English Audio Request

The most energetic proponents of these changes are known as transhumanists. One of the first to use this term in its current sense is Max More, the head of Alcor, one of the world's leading providers of cryogenic services. They work to freeze dead human bodies in the hope of being able to revive them in the future, when technology is advanced enough to do so. He describes transhumanism as a school of science dedicated to advancing “the evolution of intelligent life” beyond its current human form and limitations, “guided by life-promoting principles and values.”
Transhumanists embrace our mutability as an opportunity for improvement, even if that means we may one day be replaced another superior species. An intellectual leader of the movement is Nick Bostrom, who heads the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. In a remarkably matter-of-fact way, Bostrom describes to me some of the changes he anticipates and what they might mean.
One of the milder transhumanist ideas is to speed up the brain. This would be like putting a faster processor in a computer to improve its performance. But a potential byproduct of packing in more information per second would be to slow down the perceived passage of time. This is the way it is for children: every stimulus is new, so each minute is more jam-packed with information, which makes it feel like time is just dragging by. If your mind is working ten-times faster, then you are aware of ten-times more information in the moment, so time seems to pass ten-times slower.
It is impossible to imagine what life would be like after such a change. Walking a mile would feel like walking ten, eating lunch might take what seems to be three hours. Bostrom says there are ways to deal with this. "You wouldn't have to speed it up right away,” he says, referring to the human brain. “You could perhaps take small steps to modify that in ways you found desirable. You could continue to grow over years and decades, try out new capabilities."