Meghan O'Gieblyn – God in the machine
Sci-fi and religion alike, have always been concerned with dilemmas we now associate with transhumanism. What does resurrection or immortal life feel like? Will you still be ”you”? The idea of mind uploading has been a prevalent feature in wildly imaginative series like Altered Carbon, but now we seem to be on the verge of realisation of similar technologies with Elon Musk’s Neuralink project. Essayist Meghan O’Gieblyn shares her story that begin as a devout Christian, later to become fascinated by the seemingly secular narratives of Kurzweil. From Dante to 20th century transhumanists via the alchemists, O’Gieblyn shows how ”existential questions are always going to rely on metaphors”. We need to be wary of the metaphors we use, because they shape our consciousness and have had a history of leading to fundamentalism, religious or secular. Who knows that the right answers are, but at least we need to look beyond our Cartesian dualism of body and mind.
