We’re treating self-improvement like a software upgrade
medium.com
medium.com
> It’s that we humans should be making active choices about what it is we want to do to ourselves, rather than letting the machines, or the markets propelling them, decide for us.
Self-improvement isn't synonymous with buying products or following companies. In fact, two of the most common self-improvement goals are to reduce the amount of time spent in front of screens and to spend more time with friends and family.
This article reads more like an anti-technology or anti-corporate piece disguised as a criticism of self-improvement.
Ironically, the author of this post would like to sell you his thinly-veiled self help books such as "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business". This blog post is marketing material for his specific brand of self-improvement.
There are so many ideological knowledge and mindset cults out there competing for attention. I could probably come up with one and make millions just from looking for drifters after the first several failed for them.
Yes, he can get preachy sometimes, but he's not part of what I call "the self-help-industrial-complex". He doesn't use ponzi-like levels of ever more expensive training seminars, that garbage people like Tony Robbins and all their ilk on youtube use to make money.
Rushkoff makes compelling and sincere arguments, he admits it when he's wrong (eg like the "Program or be Programmed" book) and, yes, he's certainly a lefist. He puts himself out there and isn't afraid to break consistency with his previous views. I admire all of that.
This particular article makes some good points. I don't agree with all of it, but it's a solid point of view and not disingenuous marketing.
Then somehow we've jumped to digital implants that don't exist yet and some extremely theoretical ideas of how they might be terrible for society.
Just a whole lot of doom and gloom with no real substance behind it.
Lol let your value feed you when you run out of money with that line of thinking. Once you are wealthy, then sure; but not till then do humans have value in these systems were born into.
Transhumanism would result in the opposite. The very idea of a gender binary should be called into question when you reach the level of augmenting and transcending the limits of your flesh.
The author seems to have a very narrow understanding of Transhumanism.
For example, roughly speaking, being a tall and very muscular person can be a disadvantage in a famine. Or being much much smarter than your peers can be a disadvantage in certain social scenarios that get you expelled for non-conformity...
I imagine we will see a similar issue with transhumanism, where the resultant products are better in some scenarios, but also worse in others.
This is becoming a pet peeve of mine. When I run into my limit I just skip the read or find a way around it :)
Wish people would just stop posting to or linking to medium.
Yeah right, but we're so far away from creating even a single "upgrade" that's comparable with the human body. For example, even the best cameras would never even be in the same competing arena as the human eye. No sensors come close to our sense of touch.
The transhumanist ideology is nothing else but some kind of perverted ideology that we somehow would be upgraded with a usb port sticking out from the skin.
Even the very best tools we have today to save lives and help our bodies sucks in comparison with the biological counterpart. Sure there may be a future that we would "upgrade" ourselves, but when that time is here (which would be very, very far into the future) everyone will instantly do it because it will be so much better. There wouldn't be some kind of discussion about it since the result is so obvious.
For it to happen, whatever we replace something with will have to have all the features that we currently enjoy + a lot more.
With the current state of software development, I'd wait at least a year, like when a new Windows version comes out (or less in case of iPhone iOS).
I don't like to beta-test with my HW; I wouldn't do it with my body.
All it takes is looking at photos from space telescopes, or electron microscopes... It should be obvious that technology can make better cameras than human eyes. Or slow motion video cameras... Infrared cameras...
The only thing about human eyes that is superior is that they come connected to the brain.
For now, technological augmentation is "air-gapped". It's incorrect to ignore air-gapped augmentations. Hell, even glasses could be considered the first step, and have existed for hundreds of years.
Using glasses is essentially the "no brainer" conclusion that you are looking for. People already accept that it's ok to try to do better than nature provided for you.
You have "instant" focus, muscles that can turn the eye in almost every direction except where the skull is. We have self repairment to some degree if you get hurt. Automatic cleaning.
Sure other cameras that humans have built could be a good extension to the body if we somehow could send it wireless to our brains. Because all ways we have to date when it comes with integrating with biological matter is the part that is hard.
If we could have a chip inserted into our brains that accepted wireless communication, then sure it would be very useful. The issue is we have nothing that even comes close to that today afaik. Using glasses could also be a useful tool, but that isn't really "upgrading" the human body or being a transhuman in the sense that the article brings up.
My point is sure we have tools that could potentially upgrade our bodies but they aren't good and it seems it is a long way before anyone would operate some cables into their brain in order to accept infrared video.