Educational Technologies in the Age of Transhumanism

Introduction

Based on the endless human transformation, transhumanism focuses on the future along with the change in how people learn. The term “transhumanism” was first suggested by Huxley (1927), the father of transhumanism movement. He claims that if human species want, they can transcend themselves by realizing new opportunities of and for their human nature. Humanity+ (formerly World Transhumanist Association) defined transhumanism as: “ the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities” (Bostrom, 2003). Briefly, it can be defined as the use of technology for human enhancement which is mainly shaped by the modern technologies.

Since the beginning of intellectual technological innovations, technology has served as a significant medium to improve the quality of our lives, mainly to solve the problems we face in daily life. The more advanced technology becomes, the more explicitly its impact on society is seen in the 21st century. As human-beings, we perceive that the use of these modern technologies is a need for life and they increase the quality of communication and relationships in community. As explained in Principles of Extropy, “science and technology are essential to eradicate constraints on lifespan, intelligence, personal vitality, and freedom.” (More, 2003, Section 1). On the other hand, Bostrom (2003) claims that humanism which is an intellectual and cultural movement aims at improving human-beings’ condition advancing principally technologies. It has the potential to enhance people’s different capacities such as physics, intellectualness, psychology by eliminating aging. He (Bostrom, 2003) also points out that “transhumanism can be viewed as an extension of humanism, from which it is partially derived. Humanists believe that humans matter, that individuals matter.” (p.4). As we understand from these explanations, transhumanism movement is seeking for the ways to make the things better for the humanity.

How does transhumanism affect learning and education? Transhumanism has created drastic changes in many different sectors, especially in education as it is directly related to how we grow and shape our lives. According to Edwards and Lewin (2015) “transhumanism tells us about how we think about ourselves – what we amount to and where we are going (p.3). It gives us some insight into the essence of human identity since in the technological age. The technological age has also changed the way we interact socially and caused a sudden alteration in the generational traits. This change is fundamentally located in education. As a result, the new generation will become change agents (Prensky, 2001 & Tapscott, 2009).