Cyber technology and the human identity: Warping human identity as the concepts of human and cyber robot begin to blur

There is no doubt that with the invention of the internet came a new way of predicting the future of human and machine. The idea of humans being mixed with technology (not a new concept) was not limited to the same tangible existence that humans have always had. I just recently read a ton of articles related to the topic of posthumanism, artificial intelligence, and cyber technology, and the effects on human/machine identity/consciousness/reality and I will have a concise literature review by tomorrow. One article, A History of Transhumanist Thought by Nick Bostrom, philosophy professor at Oxford University and director of the Future of Humanity Institute, summarizes much of the earliest ideas of human transcendence into a radically different species, the word first coined by Julian Huxley. Bostrom supports transhumanism and delivers the arguments of those opposed to the idea of a superhuman organism, mainly biological enhancement instead of merely treatment of certain ailments, although one should the difference between the two, if there are any reasonable ones.
Definitely explore Nick Bostrom's site, if you want to see some excellent philosophical arguments about the importance of transhumanist ideals.

The Journal of Evolution and Technology is a great source for this subject as well. I found a great article written by Kurmo Konsa, Tartu University, Estonia, entitled: Artificialisation Of Culture: Challenges to and from Posthumanism.

Konsa focused on something very important to my own research focus, that is, How do computer-simulated environments and the addition of computer programs that can mock human consciousness and intelligence affect the future of human identity? Just as important, how will the progression of computer "intellectual" ability affect machine identity in cyberspace and the physical world? There are no doubts that these realities are merging with each other more fully with every new tech development. Ray Kurzweil, along with plenty of other scientists, describes this situation as an exponential growth, non-linear technological progress. (See Below) Konsa went into detail in this article by discussing the concept of culture in a globalizing world in which all cultures are intruded upon by others. That is, if one can even describe culture as a "thing" to describe, which would require a kind of observable separation from "other" cultures. This is becoming extremely difficult to do with globalization and many social scientists propose that it is not in the ever-changing spirit of anthropology to stick with previous paradigms confined to the physical environment of culture.
Konsa states that: "Along with scientific development, it has become irrelevant to distinguish between metaphysical nature and culture" (pg.6) because both are understood as form of information processes. He goes through the "bottom-up" approach to "artificial culture": trying to recreate culture by using computer simulation and "top-down" approaches which fist focus on larger cultural situations and describe them using the environments in which they are enacted. For my questions, the most important point of this article was that cyber culture will become something infinitely more variable and complex than anything that can be created in the physical world because of the nature of the web.

Ray Kurzweil, famous for his career-long support of transhumanism (eventually posthumanism), has plenty of articles explaining the exponential growth of technological invention and which technologies he believes will come to expand and when. On his website, http://www.kurzweilai.net/ there was one of many articles addressing the issue of consciousness in machines and the effect on both human and computer perceptions of reality. One such article, "Will it be Consciousness"? talks about the future of consciousness in machines assuming that the technology will allow for interaction between subject and environment as indistinguishable from human and vice versa. Assuming it will happen, the existence of seemingly human machines will have enormous implications; the effects of such a blurring of consciousnesses will be enormous. I will continue this discussion in a literature review later today, so stay tuned.