Dr. James Herrick was recently featured on Mars Hill Audio, a radio/podcast program that hosts conversations with scholars and artists, and focuses on Christian faith and faithfulness in contemporary culture.
Dr. Herrick discussed his recent book, Visions of Technological 
Transcendence: Human Enhancement and the Rhetoric of the Future (2017). Specifically, Dr. Herrick described transhumanists’ aspirations for how humans can meld with technology and become “post-human.” Dr. Herrick focused on how these aspirations are rendered plausible through stories. While uploading human consciousness into a computer may seem (and be) impossible, technofuturist stories shape how laws, policies, industries, aspirations, and everyday technology use play out. Indeed, technology increasingly shapes our work environments, children’s educational environments, the medical treatments we undergo, the homes we live in, the relationships we value, and the military and security systems we champion.
Dr. Herrick explains how technofuturist stories combine the myth of
progress and story of evolution. These stories promise that technology will save humanity from disease, poverty, despair, and death. As such, technological progress becomes an end in itself since it is featured as humanity’s salvation. These stories are optimistic, but falsely so: they promise that technology will save humanity and provide humans with ultimate control over their environment and bodies. However, technology is only a tool, it cannot offer meaning, purpose, or salvation. Yet these technofuturist stories are persuasive and comforting, and they are fundamentally shaping our cultural practices, laws, and regulations, creating a future in which technology operates as a god.