this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Transhumanism

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Community for transhumanists, discussion of transhumanism, news about transhumanism-adjacent technologies, information on related technologies, transhumanist philosophy, and things you are doing now personally or in an organisation to push forward the technology and political foundations for transhumanism.

Definition of transhumanism I'm using:

The promotion of widespread access to - and development of - technology to alter, improve (by your own definitions), integrate with, or completely replace your body and control your very identity, in the name of self-determination and autonomy - up to and including immortality and total digitization, but not only that!

Also, an exploration of the consequences of the types of development associated with transhumanism and the positive and negative responses to it.

I actually use a more philosophical definition personally but this is close enough to what I think transhumanism is.

Community rules:

Given that this is also hosted on a somewhat infosec oriented instance (infosec.pub), I hope we can discuss some of the privacy aspects of transhumanism and related tech too :)

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As implants and biotech is developing, I think it is interesting and important to consider that the technology being integrated with people's bodies and minds is essentially a part of them (note: I have more thoughts on this like how I consider "external" technology to essentially be a part of me too, but that's a whole other thing ;p).

As such, I think it's worth elevating the importance of Free Software and Free/Open Hardware from a transhumanist activism and politics perspective. ^.^

If we generally consider the ability and access to control, modify, and understand your body - think things like legally having access to all your medical records - to be something like a basic human right, then Free Software and Free Hardware become more than just a fundamental aspect of the right to information and communication, and start to become an ever more important issue of basic bodily integrity.

In the same way that things like abortion and access to trans healthcare are issues of bodily/morphological autonomy, so too does access, control, and right to understand tue schematics of any implants or mechanisms of communicating with them become a similar issue ^.^.

As such - at least within the current context of states (I'm an anarchist so I don't consider this as the political endpoint) - I think it would be a really good idea to push for some policies mandating that all schematics and software for devices intended for implantation or to specifically communicate with such devices, are open access and open source, including documentation on how to modify firmware of these devices (e.g. people receiving implants must have access to a cryptographic key that can be used to arbitrarily modify the device firmware).

Furthermore, I think it'd be a very good idea to have strong protections against both coercive implantation and coercive removal of implants ^.^

It's also worth considering the privacy issues. For example, trying to add legal protections to prevent any kind of location or sensory data being sent to opaque services with questionable consent.

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