Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Posthuman society

Posthuman,

In the last few years I started hearing an interesting term and word posthuman from the manson album mechanical animals that contains this word to peter Sloterdijk”s magnus opus and rem Koolhas’s texts . What exactly is posthuman ? is it a direction or a different tipe of lifestyle?
Rem Koolhaas describes posthumanity in a rather interesting way he sees tomorrow’s society traveling from one poket of civilization to anauther , from one airport to anauther and he gives them the name of the kinetic elite , a completely indoor species of people that travel almost all the time and theyr main purops in ther life is buissnies .
This kind of class of p[eople is completely different from all the outher classes that are normaly found in every society they cannot be put in layer of the society they are different they life in hubs and airport terminals , being global and traveling a big part of they time in all sort of places where they are needed . They are people that have a purpose and that have a function, being a sort of buissnies avatgarde, and they have to live under the rules of the purpose.
These facts explain why they are posthuman they have a function and they are kinetic (they depend on movement ) they are not static . and the fact thet they have the main purpose relates them .
So goeinf further this elite inhabits airports that as we see in many cases and it sarts becoming a major trend in architectural programs the airport ins becoming a mixed used building that offers multiple kind of functions to satisfy the traveler’s needs , in some cases they become small cityes containing complex functions and all kinds of services.
This is a tipe of posthumanity but I think that there are outher Tipes of posthumanity that can be traced in aall over the world .For example subcultures that are developing in cityes from Japan , people that live in an urban area and stert to be sufocated by the urban congestion and stert to respond to this by isolateing and forming their own imaginary universe. In many cases the urban can be seen as a producer of this tipe of people that are not living in the real world of everyay cliché life, developing skils for living an alternative life and becoming more and more immersed in it. This tipe of behaviour is and it is not labeled as posthuman , I think that in some cases the selfisolation and the creation of these individuals can be viewd as posthuman but in the same time this kind of lifestyle is not necesaryli connected to somekind of purpose .
The 21 century is the beginning of a new tipe of industrial revolution that has man as an entity as the forefront character ; We can see that in today’s world there are two main trends witch makes the competition between individuals interesting , The firs tipe of individuals tend to become professionals and in a lot of cases this can become a sort of stress and way of achiving success not trough an escalation process but trough an dwelling ione in withch the individual goes deep into a problem , the outher way of seeing things is by mixing knowledge , by knowink a lot of things and sometimes the relations or connexions between them but withouth being a professional I consider this as a flat way of expanding one’s individual knowledge , the people that have this kind of ability sometimes open gates and establish relations between fields of work that where not related before . So where is the “posthuman “ factor ? This factor can be found in the new tipe of caracther , the inustrial man , Everyone is becomenin at one point or nauther industrial has a purpose not that clar like in the Kinetic elite case but has a purpose belonging in one way or anauther to a plce or field of work . For example a designer that looks at society and culture in general way triing to sence a major trend and triing to incorporate the zeithgeist of that moment in time in his work , looks at society with a multidisciplinary eye and he still is a designer . This kind of approach we see in the work of tom ford that seced a lot of contemporary trends before that they even occurred .
On a personal I cant say that I enjopy fashion I’m a casual person but I can say that I admire the strategy and the way he interconnected things generating fashion trend and completlley new lifestyle for the clients relating trough adveising campaigns and comunicateing trough this kind of medium the major tendence of each season .
I would like to finnish with anauther way of seeing posthumanity, The term of posthumanity implies a sort of constace in of the term human to be able to function, so that means that to be human is bound to a set of rules that mark and generate a sort of definition of the word and the image of human . But what does realy mean t obe human ? In many cases this question is provoking a big question mark , in this case is can posthumanity describe a sort of spiritual war in witch in our interiour world we try to surperss animal instincts , maybe we are humans but we are still captives in an animal body that is still evolving . Anauther debate about posthumanity is related to the fact that genetics as siece and general phenomenon is becoming more and more discussed in different academic and science mediums . the question of ethics in an genetical human experiment is becoming blured and the evolution that can be reacherd trough genetics is more and moer tempting .Enhancing the Human may be the next big thing as all sicentests agree on the fact that the 20 th century was the centuri of phisics and the 21 th century will be the century of genetics.

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