Technology is a constant part of our lives and has done some amazing things. Today we can see a psychologist or primary care physician and check to see if your paycheck has been deposited from your phone.
Facebook, DARPA, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink project all focus on the development and future use of BMIs, or brain-machine interfaces, to change how we communicate with others. The growth of science and technology allows a person to have a child through IVF (in vitro fertilization), and the monumental CRISPR gene editing may give the human race the ability to cure diseases.
What the future looks like as tech and science continue to develop is a mystery, or so it seems. One man, FM-2030, believed that technology and science could strengthen people, cure and eradicate diseases, and help people and the world improve. His beliefs are commonly shared in transhumanism philosophy.
Who was FM-2030, and how did he become “the father of modern transhumanism?”
FM-2030
FM-2030 was born Fereidoun M. Esfandiary in Brussels, Belgium, on October 15, 1930. As the son of an Iranian diplomat, Fereidoun M. Esfandiary had traveled the world and lived in 17 different countries by the time he was 11 years old.
He was part of the Iranian basketball team during the 1948 Olympic Games in London and served on the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine from 1952-1954. Fereidoun M. Esfandiary described himself as “a 21st-century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future.”
In the 1970s, Fereidoun M. Esfandiary legally changed his name to FM-2030. He made this odd name change because his goal was to live to be 100 years old, which would be in the year 2030.
He chose this name because he was a prominent transhumanist who wanted to break free from “widespread naming conventions” that he considered to be relics of the past, and FM-2030 is genderless. FM-2030 wrote several science-fiction books, his non-fiction papers/lectures, and the transhumanist book, Are You A Transhuman?
Transhumanism
Transhumanism is the theory or belief that the human race can evolve beyond its current mental and physical limitations through the application of science and technology. Transhumanists believe that advancements in genetics and technology will supersede biological evolution to the point that humans will have the ability to become more intelligent, healthier, stronger, and able to do more with life. Transhumanism may sound like science fiction, but we are surrounded by examples of transhumanism and may be unaware of them.
Some examples of transhumanism today include virtual reality, anti-aging procedures, robotics to aid doctors during surgery, artificial intelligence, and gene therapy. Technology plays such a large part in our lives, and that was the future that FM-2030 saw.
FM-2030’s transhumanist beliefs were influenced by his world travels and the social, economic, technological, and political changes across the United States from the 1950s to the 1990s. Many of his beliefs were incredibly progressive for his time. His new name, FM-2030, reflected his beliefs in the future.
He was quoted as saying, “conventional names define a person’s past: ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion. I am not who I was ten years ago and certainly not who I will be in twenty years.”
FM-2030 believed that in the future, the nuclear family would not exist. He cited the changes in vocabulary as proof that language was still evolving. In his book Are You A Transhuman, he explains how terms like bachelor and spinster are old-fashioned; instead, society uses the term “single.” We have largely stopped using the term illegitimate child because “there is nothing ‘illegitimate’ about a child born to people who are pioneering new options for parenthood.”
FM-2030 was correct in his belief that pejorative terms listed above and others like “broken home” and “promiscuity” would change. Instead of a broken home, we as a society use the term single-parent household. Promiscuity came from an unliberated society in which having a sexual relationship with anyone other than your spouse or significant other was promiscuous.
FM-2030 points out that if we applied the same standards of promiscuity today, our modern society and everyone in it would be promiscuous. FM-2030 believes that people are not promiscuous; instead, we are fluid.
To succeed in the future, FM-2030 believed relationships would be more fluid along with sexual and gender identity. That sex was about more than procreation, but also pleasure. People will have the ability to have relationships with other people across the globe, and in the future, a fixed identity will transform into a fluid one.
FM-2030 felt that if humans came together as one society without limitations like nationality, heritage, and politics, we could create a universal conversation that would be free from prejudice. FM-2030’s ideas and beliefs about the future were interesting because they were all positive and optimistic.
So Where Is FM-2030 Now?
In 2000, FM-2030 died as a result of pancreatic cancer. He died 30 years before he reached his goal of living to 100 years old and seeing the year 2030. But if you were worried about FM-2030 never achieving his goal, you no longer need to worry.
FM-2030 may one day see the future he believed in because today, FM-2030’s body lives in a cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Alcor is one of the world’s leading cryonic facilities and intends to reanimate FM-2030 (or, at minimum, his brain) when there comes a time in which science and technology can facilitate reanimation. It sounds like that schoolyard rumor “When Walt Disney died, they froze his body.”
Cryonics
To understand what has been done with FM-2030’s remains, an understanding of cryonics is necessary. Cryonics is not to be confused with Cryogenics which is the production and behaviors of materials at very low temperatures.
Cryogenics studies how very cold temperatures affect different materials, like using liquid nitrogen to freeze off warts or pre-cancerous cells. Cryonics, on the other hand, is the process of freezing and storing human remains in low temperatures of −196 °C or −320.8 °F with the hope that resurrection may be possible in the future.
Cryonics is considered pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific community. Cryonic procedures take place once someone is dead to allow future reanimation. However, it has been proven that a corpse can’t be reanimated after undergoing the required vitrification process cryonics use.
Vitrification is the flash-freezing or ultra-rapid cooling that produces ice crystals that we use to preserve food or people in a frozen state. Human brains have been shown to undergo damage to the brain and neural circuits after the vitrification process. Cryonics can not be proven successful, and those who work for cryonic facilities like Alcor, know that the technology to reanimate the bodies they store does not exist.
These facilities exist in the hope that one day, technology will be developed to assist in reanimation. For those who chose to be cryopreserved (250 as of 2014 in the United States and 1,500 on the waiting list to be frozen at death), death is not the end but rather a pause in life that is not permanent.
Will the year 2030 be as technically advanced and evolved as FM-2030 believed it would be? As FM said, “It matters not where we came from but where we are going.”
Top Image: FM-2030 believed that the future was the important thing, and where we were going was much more important than where we came from. Source: Sarah Holmlund / Adobe Stock.
By Lauren Dillon
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