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Since Shii's article is kinda crap, I'll throw something up.
Transhumanism is the belief totally logical argument that human beings will soon manage to create a computer smart enough to make itself smarter, thereby making itself even smarter, ad infinitum. The offshoot for humanity would be that this ultra-smart computer could then solve all our problems permanently forever, and you'll live forever in a happy place filled with sunshine and rainbows.
what.
Yep, really. That's the gist of the theory. It's based on some pretty naive readings of Moore's Law, which states that computing power always increases exponentially. This, of course, is taken to mean that, at some point in the very near future!!!, processing power will reach a point at which it becomes self-aware. This point of no return is called, in Transhumanist lingo, the Singularity. It's named after the scientific title of a black hole, the logic being that life after this event will be so different, we can not conceptualize it. It's generally represented by proponents, however, as a pretty neat thing.
A number of things are supposedly going to happen around this point:
- Human and machine consciousness will merge together.
- What this means isn't exactly clear, but imagine your brain being either augmented by a ride-along AI, or your mind being uploaded into a circuit. Both are possible.
- Machines will gain sentience.
- Again, this is rather vague, but it's generally meant to mean that the Turing Test will finally be passed by a machine.
- This self-awareness leads to computers continually upgrading themselves.
- This one is a bit off to me; after all, humans are self-aware and we've been the same for as long as anyone can remember. Then again, we can't reach out and edit out genetic code, analogous to the way a computer could edit its own silicon.
- Nanotechnology becomes ubiquitous.
- This might happen within the next 20 years anyway, but it figures into enough of the arguments that it's needed.
Anyway, people like Ray Kurzweil keep writing books like The Age of Spiritual Machines promoting the idea. Doctors like Terry Grossman sell entire regimens to people looking to "live long enough to life forever." There are webcomics about it.
We'll see. I wouldn't bet on it, though. Warren Ellis doesn't either.
The Culture is my favorite post-singularity science fiction creation.