Singularity and the dispute for a transhumanist ideology

Singularidade e a disputa por uma ideologia transhumanista

Abstract

We understand Singularism, a stream of transhumanist thought, to be an ideology associated with Silicon Valley and the political right-wing (Hughes 2002). Taking this as our object of study, the present article conducts an anthropological discussion around the concepts of culture, ideology, and cosmology as proposed by Eric Wolf (1999). Cosmology provides a basis for ideology so as to offer elements for criteria such as truth and the inevitability of a given project for power. We point out how cybernetics works as a cosmology for Singularism and we explore political and philosophical differences between exponents of Singularism, which -- to a large extent - express different appropriations of cybernetics in their construction of the concept of Singularity.

Keywords:
Cybernetics; Cyberculture; Cosmology; Ideology; Singularity; Silicon Valley.