Humanity is becoming increasingly cyborgized, working on technologies that replace our bodies with machines and upload our selves into digital spaces. These changes have the potential to fundamentally alter our identity and our conventional notions of life. Questions are being raised about whether we still deserve to be called “homo sapiens” or whether we will be defined as something new.
We, Homo sapiens, are increasingly researching and practicing the replacement of body parts with non-organic ones, and we are working on giving computers digital minds. We are becoming cyborgs. According to the dictionary, cyborg is a combination of the words cybernetic and organism, and refers to a hypothetical artificial human being who has been modified through the replacement or transplantation of artificial organs to survive in a foreign and hostile environment. In this future, will we still be able to call ourselves “Homo sapiens”?
There have been many attempts to overcome disabilities with prosthetics and artificial limbs in the past, and humans have invented and use various machines that replace the eye with a computer chip or act as a heart and kidney. You can even move a bionic arm or leg with just your thoughts, and this can be done over very long distances. We’re also building machines that go beyond the functions of basic human organs, such as electronic noses and electronic tongues. These technological advances are moving beyond simply compensating for human deficiencies to exploring new possibilities and extensions of human capabilities. For example, the development of visual aids that can observe objects more precisely than the human eye, or digital aids that enhance cognitive abilities, will gradually blur the boundaries between the human body and mind. These changes will be seen as a new form of evolution, one that is inherently different from past human “evolutions”.
As you read this, you are probably already enjoying the convenience of having your smartphone or computer do some of the “memory” that your brain is supposed to do. In particular, digital devices such as smartphones have become more than just tools, they have become our “extended brains,” where much of our daily decision-making, memory, and information retrieval is done through them. This shift shows that parts of our consciousness and self are becoming intimately intertwined with mechanical devices. As the boundaries between digital and physical memory blur, our brains are no longer confined to the human organism, but are being transformed into extended concepts connected to machines.
In the future, we may not only have people who want to replace various parts of their bodies with machines due to accidents or disabilities, but we may also have people who want to become cyborgs themselves simply because of the superiority of bionic organs, and we may have people with faces that look more like machines than skin. We may not have to worry about epidemics anymore, but we may have to fear computer viruses and hackers. When we reach this stage, will we still be able to call ourselves ‘Homo sapiens’? Some may argue that we will no longer be Homo sapiens, but something new, and some may disagree. If cyborgization becomes inevitable in our society, the definition and identity of humanity will need to be redefined. We will no longer be required to maintain the traditional human form or function, but will likely become something new, beyond the limits of organisms, with functional needs and convenience at the forefront.
What would happen if we uploaded our “self” to a computer, rather than replacing a part of our body with a non-organic one? Recently, physics star Dr. Stephen Hawking passed away. What would happen if a scientist was able to copy his brain into a computer? Would the “Stephen Hawking” in the computer be a person, and would it be murder to put him in the trash? We can already do so much in cyberspace. But in the future, if it is possible to connect our brains to computers, how will we define concepts like personhood, selfhood, and so on?
Imagine a giant computer with all the people in the world stored in it, each with their own memories, knowledge, and experiences. If people could access each other’s brains to get information from within that computer, they would have each other’s memories. In this case, the individual self and boundaries would be blurred as experiences and memories are shared and overlapped. The notion of independent human beings will also fade, and all individuals may eventually be connected into one large collective consciousness. In such a future, the definition of the individual will likely blur, and a new form of “collective self” will emerge, in which we lose our individual identity.
We are Homo sapiens, living in different places on the planet, engaging in different activities, and dying at the end of our lives as living beings. However, if our limbs were replaced by machines and our brains uploaded to computers, we would be living in cyberspace rather than on Earth, and death might not be an option. Can we really call the “people” living in cyberspace “homo sapiens” in this situation? According to the Korean dictionary, life is defined as ‘the state of an organism from birth to death’. If we are ‘stored’ in a non-organic computer and become immortalized, we may no longer be considered ‘Homo sapiens’ from our current perspective.
No matter how much we imagine and speculate about this possibility, it is very likely that the future will be more than we can imagine. We are already moving away from Homo sapiens, and when Homo sapiens ends and we become something else, we may not be able to maintain the same concept of self and personhood. As we contemplate the future of humanity, it is imperative that we reflect on our identity. We need to think deeply about what we will become, and how our humanity will be preserved and transformed in the process.
