Exponential Technological Trends and Humanity’s Future
Current trends of technological growth and development suggest that humanity is on an accelerating path toward superhumanity—a condition in which our capacities to sustain and enrich life far exceed anything we now possess. This has surprising implications for our future, both near and long-term.
Exponential Growth and the Superhuman
Assuming that certain technologies continue to progress exponentially, humans are about to see a huge increase in our capacities to sustain human life and human communities. Consider how much more powerful and far-reaching the Internet is than Gutenberg’s press, or a nuclear weapon compared to a spear. The rate of technological progress and growth will likely continue at an ever accelerating rate.
Some of the latest and highest achievements of man in the utilization of natural forces approach the conditions of spiritual operations. To count the ticking of a watch thousands of miles away; to speak in but an ordinary tone and be heard across the continent; to signal from one hemisphere and be understood on the other though oceans roll and roar between; to bring the lightning into our homes and make it serve as fire and torch; to navigate the air and to travel beneath the ocean surface; to make chemical and atomic energies obey our will—are not these miracles?
Along with a general increase in intelligence and abilities—in the things we can do with technology in our homes and professions and communities—our technology will almost certainly continue to integrate more and more with our bodies. Think about the advancement from glasses to contact lenses, and hearing aids to cochlear implants. As technology advances, it becomes more intimately connected with our bodies and our biology.
This combination of exponential growth and increasing integration of technology with our bodies will have powerful consequences for humanity. We are likely on a path toward becoming superhuman—as different from what we are now as we are different from our prehuman ancestors.
Homo erectus walked upright and used fire and tools, but could not have begun to imagine the world its descendants now understand and shape. Future people may stand in a similar relation to us—and the transition may take generations rather than eons.
Consider Homo erectus. These human ancestors walked upright like a modern human and used tools like fire and stone, but their brains were notably smaller than ours. Thanks to our intelligence, abilities, and tools, modern humans understand and shape the world on a scale that Homo erectus could not have begun to imagine. Future people may stand in a similar relation to us, and if the trends above continue, the transition may take generations rather than eons.
Why We Say “Superhuman” Rather Than “Posthuman”
Popular culture imagines the superhuman as a solitary apex being. The beehive—long a Mormon symbol of consecrated community—pictures the alternative we actually seek: superhumanity as many persons united in love and labor, sharing power rather than hoarding it.
Readers familiar with transhumanist literature will notice that many transhumanists use a different word for such future beings: posthuman. We deliberately avoid that term, and the reason is worth explaining, because the word we choose carries real weight.
“Posthuman” is directionally neutral. It denotes everything that might come after or beyond humanity—a possibility space that includes degradation, diminishment, and fragmentation as readily as elevation. Posthumanity, in other words, includes subhumanity. Using “posthuman” as a synonym for the future we hope for quietly conflates the goal with the whole possibility space, and inadvertently treats failure modes as equivalent candidates. The term can also carry dehumanizing overtones: it can imply leaving behind things that are intrinsic to the human condition in the best sense—our embodiment, our relationships, our compassion.
“Superhuman” is directional. It names what we actually aim at: an elevation of capacity and virtue, not a mere departure from humanity. If our vocabulary is to communicate that we seek something genuinely better—not merely different—then “superhuman” is the more honest term.
We recognize that “superhuman” carries baggage of its own. The word can evoke egoistic and even megalomaniacal images: the lone superintelligence, the immortal individual, the all-powerful apex being accountable to no one. Popular culture reinforces this picture, and some transhumanists have embraced versions of it. That is emphatically not what we mean, so we take care to couch the term in the framing that defines it for us:
Superhumanity, as we envision it, is constitutively communal and compassionate. When we imagine the limits of creation, we imagine the creation of more creators in worlds without end. When we imagine the limits of compassion, we imagine sharing power among all of those creators and all of their creations. That is superhumanity. A being of maximal capacity without compassion would not be superhuman in our sense; it would be something else, and probably something dangerous. Superhumanity is many persons united in love, creation, and mutual upraising—communities of compassionate creators sharing power, never one being hoarding it. Excessive concentration of power in single individuals would make the communal exaltation described in Mormon scripture impossible. In Christian terms, the only trustworthy path toward superhumanity is the Body of Christ: many members, distinct gifts, united in love, with no member dispensable and no member dominant.
Some Mormon Transhumanists also embrace the term transfiguration for this future transformation. Transfiguration has strong religious overtones and history, including and especially in the LDS tradition. It relates to the term translation, which in Mormon nomenclature often implies an existential transformation and applies to both individuals and communities—even to entire worlds. And it strongly suggests the involvement of divine power and divine grace in these transformations.
In that day an infant’s life shall be as the age of a tree; and when they die they shall not sleep, but shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye.
Because “posthuman” remains common in transhumanist circles and forums, you will continue to encounter it, and we will continue to engage charitably with those who use it. But in our own usage, we reserve it for exactly one job: explaining why we prefer another word. The terminological question itself is an opportunity for deeper, more nuanced discussion about what kind of future beings we hope to become.
The Aesthetics of Enhancement
The enhancement we seek is not chrome bolted onto flesh but fulfillment of embodiment—less like machinery grafted onto a body, more like a tree coming into blossom: organic, radiant, and more fully alive.
How enhancement is perceived depends profoundly on how it is imagined. The most common caricature of the enhanced human is cold and mechanical: chrome grafted onto flesh, eyes replaced by lenses, the person disappearing piece by piece into the machine. These dystopian images are off-putting to most people—grotesque, even—and they are routinely deployed to denigrate transhumanist goals, as though the only future technology can offer is one in which we trade our humanity for hardware. When critics reject “enhancement,” it is usually this picture they are rejecting. And they are right to reject it. So do we.
But the picture is a failure of imagination, not a forecast. What makes an enhancement beautiful or grotesque is not the substrate—metal, biology, or light—but whether it enriches or impoverishes the person. An enhancement that diminishes feeling, severs relationships, or hollows out the self impoverishes its subject, however powerful it makes them; that isn’t elevation at all, and no one should want it. An enhancement that deepens perception, extends compassion, strengthens the body, and enlarges the capacity for joy makes its subject more alive, more present, more themselves. Enhancement of that kind is organic, radiant, and lovely—less like bolting steel onto a body and more like a tree coming into blossom.
Scripture has always imagined transformation this way. When Christ was transfigured on the mount, “his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Matthew 17:2)—not chrome and circuitry, but a human being intensified and glorified while remaining fully human, illuminated from within rather than mechanized from without. Mormon scripture likewise teaches that “spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:33). The enhancement we seek is not escape from embodiment but the fulfillment of it: beings more luminous, more whole, more deeply and radiantly human. That is the aesthetic of theosis, and it is the standard against which every proposed enhancement should be measured.
Impacts of Superhumanity on the World
Humans in a superhuman condition—a transfigured humanity—will have the power to affect the world in ways we cannot currently conceive. Imagine a world where we can transform a desert into a verdant region in short order; where we don’t just have cochlear implants to enable the deaf to hear or artificial legs to allow the lame to walk, but all kinds of smart, bionic body parts to enhance and extend our lives and abilities—perhaps indefinitely. What would happen if artificial intelligence were seamlessly integrated with your everyday experience, so that you couldn’t tell where your knowledge ends and the web of information begins?
As our ability to use and integrate technology grows, our descendants will be incredibly capable. When they can access vast knowledge in an instant, travel at unprecedented speeds, and regenerate their bodies at will, one might describe these abilities as “god-like”, and it is plausible that our prehuman ancestors would see us, already, as something like gods. A popular author has referred to such a future being as Homo deus: human-become-god. Christian and Mormon theology has an older and richer name for this trajectory: theosis. And crucially, the theological framing carries the moral content that secular framings often omit—that godliness consists not in power alone, but in the compassionate, creative, and communal use of power.
Questions for Discussion
- What are some tools that human beings are developing, or could develop, to become more capable?
- What are some of the likely positive and negative consequences of such technological leaps?
- How do you imagine the ideal future society? What kind of people would live in that society? What kind of abilities and capacities would they have? Are there things we can do today to make that kind of society more likely?
- Why does the choice between “superhuman” and “posthuman” matter? What does each term suggest about the future we aim for?
- “Superhuman” can carry egoistic connotations. How does framing superhumanity as communal, compassionate, and Christlike change the meaning of the word? Is that reframing persuasive to you?
- What does the term “transfiguration” add to this conversation that secular terminology lacks?
- Popular depictions of enhanced humans are often cold and mechanical. How do these images shape public perception of transhumanism? What would a genuinely beautiful enhancement look like, and how would you tell whether an enhancement enriches or impoverishes its subject?
- Do you think it’s accurate to say that superhumans could be gods, or god-like? Why or why not? Do you have an initial, gut-level response to such an idea, either positive or negative?
Advance to Primer 6