Bogdan Popoveniuc
Radu-Daniel Vatavu
ABSTRACT
We propose transhumanism as a philosophical and cultural framework for contextualizing, characterizing, and examining physical-digital environments designed to amplify, augment, mediate, and extend human sensorimotor abilities and intelligence. To this end, we connect transhumanism with Milgram’s Reality-Virtuality continuum, Mann’s reality mediators, and Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal to discuss innovations in human augmentation with the technology of Extended Reality (XR). We discuss three prototypes for human augmentation implemented with XR technology designed to be worn or integrated in the environment, for which we present implications in relation to the three core conditions for transhumanism (global security, technological progress, and wide access) and four levels at which XR determines human augmentation (instrumentation, integration, control, and sensation). In the context where transhumanism can characterize the bridging state between being human and posthuman in a world that becomes into being, we conclude with the need for an XR ethics specifically addressing human augmentation.
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- Transhumanism as a Philosophical and Cultural Framework for Extended Reality Applied to Human Augmentation
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