Something that I think we have to be aware of is that all technology comes with a price. And I'm not speaking of the cost of materials either, it's a sort of devil's bargain were to reap the benefits of technology significant risks must be endured and fundamental changes to human society must be made. Some of these are obvious. If you rely on an electricity you are tied down to the electric company. There is risk of fire, and a variety of other accidents as well, but risks are more negligable because the advance of technology (for the most part) decreases existing risks (though new risks also pop up to replace them). But the changes made remain.
With newer technology the genie asks for more and more significant sacrifices. A finger sufficed last time, and now it's the whole hand. It isn't just a method of living anymore, about being tied to a community not just for survival but for information, entertainment, and most things that people consider living. It is a requirement that rights be ceded and perspectives changed. Even the advent of e-mail and typed communication has it's downfalls. We are limited in communication, we lose the handwriting of it all. Things like mathematical notation especially suffer and morph into the weird cs notations. Our models become computer based and in so doing they become discrete. Continuity is discarded for a quicker model. As for rights, we are finding more and more that the right to privacy, to dissapear is something that technology is taking. You aren't on display, but your life can be loaned out with less and less effort.
And that's where we are at now. We are content to change our houses, our cities, our societies and perhaps even our perspectives and personalities. Next the person too must be discarded. For one thing we should be sure that it is something better that we seek.
I am also reminded of the conversation in Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet. Our reasoning for these changes seems to be a loyalty to future man, the man who will be born heir to our advances and technology. But I do have to wonder, why do we have this loyalty? Is it because we look forward to the future of mankind? But in this quest I think transhumanists are eager to throw away any part of the human, so that perhaps nothing human will remain. So this future man really has about as much relation to us as any alien or artificial life. Though thinking about my encounters with transhumanists I think that some of them realize that too. Because how many futurists agree that if we create AI it will surpass us and that will be humanity's ultimate accomplishment? It's just as good, in the end, as relentless modification of the human body and form. But of course in that situation we know that we won't be coming along for the ride, we'll be left behind. But I think in any singularity, if they even can happen, we will all be left behind.
