The Human, The Animal and The Robot

Abstract

With the emergence of new technologies into the everyday life of the human, the future of the authentic human is being challenged through the inherent nature of transhumanism. By analyzing the way in which humans rely on animals to authenticate their humanness in Philip K. Dick's 1968 cyborg-detective novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, will provide a perspective of understanding the human-animal relationships and will alter the way in which the human operates in a posthuman world versus a human world. While also taking insight from various perspectives of the self, such as the Buddhist 'no-self', and online/offline personas, will provide an understanding of how technology begins to replace the self in current technological standards as well as potential future technological standards. At the advent of a more technologically infused human, humans could easily become a less authentic life form to their 'unaltered' counterparts. This essay provides a critique on utopian aspects of transhumanism.