The TransHuman Code

We know—the last thing the world needs is another book on technology. Let us set the record straight from the outset. While this book gives plenty of space in its pages to introducing you to some of the most potent technologies today, occurring in the most important industries on the planet, this is not a book about technology. It is a book about humanity—the role humanity is playing now and, most importantly, the increasing role humanity must play in order to ensure that the common values we hold dear, the values that make life worth living, remain within our control. Yes, technology is here to stay. It is no exaggeration to assert that it’s one of the most potent tangible forces, if not the most potent tangible force, that can improve our lives. But that’s only if we are wise in how we use it, program it, and partner with it.

It is heavy-handed to say that technology is the devil or that technology will eventually doom us. Can technology doom us? It’s possible. Will it? Only if a few billion humans let it happen. In other words, it’s very unlikely that we will let anything continue for long that does damage to us. This assumes of course that we’re paying attention to what certainly technologies are doing and will do to us. It’s critical to our best future. Discernment. Vigilance. We don’t need to be uptight about it but we ought to readily acknowledge that sometimes what is exciting and convenient in the beginning ends up being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We create technology as a solution—but sometimes we end up creating a virus instead.

While the human world doesn’t always make the best decisions for itself, and while we can easily overlook the forest for the trees where technology is concerned, we still learn, we still adapt, and we still work together to make things right. History has shown this much: we’re fallible but we’re also unfailingly ambitious. Despite our mistakes—even the biggest ones—we continue to fight for a higher quality of life. We believe this innate conviction within us will allow us to always self-correct. That’s a fancy way of saying we will find the right solutions for the problems we create. This book hinges on the power of that truth. But we need to get busy applying it. Because if we’re not wise about how we proceed in this season of our partnership with technology, it is more likely than most realize that our ambitions—what is possible for us—will be scaled back to a level we’ve never experienced before. As interconnected and interdependent as we are on technology, a series of wrong decisions, wrong adoptions, wrong consumptions over the next couple of years could lead to a decades-long regression in which human ingenuity is supplanted and human sensibilities are replaced by technology. We don’t know how we would handle this because we’ve never been threatened on this sort of scale before. What will we do if we cannot be who we are? In the end, the question of the day isn’t as much, “Will we survive?” as it is, “Will we still thrive?” The answer is still, collectively, up to us.

From here out, it’s best to consider this a book of conversations—the most important conversations in which we-the-world should be engaged as we aim to use the power of technology to script the best future possible. This book is not meant to be a book of solutions. How can it be when so much of what is needed requires collaboration and adoption on a grand scale? We are merely two informed authors who aim to jumpstart the innovation, collaboration, and adoption necessary to produce the solutions we ultimately (and, in some cases, desperately) need.

These solutions and the way we reach them must be accomplished together. If there is not global consensus about the inherent human values that we aim to protect and enhance, and if we do not unify around the most critical decisions concerning their protection and promotion, human progress will be too fractured to move us forward. Solutions will take longer than our lifetimes, if we reach them at all.

On the other hand, if we can agree on humanity’s essentials—at least a majority of us—history suggests we will find our best answers as though they are oxygen. In a way, they are.

You might be wondering, What will we do with our critical answers where our future with technology is concerned? What we propose is the title of this book: a TransHuman Code. Before we explain what this means, we’d be remiss to not first explain what it does not mean. Let us clarify any confusion by saying that this is not a book that espouses the movement known as “transHumanism”, which is framed by a belief that humans are not a fully developed species and therefore ought to be replaced over time by a more advanced, bionic species of what some call “humanoids.” If you’ve seen the HBO series Westworld or the Swedish sci-fi drama Real Humans, such shows explore an earth in which transHumanism has been embraced to the point that a volcanic tension exists between humans and a more technologically-advanced, humanlike species. This future is neither one we believe in nor one we think is in humanity’s best interest.

Instead, we side with American statesman Henry Kissinger who explains in World Order that artificial intelligence is the god of the future that we must humanize. We are still creating a world for us, not for technology, to thrive. Therefore, when we use the term “transHuman” in this book, and in particular, in pairing with the term “code” i.e. “transHuman code”, we do so only as a nod to the reality that humanity as we know it today is being “transformed” by technology. From our viewpoint, transHuman (with a capital “H” to remind us of the priority) is a term that merely points to our belief that our best future will come from a transformational relationship with technology, but not one that requires us to surrender to a better, more bionic species. In fact, we believe a Westworld type future would be utterly bleak and more ominous than we can imagine. There are few circumstances more unhuman than that.

To avoid that fate and to usher in the brightest, most fully human future we can imagine, we must commit to embedding, or coding, into technology the human values and attributes that promote and protect the human species as it is today. Said another way, we must develop a multifaceted, multi-industry strategy for programming human intelligence (HI) into the artificial intelligence (AI) we create, embrace, and consume.

Human already have the greatest “code” on the planet programmed into us. “Simple truths,” wrote the French essayist Vauvenargues, “are a relief from grand speculations.” This is a book about the simple truth that the greatest technology on the planet is the human. If enough of us embrace this truth, we have a real shot at ending global plagues like cancer, hunger, and AIDS. Innovation will flourish. Democracy will lead. Compassion will reach further.

If you doubt this truth, consider that approximately 50,000 cells in your body will die and be replaced with new cells during the time it takes you to read this sentence. You make a new skeleton every three months and a new layer of skin every month. And every square inch of your new skin contains 20 feet of blood vessels, 4 yards of nerve fibers, 1,300 nerve cells, 100 sweat glands, and 3 million cells. In one hour, your heart produces enough energy to raise a ton of steel 3 feet off the ground. Your eye can distinguish one million different colors and take in more information than the largest telescope known to man. The human nose can distinguish 50,000 different scents. The surface area of your lungs is approximately 750 square feet or the size of one-bedroom apartment. There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. And then there’s the control center: the human brain. It contains 85 billion nerve cells functioning in such a complex and yet harmonic manner that today’s greatest neuroscientists estimate we understand only five percent of how it works.

“Without a doubt,” wrote Dr. Werner Git, “the most complex information-processing system in existence is the human body. If we take all human information processes together, i.e. conscious ones and unconscious ones, this involves the processing of 1024 bits daily. This astronomically high figure is a million times greater than the total human knowledge of 1018 bits stored in all the world’s libraries.”[1]

And that’s merely the science.

We’re not even scratching the surface of the artistic and spiritual complexity of every human on the planet who possess the ability to love, to long, to dream, to resolve. The human is and will always be the greatest and most advanced technology the world has ever known. Doesn’t it then make the most sense to place the understanding, improvement, and utilization of humanity as today’s highest priority? Excerpt from the TransHuman Code Book to be released Q1 2019

[1] www.transhumancode.com