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Being Human Project Brief

“By looking at trans- and post-human philosophies, it can be deduced that such a label as 'human' has become outdated, and that most ideas around the concept of what makes you uniquely human can be challenged or redefined in the near future.

Historically personhood has not been synonymous with being human – as seen with slaves, children, and women – whilst book, buildings and rivers have been conferred this legal status; your biology contains nine non-human cells for every native human one, a writhing cornucopia of human flora – bacteria, mites, and yeasts; and emotional capacities and sentience previously reserved for humans is increasingly being observed in studies of many other animals - happiness, fear, love all the product of inherited evolution.

What makes you human therefore is not what you may think, and more nuanced ideas will be required to understand what truly affords us our label of 'human'. We have seen that such a label can be arbitrarily given (and taken). What may this label be extended to in the near future in the field of robotics and synthetic biology? How far can we change the existing idea of what a human is/looks like before it ceases to be by our own definitions? By working with new materials and processes (bacterial cellulose, 3D printing pens) we will look at designing our own humans individual parts, then assembling it limb by limb, organ by organ collaboratively.”

Above is the project brief that I have been given for my latest project ‘being human’ I would sum up the brief using the question in the third paragraph :How far can we change the existing idea of what a human is/looks like before it ceases to be by our own definitions ?

I agree with the first section of the brief where it states that the word human has become outdated because with the release of technology we are able to conduct many different experiments which begin to challenge the definition of what the word human means.especially those which can change biology even to a point where it may be possible to put human embryos into animals which then challenges this label because the child wouldn’t have been conceived like a regular human.

Their are many other examples of people that might not fit the definition of the word ‘human’ but why should every person on the planet be defined by one word maybe we should challenge this and redefine the word ‘human’ so that it fits modern society?

Can animals or robots be defined by the word ‘human’ considering that they posses many human qualities ?

I am overall happy with the brief because it reminds me a lot of what I was doing in my previous project where I discussed the possibility of what would happen if robots developed emotions and become more human which led me to many philosophical questions like what does the word ‘human’ mean ? and if something posses human qualities can it be categorized as human ?

Another reason why I am happy with the brief is that it provides many interesting questions and ideas of how we can change what being human is.

In my latest project according to my brief I will be trying to change what it means to be human by making the human form better in some way by adding to it to make everyday life easier.

Ideas of how to change the human form :

* Cyborgs

* Bionics

* Genetic manipulation

* Robots

* Gene splicing

I think that this will be a very interesting project as by just reading the brief I have already came up with many ideas of how I could change the human form and therefore change what the word ‘human’ means, I think that this project will be very challenging but at the same intellectually stimulating.

What I like most about this project is the fact that we will be working as a collective which will combine all of our own ideas/pieces, it will be interesting to see the many different outcomes that are produced at the end of the module.

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Bel Ord - Human ?

#bel ord #human ?