Beyond Human Nanotechnology to Post-Human Nanotechnology
Two Volume Set

Book Abstract

Is nanotechnology really so risky that, as Ray Jurzweil once warned, “[w]e are at the critical stage today for biotechnology, and we will reach the stage where we need to directly implement defensive technologies for nanotechnology during the late teen years of this century….A self-replicating pathogen, whether biological or nanotechnology based, could destroy our civilization in a matter of days or weeks”? (GR 2017) This negative view on human nanotechnology can be contrasted with the positive one by Andrew Maynard, who suggested that “[n]anotechnology’s potential is vast and it is real. The opportunity for nanotechnology ranges from improving Olympic sports equipment to discovering better treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.” (NTT 2017)

Contrary to these opposing views (and other ones as will be discussed in the book), human nanotechnology (in relation to opportunity and risk—as well as other dichotomies) is neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe, such that there is no opportunity without risk (and vice versa), to be explained by the “regression-progression principle,” the “convention-novelty principle,” and other ones in “existential dialectics” (in Chapter Four).

But this challenge to the conventional debate does not mean that human nanotechnology, as a field of study, is impractical, or that those diverse fields (related to human nanotechnology)—such as chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, computer science, environmental science, technological studies, sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, history, philosophy, science fiction, religion, psychology, and so on—should be rejected. (WK 2017) Of course, neither of these extreme views is reasonable.

Instead, this book offers an alternative (better) way to understand the future of human nanotechnology (and related fields) in regard to the dialectic relationship between opportunity and risk (and those in other dichotomies)—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). More specifically, this book offers a new theory (that is, the theory of nanoagency) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way and is organized in four chapters.

This seminal project will fundamentally change the way that we think about human nanotechnology (in relation to the dialectic relationship between opportunity and risk—as well as those in other dichotomies) from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate.