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date: 02 July 2022

Abstract and Keywords

This essay considers the notion of the ‘exoself’ as a vision of the extended human in the future. Sandberg reconsiders the advancements in technology which allow us to modify bodies and outsource cognition and examines the profound ways in which they change ways we relate to the world: from exoself components, like watches and smartphones which are now experienced as everyday parts of life, to rarer, more exotic visions of futurity such as prosthetics, spacesuits, and exoskeletons. The chapter considers other mediums of the exoself vision such as art, fiction, and demonstrations. Sandberg maintains that while radically enhanced posthumans are too abstract to visualize, exoselves provide a ready-made image of a transhuman that is concrete.

Keywords: exoself, transhumanism, technology, innovation, futurity, cognition, perception

Anders Sandberg

Anders Sandberg is a researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist, and author. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. Sandberg’s research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. He is a Senior Research Fellow on the ERC UnPrEDICT Programme and research associate to the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. Besides scientific publications in neuroscience, ethics, and futures studies, he has also participated in the public debate about human enhancement internationally.

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