By Egon E. Mosum
For the Shakespeare fans out there, a quote from Hamlet in Act II Scene 2 comes to bear.
‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!’
That quote is over five hundred years old, but for those who tend to more modern bards like Bob Dylan, when it comes to that piece of work, ‘The times they are a-changin.’
Man, for centuries has had bits and pieces added to the piece of work he was; peg legs to replace the real deal gone missing, hooks to replace lost hands, glass eyes to cover dark holes of blindness.
But those were doll parts, ineffective cosmetic replacements. It wasn’t until our present time when false flesh replacements provide real function, and are now headed towards not only mimicking the real thing, but improving upon it.
Our technology has changed the world, and now our technologies are changing what it means to be a man, to be human.
The study of this is called ‘transhumanism’…
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It is a field of endeavor where what was born man, now seeks to become more than man, more than human, and in the process of that progress, besides scientific questions, there will be legal and ethical ones.
We are reaching a point in time where Robo Cop and the Six Million Dollar Man are becoming more fact than fiction — which brings us back to Hamlet and his words in Act III Scene 1, when he speaks of ‘the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.’
There are shocks which were not contemplated at the time by the Great Dane, for in the twenty-first century, that flesh is being more and more married to plastic, metal, silicone and software.
Elon Musk, when he isn’t busy firing federal workers or trying to get us to Mars in one of his semi-reliable rockets, is a pioneer on the forefront of transhumanism.
His company, Neuralink, seeks to meld the computer and the human cranium and in the process, he promises ‘This technology will restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs and unlock new dimensions of human potential.’[1]
In January of 2025, it was reported, ‘Elon Musk said a third person has received an implant from his brain-computer interface company Neuralink, one of many groups working to connect the nervous system to machines.’
The surgery was performed by a robot.[2]
These advances bring new hope for spinal cord injury patients, and those who have lost their vision.
A blind patient had brain chip implants and ‘Thanks to the chips in his brain, now has very limited artificial vision — what he describes as “blips on a radar screen.” With the implant, he can perceive people and objects represented in white and iridescent dots.’[3]
Are looking at a future where the lame can walk, the blind can see courtesy of the silicon chip? It appears to be so, in which case, what could be the negative side of this?
‘Much of the debate over transhumanism has focused on safety concerns and immoral consequences—such as increased social inequality—of the availability of bioenhancement technologies.’[4]
For a moment, think about how technology has always stratified society, enhanced inequality, challenged both faith and philosophy.
The industrial revolution brought about beneficial production changes, but along with it came worker exploitation, slums, life changing injuries, and a society where more often than not, those who labored in the manufacture of a product couldn’t afford to buy it for their own use.
Technology when it comes to medicine is expensive, even by the standards of high prices that we are used to in the field in today’s healthcare world.
Often, the treatment you can get is dependent on either the money you have, or the parameters of the policy you purchase covering medical expenses. Don’t have the money, don’t have the right coverage, and you might not get the breakthroughs because you are broke.
We have robot assisted surgery; we are rapidly reaching a stage where Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare will be C3PO and R2D2. Where then will go any compassion and human interaction that may still exist today?
One might imagine a society where blindness is a thing of the past, if you can afford the surgery; a day when the paralyzed can walk and run again, if they can afford the surgery.
For those who can’t; the white cane and dark glasses, the wheelchair.
Stratification in society has been going on as long as there have been societies, but now we are taking it to a whole different level with transhumanism.
Will those who can think much faster and better due to brain chip implantation have a programmed ability to contemplate the social and legal equality of those who are stuck with the gray matter they were issued at birth?
When technology can replace more and more of our human meat with metal, will those who might thereby live much longer lives have the same regard for those who won’t have the access, and therefore the lifespan?
We are going way past the merely therapeutic, we are heading rapidly towards a world where the old concept of a ‘master race’ might become physically feasible.
‘Transhumanists seek to enhance the human condition beyond any notion of “normal” functioning.’ They ‘favor morphological freedom — the right to modify and enhance one's body, cognition, and emotions.’[5]
Just looking around, without employing any technology that didn’t exist thousands of years ago, we can see that a certain segment of the population favors ‘morphological freedom’ in their piercings and tattoos.
Think about how they are regarded by mainstream society, think of the limitation of job prospects, partners, and how they may be viewed by law enforcement. Now magnify what modifications might be effectuated by transhumant technological advances and turn the question around.
Those with strong limbs, computer like minds, enhanced sensory perception — they will become the masters of society, and like all societies we have ever experienced on Earth, those on the top do not regard those on the bottom as equals, but as mere consumers or servants.
Then there is the potential for the creation of the ‘super soldier,’ which is something that has long been on the drawing board at DARPA. How would tomorrow’s Terminators and Transformers react to established rules of engagement, laws of war, and dealings with civilian populations?
The answer is a definitive, ‘we have no idea.’
That is a problem that needs to be addressed now, before our future semi-robot overlords solve it for us in one form or another.
In closing, and in contemplation, we must return to Shakespeare, for there was what might be a prediction made in his play The Tempest, when the character Miranda in Act V Scene 1 cried, ‘O brave new world, that has such people in it!’
[1] Neuralink.com
[2] ELON MUSK SAYS THIRD PATIENT GOT A NEURALINK BRAIN IMIPLANT Ungar, 1/13/25 AP NEWS https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-9dbc92206389f27fd032825cf1597ee5
[3] NEXT FRONTIER FOR BRAIN IMPLANTS IF ARTIFICIAL VISION Mullin 4/15/24 WIRED https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-frontier-for-brain-implants-is-artificial-vision-neuralink-elon-musk/
[4] THE DEBATE OVER TRANSHUMANISM Ebbets, 6/29/21 SMITH COLLEGE https://www.smith.edu/news-events/news/debate-over-transhumanism
[5] The Philosophical Limitations of Transhumanism and its Misplaced Hope in Human Enhancement Corby 10/24 in The Linacre Quarterly https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11559535/
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