March 13 2008 / by GuestBlogger
Category: Space Year: General Rating: 16 Hot
By Athena Andreadis
This piece was originally posted here on the
blog Starship
Reckless.
Views of space travel have grown increasingly pessimistic in the
last decade. This is not surprising: SETI still has
received no unambiguous requests for more Chuck Berry from its
listening posts, NASA is busy
re-inventing flywheels and citizens even of first-world countries
feel beleaguered in a world that seems increasingly hostile to any
but the extraordinarily privileged. Always a weathervane of the
present, speculative fiction has been gazing more and more inwardly
– either to a hazy gold-tinted past (fantasy, both literally and
metaphorically) or to a smoggy rust-colored earthbound future
(cyberpunk). 
The philosophically inclined are slightly more optimistic.
Transhumanists,
the new utopians, extol the pleasures of a future when our bodies,
particularly our brains/minds, will be optimized (or at least not
mind that they’re not optimized) by a combination of
bioengineering, neurocognitive manipulation, nanotech and AI. Most
transhumanists, especially those with a socially progressive
agenda, are as decisively earthbound as cyberpunk authors. They
consider space exploration a misguided waste of resources, a
potentially dangerous distraction from here-and-now problems –
ecological collapse, inequality and poverty, incurable diseases
among which transhumanists routinely count aging, not to mention
variants of gray goo.
And yet, despite the uncoolness of space exploration, despite
NASA’s disastrous holding pattern, there
are those of us who still stubbornly dream of going to the
stars.
(cont.)
We are not starry-eyed romantics. We recognize that the problems
associated with spacefaring are formidable (as examined briefly in
Making Aliens 1,
2 and 3). But
I, at least, think that improving circumstances on earth and
exploring space are not mutually exclusive, either philosophically
or – perhaps just as importantly – financially. In fact, I consider
this a false dilemma. I believe that both sides have a much greater
likelihood to implement their plans if they coordinate their
efforts, for a very simple reason: the attributes required for
successful space exploration are also primary goals of
transhumanism.
Consider the ingredients that would make an ideal crewmember of
a space expedition: robust physical and mental health, biological
and psychological adaptability, longevity, ability to interphase
directly with components of the ship. In short, enhancements and
augmentations eventually resulting in self-repairing
quasi-immortals with extended senses and capabilities – the loose
working definition of transhuman.
Coordination of the two movements would give a real, concrete
purpose to transhumanism beyond the rather uncompelling objective
of giving everyone a semi-infinite life of leisure (without
guarantees that either terrestrial resources or the human mental
and social framework could accommodate such a shift). It would also
turn the journey to the stars into a more hopeful proposition,
since it might make it possible that those who started the journey
could live to see planetfall.
Whereas spacefaring enthusiasts acknowledge the enormity of the
undertaking they propose, most transhumanists take it as an article
of faith that their ideas will be realized soon, though the
goalposts keep advancing into the future. As more soundbite than
proof they invoke Moore’s exponential law, equating stodgy silicon
with complex, contrary carbon. However, despite such confident
optimism, enhancements will be hellishly difficult to implement.
This stems from a fundamental that cannot be short-circuited or
evaded: no matter how many experiments are performed on mice or
even primates, humans have enough unique characteristics that
optimization will require people.
Contrary to the usual supposition that the rich will be the
first to cross the transhuman threshold, it is virtually certain
that the frontline will consist of the desperate and the
disenfranchised: the terminally ill, the poor, prisoners and
soldiers – the same people who now try new chemotherapy or
immunosuppression drugs, donate ova, become surrogate mothers,
“agree” to undergo chemical castration or sleep deprivation. Yet
another pool of early starfarers will be those whose beliefs
require isolation to practice, whether they be Raëlians or
fundamentalist monotheists – just as the Puritans had to brave the
wilderness and brutal winters of Massachusetts to set up their
Shining (though inevitably tarnished) City on the Hill.
So the first generation of humans adjusted to starship living
are far likelier to resemble Peter Watts’ marginalized Rifters or
Jay Lake’s rabid Armoricans, rather than the universe-striding,
empowered citizens of Iain Banks’ Culture. Such methods and
outcomes will not reassure anyone, regardless of her/his position
on the political spectrum, who considers augmentation hubristic,
dehumanizing, or a threat to human identity, equality or morality.
The slightly less fraught idea of uploading individuals into
(ostensibly) more durable non-carbon frames is not achievable,
because minds are inseparable from the neurons that create them.
Even if technological advances eventually enable synapse-by synapse
reconstructions, the results will be not transfers but copies.
Yet no matter how palatable the methods and outcomes are, it
seems to me that changes to humans will be inevitable if we ever
want to go beyond the orbit of Pluto within one lifetime.
Successful implementation of transhumanist techniques will help
overcome the immense distances and inhospitable conditions of the
journey. The undertaking will also bring about something that
transhumanists – not to mention naysayers – tend to dread as a
danger: speciation. Any significant changes to human physiology
(whether genetic or epigenetic) will change the thought/emotion
processes of those altered, which will in turn modify their
cultural responses, including mating preferences and kinship
patterns. Furthermore, long space journeys will recreate isolated
breeding pools with divergent technology and social mores.
On earth, all “separate but equal” doctrines have wrought untold
misery and injustice, whether those segregated are genders in
countries practicing Sharia, races in the American or African
South, or the underprivileged in any nation that lacks decent
health policies, adequate wages and humane laws. Speciation of
humanity on earth bids fair to replicate this pattern, with the
ancestral species (us) becoming slaves, food, zoo specimens or
practice targets to our evolved progeny, Neanderthals to their
Cro-Magnons, Eloi to their Morlocks. On the other hand, speciation
in space may well be a requirement for success. Generation of
variants makes it likelier that at least one of our many future
permutations will pass the stringent tests of space travel and
alight on another habitable planet.
Despite their honorable intentions and progressive outlook, if
the transhumanists insist on first establishing a utopia on earth
before approving spacefaring, they will achieve either nothing or a
dystopia as bleak as that depicted in Paolo Bacigalupi’s unsparing
stories. If they join forces with the space enthusiasts, they stand
a chance to bring humanity through the Singularity some of them so
fervently predict and expect – except it may be a Plurality of
sapiens species and inhabited worlds instead.
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