Abstract
The Transhumanist future will be an age of data dominance, pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, smart machines, and autonomous mobile robots accompanied by a vast speed and ever-increasing acceleration of change. The pervasive and ongoing change requires a fundamental re-invention of business management which should coincide with the conditions of the converging transhumanism age. The main feature of the future management paradigms that differ from the traditional style will undoubtedly be the artificial intelligence with several applications of machine learning and humans' collaborative work with associate-like autonomous robots. Managers at all levels will have to adapt to the world of artificial intelligence and smart environment. The transhumanist manager should learn and get equipped with the necessary management requirements. The new learning platforms, methods, techniques, and media should be researched to get prepared for a transhumanist business management future with a faster alacrity to compensate for the speed of the technological progress.
TopIntroduction
Transhumanism is a futuristic philosophy that deals with making use of existing and future exponential technologies to transform the human body and mind (Humanity Plus, 2008). Being as a solid reference, two definitions of Transhumanism are given:
- 1.
The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
- 2.
The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.
The future will continue to be mysterious for us as long as our sense of time continues in its present form. But this does not prevent us from creating forecasts for the future and creating future scenarios. The technologies developed in the late 20th century and the 21st century seem to design a whole new future for world civilization. Exponential technologies will change many activities and behaviors from the business areas to the psycho-social life of the world.
New technological developments that will allow people to use their brain and mental potential more effectively and efficiently will come into the agenda. As a result, it is expected that the cognitive properties of the person will improve compared to the natural condition. This improvement will probably be due to new genetic medications that provide cognitive healing, genetic engineering, neural implants, and virtual brains that connect in the form of prosthetics. Integration of prosthetic virtual brains to the human body and/or direct wireless connection of the human brain to the computer systems will result in higher intensities of artificial intelligence, and human problem solving performance will increase to an unprecedented degree.
The Transhumanist Age will be a period of intense and widespread use of artificial intelligence and augmented reality, which are articulated in terms of people (Peddie, 2017). This situation; thinking, communicating and all kinds of interaction will change our behavior to a large extent. The artificial intelligence system that is formed by the integration of artificial intelligence and enhanced reality will work together with implants, for example, optical and auditory, to improve the human perception. When you look at a person in the Transhumanist age, you will have access to much more information than the physical appearance of him/her.
Cybernetics should be underlined when talking about advanced technologies of the Transhumanist Age, which covers 2030 and beyond. Cybernetics is the application of statistical mechanics to communication engineering, the study of human control functions and the mechanical and electronic systems designed to take them in place (Anissimov, 2007; Goertzel & Pennachin, 2007). Thanks to cybernetic technologies, human-machine integration called cyborg will become possible. Cyborg is not the same as bionic, bio-robot or android; is applied to an organism capable of recovering functionality or advanced capabilities due to the integration of some artificial components or technologies based on some kind of feedback.
One of the exciting technologies of the Age of Transhumanism is autonomous robots, which can produce either self or similar. Three-dimensional printers that can produce themselves using the present layered production technology can be considered as a simple example. If such a technology is autonomous, it shows that it can produce its own decisions and act accordingly (Banger, 2016; Fahimi, 2009).
Artificial intelligence has similar functions and features to human thinking system. While the work on artificial intelligence is ongoing, another focus will continue to be on the human brain. Backing up whole or part of the brain, recovering the backup, deleting some information from the brain, loading new information into the brain will continue to create scientific excitement in the way of being real (Wiley, 2015).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Business Learning: Business learning is the process of learning and developing business skills through the media of education and/or training - in any age, using any channel in any environment. In the new context of business heavy use of technology in learning is expected.
Exponential Technology: It is a technology that doubles in power or processing speed in every prescribed slice of time, while its cost of ownership halves. Also stated as leading-edge technology.
Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence is the ability of a computer or computer-controlled machine to perform various activities in a manner similar to intelligent living beings.
Business Skill: Business skill is the ability to carry out a business task effectively with determined performance and results within a given time, material, money, managing power or other kinds of resources.
Business Management: Business management is the economic administration of an organization, which includes the corporate activities of setting the strategies, coordinating and supervising the efforts of its human and robot employees to perform its operations and objectives through the use of available resources. New context of business management heavily emphasizes the use of exponential technologies and data processing.
Transhumanism: It is a futuristic philosophical approach that studies making use of exponential technologies to transform human body and mind.
Business model: A business model is a set of linked and planned activities designed to make profit in the marketplace. It is a way of doing business that an enterprise makes to maintain its sustainability.
Business Ecosystem: The business ecosystem is a collaborative and competitive economic community consisting of designers, manufacturers, suppliers, customers, consumers, and other related public, private or civil society organizations acting together in order to trade goods and services.