Foreword

Let’s face it, the world is moving quickly into a future full of uncertainty. One where for the first time in history, human beings may no longer be classified as a mammal. One where technology will naturally be a part of man’s evolutionary footprint.

There are many people today that have done the research. They understand the future we are inevitably walking into. Technology is growing faster than it ever has before. There will come a day where man will build machines that match and then supersede his intelligence.

These groups use different words to describe the new era: Transhumanist, posthuman, techno-optimism, cyborgism, humanity+, immortalist, machine intelligence, robotopia, life extension, or Singularity.

While there is overlap, each name represents a unique camp of thought, strategy, and possible historical outcome for the people promoting their vision of the future. Collectively, they all believe in the same experience of life, something the authors have captured so expertly in this book. We are walking into the “Age of Super You.”

This book is a guide to that future. It explores some of the major themes we face in this new era. How will science and technology impact our humanity? What will we look like? What will our children look like and become? Will we be healthy? Will we live for hundreds of years? Can death be cured? Who will be in the way of all this? Can our leaders, government, and clerics keep up with it all?

As this book goes to press, I am in the final months of running for President of the United States. I’m running as the leader of the Transhumanist Party, a political organization I founded seeking to use science and technology to radically improve the human being and the society we live in.

In addition to upholding American values, prosperity, and security, many of these issues are on my mind.

The three primary goals of my political agenda are as follows:

1. Attempt to do everything possible to make it so this country’s amazing scientists and technologists have resources to overcome human death and aging within 15 to 20 years—a goal an increasing number of leading scientists think is reachable.

2. Create a cultural mindset in America that will embrace and produce a radical technology and science that is in the best interest of our nation and species.

3. Create national and global safeguards and programs that protect people against abusive technology and other possible planetary perils we might face as we transition into the transhumanist era.

There is a burgeoning movement in the United States, and as well as many other countries, that we need to prepare for a robust technology-enhanced future. The authors have crisply defined the trend in their book and have cleverly looked back to see how it happened and look forward to see where it is going. Even though it wasn’t intended to be a guide to the future and how we got there, in many ways it is.

The book examines how humans are transforming themselves through science and technology to become better versions of themselves, to live healthier and more fulfilling lives, and to hyperextend their human capabilities, including their longevity.

There’s increasing evidence everyday from the frontiers of science—and already in the warehouses of ecommerce companies—that much of what this book examines and predicts is, or soon will be, a near-term reality.

In 1969, as man first walked on the moon, we lived in a largely analog society. There was no sign of the digital economy that was about to sweep the world in the next three to four decades, and yet, life has since radically changed. First, with the personal computer in the 1980s and the birth of the consumer Internet revolution in the 1990s and the mobile revolution in the 2000s and 2010s. Information that was once limited to black and white television screens on the evening news and in newsprint each morning now flows freely and ubiquitously on-demand, and with no regard for your location.

All that was around the corner back then, but only a few could see it. The Jetson future was about the raw power of rockets, a push-button work week, and flying cars, rather than the simplicity and elegance of the Internet, the transformational nature of a digital economy, and the radical hybridization of machine and human that’s about to arrive.

The future is hard to predict with any accuracy. Still, here in 2016, we know a major shift is about to happen again. We can see the macro-trends of the technology Singularity coming, and fast. It will be tectonic in how it shifts society.

You’d think every politician in the twenty first century would be publicly and passionately pursuing and preparing for the future. But they’re not. They’re more interested in landing your votes, making you slave away at low-paying jobs, keeping you addicted to shopping, forcing you to accept bandage medicine and its death culture, and getting you to pay as much tax as possible to fund far-off wars. There’s no regard for the future.

And if transhumanists—a growing group consisting of futurists, life extensionists, biohackers, technologists, singularitarians, cryonicists, techno-optimists, a few authors, and many other scientific-minded people—are serious about the pending future, then it’s time to get involved. If it’s new territory for you, start by reading this book.

Zoltan Istvan
Presidential candidate and founder of The Transhumanist Party
April 2016