Hyperhumanism

= "a counterpoint to transhumanism. Instead of outsourcing our intelligence to machines, hyperhumanism asks us to reclaim the innate capacities of the human body, imagination, and relational field". [1]

Description

Carl Hayden Smith and Filip Lundström:

"Hyperhumanism (HH) represents an affirmation of the human condition and of our central importance in the current technological moment. The human being is not something that we want to move beyond and be “on the other side of” (transhumanism) or something that we no longer are (post), but as stated earlier, the first tenet of HH is that we are not human yet, making the human being "pre-human.” HH requires a shift from thinking about human beings as an essence to a process; a human being is therefore defined as a being participating in the process of becoming human. Hyperhumanism is the insight that a human birth is a jackpot win, “the best of all possible worlds and that one who is lucky enough to be born a human should not miss the opportunity to be human; one should seek to thrive in their human body for the short time it is still here.

Characteristics

Carl Hayden Smith and Filip Lundström:

"We will now explore the definition of Hyperhumanism through some key concepts:

The “hyper” prefix in hyperhumanism

Before outlining the characteristics of hyperhumanism as a response to transhumanism in the GenAI question, an explanation of the choice of the “hyper” prefix is required. There are several prefixes indicating a state of being “beyond”, “over”, or “after” a certain concept, such as “post”, “meta”, “trans and "hyper ". While these prefixes have distinct meanings, the way they are used to delineate a certain realm of discourse is often arbitrary and can lead to more confusion than clarity. Humanism has been combined with all the said prefixes; “posthumanism” and “transhumanism” are established and well-known terms in the field; and “meta-humanism” is also of some significance as well (del Val 2010).

This leads to the question of why we have chosen the prefix “hyper and what we aim to say with it. Hyper can mean two distinct but different things, the first being beyond or above, meaning hyperhumanism is beyond a "human-centric" view of life and acknowledges multiple kingdoms and intelligences that are not human but remain valuable, such as the fungi kingdom but also potentially the emerging machine intelligences. The first premise of hyperhumanism is that ‘human beings may not be fully human yet’, meaning we are still very much in our infancy as humans, in a constant state of becoming. Hyperhumanism is also “hyper” as the hyperhuman strives to be fully human and live a life where the intensity of living a transitory human life is celebrated, sought after and thoroughly explored. In contrast to transhumanism, the hyperhuman does not seek to get rid of the limitations of the physical body but enjoys them and thrives within those constraints.

Dividual Identity

Carl Hayden Smith and Filip Lundström:

"A foundational assumption of hyperhumanism is that humans are not coherent individual beings with solid identities but dividuals in a process of becoming, participating in several networks and flows simultaneously, and having no clear-cut boundaries but using membranes to filter the flows and utilising multiple identities. This is true of both the physical body and consciousness itself (Saey 2016)."

(https://computer-arts-society.com/evaarchive/documents/2024/154_Smith_EVA24.pdf)

Double Consciousness

Carl Hayden Smith and Filip Lundström:

"Double consciousness (DC) (Smith 2020) is another key concept for hyperhumanism. Double consciousness is the state of being that gives access, at one and the same time, to two distinctly different fields of experience. The basis of DC is that perception is something that we are actively involved in, reality itself is under construction and we are (to a certain extent) agents in constructing our own reality. The key question therefore is, if we know our reality primarily through our first-hand experience then how should we understand the production of that experience?

The objective is that through understanding the mechanisms of DC we may be able to explore the production of exactly that, our own experience. As a result, DC also relates to the field of Ontological Design, which is a method of context engineering the human experience itself. Double Consciousness (DC) is a framework that is being stress tested through a number of emerging application areas. Can adopting these forms of DC help us to see ourselves from other perspectives and how can a literacy of pluralism help us to become more hyperhuman?"

(https://computer-arts-society.com/evaarchive/documents/2024/154_Smith_EVA24.pdf)

Interbeing

Carl Hayden Smith and Filip Lundström:

"The interbeing (Hanh 2020) is a crucial bridge towards hyperhumanism. Interbeing enriches interconnectedness, compassion, and mindfulness. It encourages us to extend our awareness beyond ourselves in order to foster a greater sense of responsibility and engagement with the world and all living beings. Interbeing also refers to the ability of thriving in the liminal state, the ’liminality of being human’ but also utilises the liminal states such as the hypnagogic and hypnopompic for creative insight (Dumpert 2019). Exploring the notion of ‘sleeping on it’ to ensure the dreaming state can do its work."

(https://computer-arts-society.com/evaarchive/documents/2024/154_Smith_EVA24.pdf)

Umwelt hacking

Umwelt Hacking is the active questioning of whether we can sense like a forest, a mycelium network, or an octopus (Smith and Wakely 2022). Each of these is their own 'kingdom', so how do we build sensory bridges between these kingdoms? This emphasises and affirms the liminality of the human condition, the ability humans have to shift states of mind. The hyperhuman seeks to master this ability and use it as a source of knowledge and wisdom.

Learning and the creative act

Another central tenent of hyperhumanism is to learn and be devoted to lifelong learning and realise that this learning is dependent on the long-term mediation of knowledge and integrating experience, which means working through information thoroughly and avoiding shortcuts (outsourcing) and copy-and-paste reasoning. This has implications for the creative act as well, where "long-term mediation” is translated to the more poetic concept “the creative struggle,” meaning that the creative act cannot be replaced with quick prompts but is dependent on the careful consideration and attentiveness of the artist.

This is closely linked to the hyperhuman approach to aim for altered traits rather than altered states. This means that instead of trying to attain a new mental state through shortcuts and bypassing, the way to go is to work through an experience and grow from it.

context over content

"Participation rather than Consumption:

Contextology (Smith 2016) is the study of context, or the science of ‘Context Engineering’ (CE). CE focuses less on engineering content and instead attempts to manipulate and create context directly. This is achieved when we are enabled (via CE tools) to reconfigure our own perception and cognitive abilities directly. We can now adopt radically different visual or auditory systems or spend time out of body (through body swapping or gender swapping) to achieve novel cognitive and creative insights. CE gives us new abilities, control over our senses, and the corresponding ability to develop new forms of perception, providing us with a new type of self and societal exploration."

(https://computer-arts-society.com/evaarchive/documents/2024/154_Smith_EVA24.pdf)

More information

• Video: Carl Hayden Smith on Hyperhumanism

* Article: Hyperhumanism in the Age of Generative AI: The impact on human creativity and identity. By Carl Hayden Smith and Filip Lundström.

URL = https://computer-arts-society.com/evaarchive/documents/2024/154_Smith_EVA24.pdf

"Recent developments in generative artificial intelligence have made it once again important to investigate our relationship to emerging and disruptive technologies. A core question being asked is what it now means to be a human being, when we are no longer the sole creators. What is the role of the human when the creative act is being outsourced and externalised to our machines? Hyperhumanism offers an alternative path when conceiving our relationships with these powerful tools, by defining concepts that help us to rethink human-technology interaction. This is a follow-up paper to Techno-Hyperhumanism (Smith and Castaneda 2020) addressing the future work suggested, namely hyperhumanism's impact on human identity, comparing transhumanist and hyperhuman approaches and relationships to modern and future technologies, as well as developing the ethics of human improvement through a hyperhuman lens."