Yes those are all interesting considerations to be addressed. What I am focusing on in this topic, however, is the “human element” itself, regardless of eventual or inevitable mergings with technology, or how these might take place (or are already taking place). What interests me here is that this human element is a “flesh, organism, a mortally fragile and unquantifiably spiritual singularity of conscience”. Regardless of how we might argue “the soul”, how we might argue that cyborgism is or will be changing man, this human element, in itself, whatever you wish to call it, is the subject of my enquiry here. More specifically, the aesthetics of this element.
Unfortunately there just aren’t convenient easy concepts to employ here when we speak of “the human element”, we need to create our own meaning and, also unfortunately, use words already available to us. Language has not yet sufficiently evolved to keep pace with the forward momentum development of the “frame” of meaning in which we are, as humans, situated and from which we emerge. This frame now involves large degrees of complex technology and new possibilities for how the human is contrasted, in its “essence”, against this technological backdrop.
So: it seems to me that man, as man, regardless of other considerations like cyborgism or AI or biosynthesis, possesses certain distinct characteristics which separate him out, are separated out, from the technological world around him. Man to a large extent emerges from this technos, its own essence conditions man in large(ly yet unknown) ways, but there still exists this “essentially human” which I choose to identify in line with its aesthetics: it is mortal, fragile, unquantifiable, “infinitely” discursive yet also singular, “spiritual”, possessing qualities that present as “ethical” and “beautiful”. These stand in stark contrast to technology, to both the essence of this technology and the productions of technology. I think that the human element is distinct from the technological element, inherently so, but not absolutely so - there is large and increasing overlap, one gets lost within the other, one may not be differentiated from the other within an increasingly large number of situations. And yet… they remain distinct. This problem of overlap, merger, the things which techno-futurists or cyborgists or AI researchers adore and are fascinated with, is a very real phenomenon, yet it does not exhaust the space in which the human and the technological meet, nor certainly does it exhaust (although it might claim to) the exteriorities which lie outside of this domain of cross-referentiality.
What we have is the undeniable modern issue of the role of man in technology, the role of technology in man, the co-occurring mutual emergence and dependence that arises therein - but despite the praise that techno-futurists and others have for this developing new domain and all its implications, as this domain becomes more developed it also casts both the more essentially human nature and the more essentially technological nature, in themselves, in shadow, conceals them. How is this? It is because the human element and all the “characteristics” with which we might associate it are, where they emerge predominately from within this singularly human frame, remain unseen and unseeable where we are looking only through a lens that is already everywhere human-technological. The same goes for the nature of technology itself, it also remains unseen and unseeable where we only look from a perspective that is already synthesizes with both the human and the technological.
My concern here is to try and unconceal these more essential human and technological natures, and NOT to work through the seemignly endless (yet also interesting in their own right) machinations of possibilities and implications related to the merging of man and machine. Where this merger does fall within my purview here I am only concerned with how this contextual frame of meaning becomes the backdrop against which the human is juxtaposed, and what sort of aesthetics emerge from this juxtapositioning. Perhaps what it means to be human can no longer be adequately conceived outside of considerations of the technological, but this does not undo the critical need to seek out this human essence, as well as the technological essence, where they present more in their “ownness” and most sufficient nature and quality. I think this sort of considerations is further cloaked the more we lose the ability to see technology in itself, or see the human in itself. The reality of the disappearing “in itself” of these entities is not denied, rather it is seen as very real and also a very real problem for the possibility of accurately and intricately explicating of these entities. Certainly a good understanding and mapping of these beings “in themselves”, absent the other, at least sufficiently so, would also be a prerequisite for trying to best understand and map the terrain where these beings come together and merge into each other.
It also goes without saying that yes, certainly man is “a machine”. Yet man is a sort of machine that is very different from the machines that have emerged from technos. It is this difference that I feel is important here. I consider the observation that man is a machine, an organic machine/s, obvious and uninteresting, at least in the context of this topic where the aesthetics of the human against the backdrop of the technological is being considered.
