Article Summary by Margrit Shildrick
Technologies have always played a major role in the lives of people with a range of disabilities that are assumed to impede personal autonomy. Whether mechanical aides, organic – and often internal – supplements, or digital enhancements, the widely accepted claim is that such technologies have a clear therapeutic value. It conjures the illusion of a sequence of ever more complex technologies leading to increased function and a more secure sense of self. By offsetting their physical and cognitive differences, disabled people are assured that they will no longer be devalued.
My less conventional perspective leaves behind the desire for individual autonomy and explores the question of the transhuman and the posthuman. I ask: what happens when human embodiment becomes intricately entangled with digital coding? Functional usage is likely to dominate in the short term, but further on we might wonder about the extent to which the category of the human can remain as the anchor of continuing life. In exploring the practical, philosophical and bioethical implications of emerging digital technologies, I distinguish between transhumanism, which focuses on self-perfectibility, and a posthumanism that in radically decentring the very notion of human privilege and hierarchical distinctions offers an optimistic view of disability futures.