Analysis Of Arthur Kroker's Exits To The Posthuman Future

As the “gaseous dust and debris” of the social world slowly fades away, mankind is left standing in horror, not from the utter destruction, but from the methodical, unyielding takeover of technology over its body, mind, and essence (Kroker 15). In his 2014 essay, Exits to the Posthuman Future, Arthur Kroker proposes how humans are slowing succumbing physically and metaphysically to the data-driven world that is gaining momentum from the exponential growth of technological advancement. In actuality, Kroker’s inability to clarify the boundary and distinction of the corporeal human leads to horological uncertainty concerning the posthuman future.

The vision of the posthuman future is destabilized by how Kroker underestimates the ability for man

Drift culture represents the “ontological illusion” that technology has over man, but its embodiment as “the essence of the data storm that envelops us” doesn’t configure with Kroker’s assertion that it will be a “point where the will to technology turns back on itself” (Kroker 15). For it to be a movement, it requires points of succession over time that will slowly transform man into the “new species” that has to learn again the “language of social media” (Kroker 16). Yet, Kroker describes it as a moment that will lead to “crashing boundaries, volatizing society” and the overthrow of “great referential icons of power, sex, consciousness” (Kroker 16). This abrupt break requires no progression of time and may occur at any point in the near future. Differences in temporal position are also relative to how drift culture is formed and implemented on society. Kroker ties his belief in drift culture with principles of biology stating how “just as genetic drift occurs by chance, producing in its wake unpredictable streams of genetic variation, so too drift culture: drifts of code, history, archives, media, and video” (Kroker 16). The prerequisites for drift culture to ever happen relies heavily on being “fully enigmatic with no definite goal,” but Kroker admits

The idea of technological prosthesis and becoming a man-machine hybrid are central components to the posthuman being and would signal that today’s generation is already in the midst of Kroker’s future. In addition, Kroker deepens his ambiguity by also stating how the “future is an open space, still to be determined” (Kroker 17). This implies that the future is unbarred to a wide range of possibilities rather than the narrow alley Kroker predicts mankind will tread down. Furthermore, Kroker believes that we must evolve a “duplex vision-seeing simultaneously like a human and a technological device …seeing like a robot” (Kroker 18). Uncertainty in drift culture’s evolution calls into question the evolution of the duplex vision. Evolution is defined as the accumulation of favorable traits in response to a constantly changing environment. This evolution of the human in response to the growing presence of technology would not represent a break from its old form, but a progression. Technically, this form of the human would be better suited for survival and have a greater advantage of manipulating its surroundings for sustainability, if Kroker’s conditions for the posthuman future do ever come to fulfillment. These