Thinking (with) Human Enhancement

Humanity faces a feeling of dispossession toward the technology it creates. That feeling crystallizes in the notion of "human enhancement" : the improvement of some human capacities, individual and collective, through technological means. That is the transhumanist program in a nutshell. Hopes in these technologies are numerous and objective, they nevertheless raise ethical and philosophical questions. Firstly, it reduces body and mind to data which are assumed to be compatible (if not identical in nature) with IT signals. Secondly, it reshapes our relation to our own body that sets aside the singular expression of "ill-being", blurring the frontier between "reparation" and "enhancement". Lastly, it raises concerns regarding equality of access to these technologies, which goals have to be questioned in terms of social progress.