On Anarchism, Technology, and Transhumanism

On Anarchism, Technology, and Transhumanism

From The Commoner by reimagining

The more I wrestle with it, the more I become sympathetic to, if not a full-blown supporter of, anarchist-transhumanism. After much interrogation, the notion of technology as a neutral tool that can be leveraged to act as an oppressive method of control (to reduce agency and confine), an emancipatory tool (to resist domination, to expand agency and empower), or a complex overlapping web of both seems to generally ring true.

There has been a great deal of discussion regarding the Luddites on various social networking platforms, and how they fought against the socioeconomic context in which a specific new tech was being leveraged against them. They thought the most effective way to combat their imminent dispossession under the social relations the tech enabled was sabotage.

I would like to briefly connect this history to another example of a technology initially used as a tool of control: written language. Written language made its first appearance on the historical record some 5,500 years ago, distinctly as a technology of statecraft and domination. Now, as literacy has become more common, the written word is often employed by the subaltern as a liberatory technology, a use antithetical to its origins.

Three-dimensional bioprinters, like the one above, print out a mixture of cells called "bio-ink" in order to produce artificial biomedical parts. The aim is to simulate natural tissue, which some speculate could allow us to produce artificial organs for medical purposes (image source).

Conceiving of and critiquing technology through a simple anarchist agency-framework (an approach to analysis and evaluation, informed by anarchist principles, which looks at how a given thing might either promote freedom and increase agency or reinforce domination and control) and a loose disability justice analysis, has led me to think that the all too common wholesale condemnation of new technology in and of itself, without actually digging into the roots of its possible implications in both directions – towards freedom or domination – is contrary to anarchist ethos.

The Luddites were right to attack the emergent industrialised textile industry, the exploitative context in which it necessarily gave birth, and the lifeways it threatened to extinguish in its owners' quest for endless accumulation. Yet within the technology of textile machinery, buried beneath the rapacious drive of capitalists consolidating power and enclosing the very lives of those they subjugated, there was latent liberatory potential; different but not dissimilar to that of the origins of the legacy of written language.

To be sure, for example, autonomous strip mining machinery is ipso facto a net negative but its horrors can't be myopically reduced to how such a technology robs workers who were doing the strip mining of their livelihoods – it needs to be thought of beyond the blinding economistic frame of the-now and placed into broader contexts. The communities of living beings, both human and non-human, destroyed through the act of strip mining, the resulting untold toll on humanity through the ceaseless patterns of constant overconsumption such industrial activity creates to justify its existence, the brutality it enacts both primarily and tangentially on ecosystems, on climates, etc, are why autonomous strip mining machinery is an inherently destructive tool of cisheteropatriarchal white supremacist capitalism: a net negative. Not only because of the jobs automation threatens.

Those who suffer socioeconomic oppression fuel a negative reaction to emergent technologies, since these technologies threaten their immediate financial security. However, it is possible to think beyond this framing and discover the potential of technology to lessen human suffering. For example, the manners in which assistive technology such as automated devices can be used to help individuals with disabilities with activities of daily living, such as dressing, eating, and bathing, how it can increase their independence and agency by allowing them to perform these tasks on their own, without the need for assistance from others, how it can in a broader context make certain services and products more accessible and affordable, should cause us to view unthinking attacks on emergent technology with scrutiny. How can we, in good faith, knee-jerk denounce something with such immense potential for increasing human dignity?

The Pioneer Building in San Francisco's Mission District, housing the offices of Neuralink and OpenAI. Open AI are the creators of ChatGPT, a new artificial intelligence (AI) system. AI's like ChatGPT mimic human speech, writing, and knowledge gathering, and are therefore perceived as threats to many human jobs by popular media (image source).

I believe technology as an abstract concept is neutral. To conclude that technology is wholesale negative for humanity is a philosophical non sequitur. By no means should technology be decontextualized from its social, political and its ecological implications.  The webs of overlapping networks of interconnected contexts need to be considered. A notion of transhumanism (which generally seeks to enhance the human body and mind, intending to improve the human condition through such means as nanotech, artificial intelligence, etc, to augment physical and mental abilities, and improve health and well-being) confined wholly within hegemonic cisheteropatriarchal white supremacist capitalism is understandably fuel for cyberpunk nightmares. But I posit that this is true of the implementation of nearly all technology within this paradigm.

Through an anarchist approach – ethics and strategy – we can both attack and liberate through the use of a radical analysis. We can face unfurling (and sometimes frightening) complexity head-on without shrinking away from the ethos of aspiring toward ever-increasing degrees of freedom and autonomy for all living beings. This is how an anarchist transhumanism is beginning to crystalize, with a commitment to use technology in the expansion of human freedom and happiness.

In some versions of the myth, Pandora's box also contains one crucially good thing: hope. According to the story, when Pandora opened the box, all the evils escaped and spread throughout the world, but hope remained inside, lying in wait, yet to be fully actualized. We might say that the Pandora’s box of today’s technology has long since been opened. In this case, to try to forgo technology altogether is to live in denial of what that box has released. However, if we can find the hope that remains, then we must hope to create a world that has been blessed, not cursed, by the contents of that box.  

There are 7 Comments

the idea that anything is neutral is funny, in both the haha and peculiar senses. everything has a context and the opening of this article makes me rethink my commitment to literacy rather than making me want to embrace transhumanism.

when i first read Zerzan (in 1989. yes, i am old.) i was intrigued. these were ideas i hadn't thought about before. i was nearly a primitivist for a while, but a lot of people i know do care work for disabled people and they troubled my view. i don't think there is any easy resolution to this predicament. but to say that assistive technologies allow people to be independent, as if independence is what any of us have, is a very strange way to put this. to use devices rather than to be in community is not a world i want.

really, though, it seems to me that the missing piece here is fear of death, (for all humans, not just disabled people). wanting to stay alive as long as possible, at whatever cost to all other living beings, that all seems like something anarchists would want to interrogate. fear of death is the father of progress. and the idea that progress can lead to the elimination of death is what keeps a lot of us trapped in the clutches of progress.

i know we were all taught that the lesson of Pandora's box is that hope remains & hope is a good thing. but have you considered that hope was in that box for a reason and probably is not the boon companion we think it is?

"to say that assistive technologies allow people to be independent, as if independence is what any of us have, is a very strange way to put this" - great point

"the idea that progress can lead to the elimination of death is what keeps a lot of us trapped in the clutches of progress." - you may be right, but I think it goes beyond a fear of death (which is difficult to comprehend and respond to, even if wanting to), but more a fear of the pains, suffering, and inconveniences of aging in a society such as this.

what does "to be in community" mean?

what does it mean to be in community? such a margarine word, community. i get that.

i don't mean it in any specialized way. i mean in community to mean the humans and the more-than-humans that we see every day, that we eat with, sleep with, go to the beach with. the people whose funerals, bat mitzvahs, weddings, & other rites of passage we attend, the people we visit in the hospital, and the like. the group of beings we care deeply about.

"it can increase their independence and agency by allowing them to perform these tasks on their own, without the need for assistance from others... How can we, in good faith, knee-jerk denounce something with such immense potential for increasing human dignity?"

What makes performing tasks with the assistance of technology more dignifying than getting help from others? I feel like this mindset is just a product of cisheteropatriarchal white supremacist capitalism

Don't subsidize technology. That simple. You don't even really have to be prohibitive, just cut the energy that drives it(moors law). Just putting an end to the 5 monopolies(land, tariffs, money, patents, and infrastructure) would kneecap the leviathan technium. Recall what happened when Rome cut the grain subsidy, the dim and the dark soon followed. I like technology that is more focal object based then device based. As a vision, I would sum it up as Mad Max with less desert and war and more food forests and phalansteries with thousands of human psychographic archipelagos(or bolo'bolos).

this is a good example how anarchism became useless (if it wasn't always). Like Octave Mirbeau once said "anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything".

This must be a joke, right? If not, the author’s hyper-alienated approach and thoughts make it all-to-clear how far gone some people are as “anarchist transhumanism is beginning to crystalize”. oh, and “cisheteropatriarchal white supremacist capitalism”? enough said, won’t even touch this over-packed adult diaper. “How can we, in good faith, knee-jerk denounce something with such immense potential for increasing human dignity?” As if there hasn’t been over a century of actual critique and analysis on the subject by incredibly potent people who used their biological-determined brains….knee-jerk….go back to your video games. I suspect this is either a poorly-executed spoof, AI, a Russian bot, or the once-human and now cyber-lobotomized equivalent.

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