4 :: POSTHUMAN IDENTITY
(Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh), blood vessels (German Fraunhofer Institute),
human skin (Lothar Koch of the Laser Centre Hannover in Germany) and even sheets
of cardiac tissue that can ‘beat’ like a real heart (Cabor Forgacs, University of Missouri
in Columbia). In the light of these developments, some have claimed that growing
bio-organs (by printing them) will eventually replace the need for donor organ
transplants in the future. Like 3D printing, developments in artificial intelligence are
part of this broader posthuman transformation. Craig Venter, author of Life at the
Speed of Light (2013), and one of the leaders to have mapped the first draft sequence of
the human genome in 2000, has been at the forefront of the digitization of synthetic life.
In 2010, Venter and his team produced the first synthetic organism by transplanting
man-made DNA into a vacant bacterial cell. For Venter, developments in synthetic life
are only in their infancy. For example, consider the possibility of biological teleportation
- involving the transmission of a genome across the solar system at the speed of light
and its reconstitution on the other side of the planet – which in Venter’s view is no
longer the stuff of science fiction but a burgeoning field of actual possibility (see Corbyn
2013). Whilst such developments are presently confined to bacteria and microplasma
only, the implications of synthetic life – from vastly accelerated vaccine production to
the potential creation of entirely new life forms – when combined with the rapidly
decreasing costs of synthesis and sequencing technologies means that the definition
of life as we know it is undergoing radical transformation.
Then there is the impact of robotics to consider. In 2013, Rich Walker and Matthew
Godden of Shadow Robot Company in the UK assembled ‘Rex’ – billed as the first
true walking, talking and heart-beating bionic man. Using the most advanced human
prostheses available – from robotic limbs to artificial organs and even a synthetic
blood-pumping circulatory system – it was reported that Rex simulates approximately
two-thirds of the human body, including artificial hands, feet, wrists, ankles and an
almost complete set of artificial organs from an artificial heart to synthetic blood,
lungs (and windpipe), pancreas, spleen, kidney and even a fully functional circulatory
system (Dixon 2013). Rex also sports a human-like prosthetic face, and an
exoskeleton made by REX Bionics in New Zealand. Equipped with a sophisticated
‘chatbot’ program, Rex can carry out rudimentary conversations – achieved largely
through retinal prosthesis and cochlear implants which facilitates speech recognition
and speech production systems (Channel 4 2013). The advent of Rex indicates just
how much the blending of the nonbiological and biological is becoming increasingly
hard to distinguish in today’s era of the posthuman.
These radical transformations of the interrelations between the human and its others
involve immense theoretical, socioeconomic, cultural and political consequences,