Classical Cybernetics and Transhumanism: A Reply to Richmond’s Review of The Nature of the Machine and the Collapse of Cybernetics

Abstract

Sheldon Richmond has written an insightful and exhaustive review of my book The Nature of the Machine and the Collapse of Cybernetics: A Transhumanist Lesson for Emerging Technologies (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). Richmond voices concerns regarding some suggestions I made about the future of humanity vis-à-vis a contemporary cybernetic reinstantiation in the form of Emerging Technologies. He suggests that future cybernetically rooted sciences (and the transhumanist technologies that come along with them) can pose peril for the human condition. This reply is intended to clarify certain points that Richmond brings up, by means of (a) responding to his suggestion that cybernetics and transhumanism could be independently understood, and (b) unveiling a metaphysical and ethical stance, shared by Richmond, critical to the observations I made regarding a “cybernetically organized mankind” made possible by Emerging Technologies. I identify Richmond’s position as (a) precautionary in nature, (b) for reasons perhaps more ethical than epistemological, somewhat out of sync with the cybernetic ethos.