AHC: Transhumanist stage Civilization by 2015

Albert.Nik

Banned
In this AHC,you need to have a particular POD post 1900 to have the Human civilization enter the Transhumanist era by 2015. The qualifications for this is that we are powered by an overwhelming majority with renewable and sustainable energy,have at least two thirds of the population of the World with upgraded brains and bodies by 2015. Another condition is that these upgrades should be available to the 100% of the population irrespective of wealth status to whoever wishing and willing to get them. You are at liberty to choose your POD but keep it plausible and elaborate a bit.
 
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In this AHC,you need to have a particular POD post 1900 to have the Human civilization enter the Transhumanist era by 2015. The qualifications for this is that we are powered by an overwhelming majority with renewable and sustainable energy,have at least two thirds of the population of the World with upgraded brains and bodies by 2015. Another condition is that these upgrades should be available to the 100% of the population irrespective of wealth status to whoever wishing and willing to get them. You are at liberty to choose your POD but keep it plausible and elaborate a bit.
:pButterfly away the Lost decade:p
 
I don't think that's possible. Give things another century and maybe you could have a good chunk of the global population having those things, but most of that technology that could be implanted into people is only being developed now and a I don't think it would be available to all the population, there's simply too many people and not enough resources and that's only going to get worse. Renewable energey might have a better showing though.
 
I'd tempted to call this ASB, but with the current state of scientific knowledge on two key topics--renewable energy and upgraded brains and bodies--I don't think it's possible to put a timeframe on things. You'd need commercial nuclear fusion to be invented early and prove immensely successful and even then will take a ton of government subsidies to phase out the current power infrastructure. No other renewable energy could possibly do that, at least not when faced with the challenges of widespread adoption, the one exception being solar energy when combined with an utter space wank making space solar feasible--that and other renewables would push it through.

Second, we don't know enough about the human brain to feasibly upgrade it even now. Similarly with the body, since the real upgrades are all linked with the nervous system. If we don't conceivably know what we're doing in there and what side effects it might have nowadays, I don't see how we can reasonably say we can have this done by 2015 in some ATL. It goes without saying most research on this isn't to enhance healthy people but to cure the sick and disabled. Why should this change? Advances in neuroscience and such which will lead to this will be a side effect of other research on the nervous system meant to cure paralysis, blindness, amputees, Alzheimer's, etc. The only way I could see this being true in some ATL is if some ideology took hold that encouraged strict euthanasia of the ill/disabled in a way that would make even the Nazis blush. They would devote their medical science toward improving the healthy to make a strong society.

The most implausible part is having this be accessible to anyone regardless of wealth. That's one way to bankrupt your country really fast. Maybe some small wealthy countries could feasibly give it to every citizen (especially those with very restrictive definitions of "citizen", like Qatar), but otherwise it would be too early to be passing out what in this ATL would be very new tech. Odds are it wouldn't be far passed the stage where getting enhanced carried a risk of stroke, paralysis, or just straight up brain/nerve damage, let alone the long term risks which would be unknown. It would be dangerous and irresponsible to try and foist this on people (because no doubt there'd be a cultural component to this as well encouraging people to get modified, and peer pressure is a thing). But maybe the people and countries who practice said ideology I mentioned will give it a try. Said ideology (sounds like a permutation of fascism) is likely to have strong racial/class components but perhaps in their society they would've already mass murdered the "inferior" races/classes. But given that mass murder is not conducive to building a strong economy and said regime's concern with more pressing issues than simple transhumanism, I don't think they'd get very far.
 
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