ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the capacity of prostheses and robotics to alter people's identities, capacities for action and social relationships, and focuses directly on technology's growing role in structuring the systemic parts of society. It explores what happens when people become coupled to and separated from contemporary technology. The chapter analyzes how individual identities are informed by thoughts, senses and actions that extend into the complex technological systems that surround us, forms that can enhance but also constrain people's capacities to act in and on the environments in which they live. It develops these themes by focusing on some key contemporary technologies. Prosthetic and robotic technologies are analysed as mostly shaping how identities are forged and action occurs within given institutions. Expert systems and technogenetic systems, in contrast, actually shape these systemic parts of society in which individual identities and social relationships are formed. The chapter suggests that while Humanity 2.0 remains possible, present trajectories suggest a mixed prognosis.
