When I hear questions such as “What does Humanity mean …” I’m reminded of the nominalist/essentialist debate in philosophy. Nominalists tend to read definitions from right to left, whereas essentialists read from left to right.

For example, an essentialist asks “what does this term X on the left really mean, what is ‘the correct’ definition on the right.” The nominalist, on the other hand, asks: “Since we have a number of interesting definitions on the right, let’s agree for the sake of this discussion what short hand abbreviations (terms) we would like to assign to these definitions.”

Historically, it was fairly easy to come to some agreement on what the term “human” ment because all flesh-and-blood humans were largely determined by their genetic code. Human babies grew up to become adult humans and not trees or some other life form.

However, as we gain mastery over nature we gain the ability to fundamentally transform ourselves and our species. Education as we know it today – communication through the spoken word, writing, printed books, television, and audio/video/mouse/keyboard computer interfaces – is just the tip of the iceberg. We are now beginning to gain mastery of our genetic code; we are finding better and better ways to scan and understand our brains; and, we are building better and better direct brain-computer interfaces.

Some futurists, such as Ray Kurzweil, believe that machines will attain a mastery of natural language in about fifteen years, they will far surpass unenhanced human levels of intelligence in about thirty years, and that enhanced humans will also merge with their machines to transcend biological evolution in about thirty years.

According to Kurzweil, humans enhanced with direct brain-computer interfaces will do “most of their thinking in the cloud.”

In your post you say: “I’m heartened by the fact that almost every project I know of emphasises the need for time to develop human relationships for technology to be a success and bring about change.”

I’m not sure how Kurzweil would respond, but he might say that enhanced humans will do most of their “relating to one another” in the cloud as well.

If Kurzweil is right, it would be an absurd understatment to say – “Oh yes, I think this might have a significant impact on Higher Education as we understand it today.”

Some economists and educators might say – this is all idle speculation; it has nothing to do with lowering unemployment today; it has nothing to do with lowering the cost and improving the quality of education today.

As for myself, I do think it’s time for economists to re-examine their long-held beliefs that workers displaced by technology will always be able to be retrained to find new jobs. And, I do think it’s time for educators to start asking themselves if education as we now know it will be able to help unenhanced humanity keep up with its race against the machine.

Finally, I would hope that educators will be able to help both those who want to become enhanced humans and those would would rather die first find understanding and compassion for one another. If both can do so, then I would say that both deserve to be known as Human.