Becoming Technium: The Rise of the Transhuman Species in Ramez Naam’s Nexus

Abstract

Innovation has had a significant impact on all facets of life, societies, and customs since the turn of the twenty-first century. It has profoundly influenced sociocultural and existential dimensions of human life. In the contemporary technological landscape, innovation plays such a foundational influence in people’s daily lives that it is increasingly inconceivable to picture a future without it. It has acquired the potential to modify the very human personality, even if it is generally seen as a solution to most human problems and a source of consolation. Because of technological advancements, humanity has entered the cyberpunk era, where cutting-edge devices like computers and mobile phones have become an additional brain of the body, potentially posing a threat or transforming people into transhuman beings. People have become more and more dependent on innovation, which progressively blends with and changes the unique human state to become the ‘Seventh Kingdom of life’. The ‘Technological Singularity’ is very likely as computers and artificial intelligence improve faster than mechanical advancement. According to Ramez Naam’s ‘Nexus’, there is a possibility that humanity may merge or converge innovation into a complex, interdependent species known as the ‘‘Technium’’, which will soon transform into transhuman beings. This research undertakes a critical examination to showcase the achievable technological singularity that completely transforms human personalities into a different species known as “transhumans”. Consideration has been given to Ramez Naam’s Nexus in order to support the idea of  speculative transhumanistic perspectives.