JET: New article by Kurmo Konsa

The Journal of Evolution and Technology has published a new article, "Artificialisation Of Culture: Challenges to and from Posthumanism" by Professor Kurmo Konsa, of Tartu University, Estonia.

Professor Konsa's abstract:

Human societies reorganize both the surrounding environment and themselves. As a result, society is becoming more and more artificial. The driving force behind this process is constantly renewing technologies that are developed to increase welfare. Technology has moved from the reorganization of the physical environment to man’s biological body, genome and consciousness. Transhumanist concepts concentrate on the biological and genetic amendment and improvement of the human being. By contrast, questions concerning culture have been insufficiently discussed. Culture, which greatly determines how to be a human being, is something very special to the human species, and appears to have been greatly undervalued in discussions of a possible posthuman future. Very obviously, culture is the factor that determines whether we will reach such a future and whether we will be able to use all the opportunities that it would offer to us. This study deals with culture from the viewpoint of artificialisation, and indicates some of the possibilities for creating artificial cultures.