Well, me might just be having a terminology difference.
My understanding of “transhuman” involves being more than just human. Picking up a tool, even a sophisticated tool, doesn’t qualify. And “more” implies that you standard garden-variety human doesn’t qualify either.
I’m not claiming there is an easily discernible bright line, but just as contact lenses don’t make you a cyborg, a weirdly shaped metal tooth does not make you a transhuman.
But that’s because everyone uses glasses, as a matter of course—it’s the status quo now. The person who thought “well, and why should we have to walk around squinting all the time when we can just wear these weird contraption on our heads”, at a time when people might look at you funny having wearing glass on your face, I think that’s pretty transhuman. As is the guy who said “Let’s take it further, and put the refractive material directly on our eyeball” back when people would have looked at you real funny if you suggested they put plastic in their eyes are you crazy that sounds so uncomfortable.
Now of course, it’s easy to look at these things and say “meh”.
Edit: If you look at the history of contact lenses, though, what actually happened is less people saying “let’s improve” and more people saying “I wonder how the eye works” and doing weird experiments that probably seemed pointless at the time. Something of a case study against the “basic research isn’t useful” argument, I think, not that there are many who espouse that here.
Well, me might just be having a terminology difference.
My understanding of “transhuman” involves being more than just human. Picking up a tool, even a sophisticated tool, doesn’t qualify. And “more” implies that you standard garden-variety human doesn’t qualify either.
I’m not claiming there is an easily discernible bright line, but just as contact lenses don’t make you a cyborg, a weirdly shaped metal tooth does not make you a transhuman.
But that’s because everyone uses glasses, as a matter of course—it’s the status quo now. The person who thought “well, and why should we have to walk around squinting all the time when we can just wear these weird contraption on our heads”, at a time when people might look at you funny having wearing glass on your face, I think that’s pretty transhuman. As is the guy who said “Let’s take it further, and put the refractive material directly on our eyeball” back when people would have looked at you real funny if you suggested they put plastic in their eyes are you crazy that sounds so uncomfortable.
Now of course, it’s easy to look at these things and say “meh”.
Edit: If you look at the history of contact lenses, though, what actually happened is less people saying “let’s improve” and more people saying “I wonder how the eye works” and doing weird experiments that probably seemed pointless at the time. Something of a case study against the “basic research isn’t useful” argument, I think, not that there are many who espouse that here.