Remaining human in a transhumanist world

Abstract

Given that the transhumanist vision of the world is frequently painted as desirable for people and optimistically utopian, the article’s aim is to investigate one of such visions, imagined by Scott Westerfeld in The Succession duology to see if such a utopian model accounts for the necessity of the survival of humanity. While avoiding the usual strictly dystopian and alarmist scenarios, Westerfeld’s postmortal and extropian world is rife with challenges to the transhumanist ideas, asking about the actual grounds on which future communication and cooperation would be based, and the limits of enhancement that need to be drawn not to lead to dehumanization.