Final Project part 2

             There is a similar controversy in modern day society: transhumanism. The controversy of transhumanism is the belief that humans can use technology to make humans better, by means of strength, mobility, or even life span. An NPR article was written about a new book, Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborg's, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death, written by Mark O’Connell. In this article, O’Connell says, “What makes us human is precisely our fallibility, out connection to our bodies, the existential threat of death. Remove that and we are a huge question mark, something we can’t even contemplate.”  That is the exact situation the World Congress was facing when trying to decide if Andrew was human. They were faced with this huge question mark; they didn’t know what to call him. Since he couldn’t die, he wasn’t human, but since he had organs and nervous system, he wasn’t a robot either. This confusion is what ultimately leads them to make their decision. In a blog post, Transhumanist Interview, Rigel Carson recalls a quote from transhumanist biohacker who wanted “to become this disembodied infinitely powerful thing that would go throughout the universe and encompass everything," This is another reason why the congress couldn’t consider Andrew as a human. At this time he was unable to die. He had already lived two centuries, so it was fair for the congress to assume he was some kind of “infinitely powerful thing.” They had no idea what he was capable of, and that made them nervous. No one wants to die, but it’s a well know fact that everyone eventually dies, so if you don’t… you’re not human.

            Carson continues by saying, “I think the prospect of transhumanism and biohacking can be followed by a loss of identity.” Andrew would agree with this statement, because that was the main reason he went to the congress in the first place. He felt out of place, like something wasn’t right, because he wasn’t human. Becoming a human would give him that identity and everyone would have to treat him the same as everyone else. Congress couldn’t give him this identity because his immortality took away from his aura. Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in Mechanical Reproduction talks about aura as this presence of influence and attraction that all things have. The fact that something doesn’t last forever is important when it comes to aura. Benjamin argues that the more accessible something is, the more the aura diminishes. Andrew was originally created as a robot that was a mass-produced object. He wasn’t meant to be different from any of the other robots; therefore he never had an aura in the first place. But Andrew was different than all the other robots that were mass-produced. He had a personality, a desire to learn, and an ability to love. He developed a history with multiple people he considered his family, so wouldn’t that mean he had an aura? The congress would argue no. If something is continuously accessible until the end of time, the aura diminishes until it is gone, but if that thing never has an aura to begin with, it will never have one at all. The aura is part of what makes us human and the lack of an aura is a good enough reason to deny Andrew’s request to be human. The aura could be the reason why realistic looking robots make us feel so uncomfortable, according to the uncanny valley hypothesis. These robots don’t exert an aura as humans do; yet they look like humans so it tricks our eyes into believe they are humans, but since the aura is nonexistent they are uncomfortable by the presence.