Post-Human Design

Abstract

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.