ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Harari’s claim that, in seeking perfect happiness and immortality, Homo sapiens are actually trying to upgrade themselves into gods. It focuses on two types of engineering: biological engineering; and cyborg engineering. A new technology – CRISPR-Cas9 – was first tried out in 2013; it refers to a procedure for snipping out a section of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence from a gene and replacing it with a different one – quickly and accurately. Compared with IVF, CRISPR is a vastly more powerful technology, carrying a far greater risk of abuse – including the temptation to try to engineer some sort of genetically perfect race. The term ‘cyborg’ was first coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline. Not to be confused with ‘bionic’ or ‘android’, a cyborg is a being with restored – or enhanced – functions and abilities due to the insertion or addition of some artificial body parts into its organic body.
