Sarif and the Singularitarians

I think Deus Ex may have spawned a new breed of transhumanists.

No, really, I think we lucked out this time.

But first of all, post music:

The Focus on Near-Term Propects

For one thing, nanotechnology and mechanosynthesis were downplayed in this game and kept as passing mentions, setting the stage for Deus Ex. The game is based strictly on things that will become possible in the Plausible Near-Future, but still the mentions of nanotechnology don’t have the degree of skepticism you see in some places nowadays. An email near the end of the game says:

We’ve been able to build and modify molecular structures on the fly using mechanosynthesis.

For the full quote:

From: alan.curtis@versa-life.s.net

To: Hugh Darrow

Good morning, Mr. Darrow,

Regarding the conversation we had last week. The project is advancing quite swiftly. We’ve managed to devise a new and improved prototype to better counter the quantum size effect. So far the nanoionics are responding as planned and the latent effects on biomaterials are negligible.

An unforeseen benefit is that using copper couplings make the units virtually undetectable. This will, on the ither hand, require a very potent electronic virtual tracking system for maintenance and emergency procedures.

We’ve been able to build and modify molecular structures on the fly using mechanosynthesis. The samples all responded very well, apart for the usual rejection syndrome of course that always sets in after a few minutes. The effects are even more potent on the molecular level.

That’s why the news from some of your associates are so promising. Apparently they’re on the verge of isolating and replicating DNA segments that present no rejection syndrome whatsoever. I don’t know how you and your team got access to those samples… but I don’t care.

Do you realize what this could mean? We’re finally there. Imagine that, a regular-looking human being. Nothing unnatural in his appearance. And still, the power of billions of machines within him, manipulated at will. This is the future, Mr. Darrow.

I’m going to let this sink in. A mention of mechanosynthesis, in game? Or in a work of fiction in general? You can imagine how I felt at this point, even if it was only meant as a buzzword. In the eBook you find inside the safe in the police evidence storage, Megan Reed says “It’s to genetics what Universal Assemblers are to Nanotechnology”, and near the end (If you chose to get the new biochip) mentions nanotechnology as means to a recent invention. In the post-credits ending, she also makes a mention of a ‘nanite-virus’ chimera, possibly referencing the Gray Death.

I mean, shit, just watch this documentary:

The whole documentary is spent analyzing the feasibility of Jensen’ augs by 2027.

Deus Ex as a Revival of Good Old Transhumanism

Another point that is very, very important is the game’s mockery of Singularitarianism. The Harvesters in Hengsha are cyberpunk Singularitarians who rob people of their augmentations, as Deus Ex: Icarus Effect puts it:

- the 2020s’ equivalent of the old urban legend about guys waking up in a bath of ice sans a kidney… Only this time, victims were unlucky souls killed and stripped for their cybernetic augmentations.

You know Good Old Transhumanism: The kind that focuses on people and the problems of people, and the transcendence of our biology, rather than Singularitarianism and obsessing over strong AI and uploading. Transhumanism that is about people, societies, not the uploading of the libertarians. A breath of fresh air.

Nowadays the majority of the transhumanist community believes in the Singularity, which the author believes to be a pointless counter-productive idea: It is a promise, not a goal. It’s a certainty rather than an idea one works towards. So the person can quite happily sit on his ass, talking about ‘existential risks’ like how the thermodynamically impossible gray goo nanomachines will kill us all or how Skynet will take over. I thought we were over those things? But, alas, they have to make everything that is old into something new again. Bring back HAL and AM, don’t let them rust!

Old Transhumanism and Singularitarianism are like David Zindell and Charles Stross, respectively. All who have read A Requiem for Homo Sapiens and Accelerando know what I mean.

Also, Hanuman Li Tosh was a bro. Right up there with Bob Page and The Major and all the other heroes of transhumanism.

Inside a cell in the Harvester hideout, you can find an eBook containing a pamphlet of the ‘SingularityChurch of the MachineGod’, which is equating the belief in a technological Singularity with a religion, no veil of subtlety or anything. And this is one of the things I like the most about the game: Not only does it focus entirely on the near-term prospects of technology, it mocks consummationist views of the future as a moment of rapture. The game evokes a feeling of immediacy to technological development, something all the promises of the molecular nanotechnology enthusiasts has not equaled and may never will. The game is about things that might as well be here, now.

The only thing that discredits this awesome theory is the mention of “the promise of a Singularity” in the Sarif Ending.

DIY Transhumanism

There isn’t much to say, just look at the augmentation chop-shop in the Harvesters’ hideout:

The Kitchen of your Average DIY Transhumanist

And from the developers:

Shanghai’s Hengsha is a lot more into the trans-humanist thing. It’s a lot more accepted there – it’s the Silicon Valley of all cybernetics. Within the art direction everything that’s more like that is more golden, and a lot more towards the cyber-renaissance. The dual layer is inspired by a mockumentary we saw quite a while ago, which appeared to be a real documentary about Hong Kong… In the game the idea isn’t that it’s the poor at the bottom and the rich at the top; the bottom used to be the Mecca of cybernetics, a lot of the headquarters of the great labs and manufacturing plants are there, it’s just that when they built above it they chose a different architectural direction. So above they have new universities and new headquarters, but the bottom isn’t a slum – there isn’t an old school dichotomy. We put a lot of stuff in the game, like you’ll see those student-types from the upper level coming downstairs at night to party, and hit the bars and brothels. - Jonathan Jacques-Belletête

The Two-Tiered City of Hengsha

This is clear when the Harvesters tell you things like:

“I see you’re on your way to becoming fully ‘Shifted’… I am jealous.”

“When the ‘Shift’ happens, we’ll all be complete… And immortal.”

The Harvesters are the epitome of William Gibsons’ famous quote: “The street finds its own uses for things.”

The two-tiered city of Hengsha can be considered as a sort of technological ‘trickle down’, literally: The Tai Yong Medical building, and the Upper City, far above the ground, invent away and occasionally the slightest bit of magic falls through the gaps of the floof and reaches the not-really-slums beneath, where it is scavenged and repurposed.