Visions of the human in science fiction and cyberpunk

This collection of papers joins a growing body of work addressing what are arguably some of the most important questions faced in the 21st century; what does it mean to be human and what do we understand by humanity? Such questions are of course not peculiar to our age; various answers have been manifest in different forms throughout the history of human thought. However what makes the questions of pertinence now, and of particular interest to the participants of the 'Visions of Humanity Conference' is their posing at a time of such cultural turbulence. By cultural turbulence we are talking both of the 'post-modern' nature of such questions; that we are no longer asking questions about humanity but questioning our categories of the human, and of a set of interlinked, contemporary phenomena. Such phenomena may for convenience's sake be grouped into three areas; the current intensity of global modernity, the emergence of new forms of technology and the cultural representations of such technology. Firstly, Global modernity; by referring to a 'global modernity' we draw attention to the deeply interwoven nature of contemporary life across the globe. By this we do not mean that there is some form of globally shared culture or commonality of experience. Rather we regard global modernity as the extent to which capitalist enterprise reaches into nearly all societies. Even those regions of the world regarded as being on the periphery of capitalist enterprise are subject to forces originating in far off societies and cultures. In recent years this phenomena has increased in intensity considerably. Macroeconomic developments, the increasing the awareness of global risks, and dramatic changes in global political patterns and structures all contribute to an epoch in which the consequences, if not the benefits, of modernity are globally felt.