Session III : Posthumanism

One of the most prominent challenges in the digital transformation is the design of virtual environments in a wide variety of contexts and innovation scenarios. Digital transformation and the virtual environments raise questions regarding the need to technically supplement the physical prerequisites of mankind and the societal pressure to technically enhance humans. Although the ‘deficient ontology’ of man cannot be overcome, a contemporary design must be aware of possible extensions of environments and bodies. Under what conditions and common agreements may humans design themselves and their environments beyond natural conditions? This design-theoretical question unites technical, mediatheoretical, and ethical aspects. Probably the most extreme utopia of a virtual reproduction is offered by the discourses on transhumanism on the one hand and posthumanism on the other. Transhuman positions seek to confirm the Enlightenment understanding that mankind is permanently progressing towards the perfect human. In Gehlen, that is through technical improvements of body and aims at immortality. In contrary, (technological) posthumanists take an ethical position and tie the path to perfection to the abolition of the human as a biological entity. They understand perfection as a perfect simulation or already conceive of man as a cyborg of machine and organism. The historical view of the concept of design opens an ever-expanding space of meaning. In addition, new questions are currently being raised about the expansion of the concept of design beyond the anthropocentric view (user, target groups) to a posthuman dimension.