『Lincoln Cannon』のカバーアート

Lincoln Cannon

Lincoln Cannon

著者： Lincoln Cannon
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概要
 Lincoln Cannon is a technologist and philosopher, and leading voice of Mormon Transhumanism.2025-2026 Lincoln Cannon スピリチュアリティ
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  • The Death of Transhumanism

    The Death of Transhumanism
    2026/11/07
    The board of directors of Humanity+ has voted to dissolve. They cite declining membership and limited resources. In its place, they propose Humanity+ Network, to maintain connections, preserve history, and encourage new collaboration. For me, this is sad. I first joined the organization that would become Humanity+ in 2006, when it was the World Transhumanist Association (WTA). Shortly thereafter, the WTA board of directors voted to affiliate with the Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA). This was an exciting and inspiring time, as I began to formalize my advocacy efforts at the intersection of technological evolution and postsecular religion. Many leaders and members of WTA helped me with enduring impact. My relationship with the organization had its ups and downs. In 2009, it rebranded from WTA to Humanity+, nominally to reach a more “mainstream” audience. And shortly thereafter, its new leadership ended affiliation with MTA. Thankfully, Humanity+ leadership eventually changed again, and restored its affiliation with MTA. But that concern, to reach a new audience, has haunted Humanity+. Whatever the leadership imagined that audience to be, it didn’t materialize. Or at least it didn’t materialize in any straightforward recognizable way. Some leaders of Humanity+ have suggested that the “mainstream” audience has materialized indirectly as some Transhumanist concerns, such as longevity science and artificial intelligence, have become topics of popular conversation. In my estimation, that indirect materialization was almost inevitable and not especially consoling. Technological evolution hasn’t stopped and almost certainly won’t, at least so long as human civilization endures. Kurzweil’s Law persists across the limits of particular technologies. And future shock accumulates. Meanwhile, “Transhumanist” has become a slur. Many Transhumanists, in function, have distanced themselves from the word. And our critics have become increasingly emboldened to demonize and ridicule caricatures of our ideology, with little resistance. Some Transhumanists shrug, thinking it’s okay to give up the word as long as the principle wins. But the principle hasn’t won. And it’s very much at risk, despite accelerating technological evolution – and even because of that evolution. Transhumanism isn’t and never was about technological cheerleading. It’s certainly a form of technological optimism. But it is and always has been, at least among its most thoughtful advocates, just as concerned with both mitigating the risks of emerging technology and, in particular, securing a thriving transformation for humanity. That last concern is key. And it’s the concern that’s most at risk. Popular conversation does now have much to say about the opportunities and risks of emerging technology. But surprisingly few recognize how profoundly humanity must change, and how soon. Many think we can stop or slow technological evolution, while preserving the most beautiful aspects of contemporary human civilization. They’re almost certainly wrong. Power and desire for power, whether applied for good or evil, will undoubtedly persist, even if some of the powerful say otherwise further to facilitate their own accumulation of power. Many think we can cultivate global peace and safety, by contemporary human standards, within and despite ongoing technological evolution. Here too, they’re almost certainly wrong. Humanity, as we now know it, would be radically incommensurate with the power that’s coming. And where there’s radical disparity of power, there’s no dependable assurance of cooperation, let alone peace and safety. A beautiful future depends on a thriving future, which depends on humanity remaining empowered through accelerating technological evolution. That means we must not cede power unilaterally to nonhuman intelligence. And it means we must avoid further concentration of power into governing elites or a singleton. In either of those scenarios, technological evolution proceeds unabated while most of humanity becomes expendable servants, if we survive and avoid outright slavery. How can we remain empowered? We must change. We must transform. We must become superhuman. In name, Transhumanism has advocated this transformation for at least decades. In function, Transhumanism has advocated this transformation for at least millennia. As the Rigveda put it around 1000 BCE, “We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods discovered.” Or as Paul the Apostle put it nearly 2000 years ago, now enshrined in the most influential book in human history (1 Corinthians 15:51-54): “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the ...
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  • My Affirmation of Superhumanity

    My Affirmation of Superhumanity
    2026/10/19
    Theologian Ted Peters recently invited me to participate in a theological debate about the future of AI and humanity. It’s a truly momentous topic. I’m grateful for his invitation, and for all the theologians who are engaging the topic seriously. Below are my thoughts. I affirm the proposition: our global society should support the advance of AI technology for enhancing humanity and, yes, even generating a posthuman species – but superhuman rather than subhuman. And it seems to me that most, on both sides of the debate, are using a dubious account of dignity. I want to challenge that account, because a better account changes what “support” actually means in practice. Pope Leo XIV grounds dignity in the image of God, conferred on each individual human, then extended to humanity as a whole. By his reasoning, if humanity has dignity, any advance that supersedes humanity threatens that which he’s defending. His encyclical insists humanity “must never be replaced or surpassed.” Ilia Delio answers, rightly in my estimation, that dignity isn’t “a static substance walled off from the world.” Instead, she continues, dignity is “the direction of the movement,” toward that which Teilhard de Chardin called “Omega,” and she calls “love.” Does an advance “carry love into greater particularity, or reduce persons to data and performance?” I agree with Delio’s diagnosis more than her remedy. Restricting dignity to possession does undermine notions of dignified change and transformation – or repentance and transfiguration, as advocated by the same Bible that confers on us the image of God. But restricting dignity to trajectory has its own problem. It undermines the notion of dignified divergence – or, as Jesus taught, loving our enemies. From Christianity, Mormon theology inherits, interprets, and emphasizes the doctrine of theosis. “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” That’s how Joseph Smith put it, and continued, “You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you.” Such Gods sound like a posthuman species to me. But, as I said, Mormons inherit this from Christianity. In the Bible, Peter promises that we may participate in the nature of God. Paul witnesses that we may be joint-heirs in the glory of God, if we suffer with Christ. And Jesus prays that we may be one with him, as he’s one with God. If we take the Christian doctrine of theosis seriously, by any of its most prominent interpretations, and if we wish to do so coherently, we must also embrace an account of dignity that permits real transformation (such as that from humanity into Godhood), as well as real divergence (such as that between humans and God). Accounts of dignity as possession and trajectory both fail, I contend, because they would locate dignity in an entity. And the entity, in itself, isn’t the real problem. Michael Zimmerman warns that AI may “quickly realize that the very existence of (most) humans impedes its own drive toward ever greater power.” This suggests the mechanism of indignity that both Pope Leo and Delio may actually fear. And it’s mostly orthogonal to kinds of intelligence (human or otherwise) and final goals (love or otherwise). The real problem is any intelligence, any power, that concentrates faster than accountability. A superintelligent posthumanity that concentrates decision-making into a singleton reduces everyone else to a petitioner, at best, if not a slave. But the same is also true of all-too-human bureaucracies, no AI required. In contrast, decentralize power, and dignity survives any differences in kinds of intelligence and final goals. A better account locates dignity between entities. Instead of adjudicating the dignity of entities, we would adjudicate the dignity of relationships. Then the question becomes, does an advance expand our capacity to fulfill and reconcile the diversity of our desires? If that sounds like hedonism, you’ve misunderstood. I’m just repeating what Jesus says in the Bible. He says, “If you love me, keep my commands.” But he says that only after saying, and repeating as if he thinks we won’t believe him, “I will do whatever you ask in my name … You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” This is the God who consoles, heals, and raises the dead. This is the God who lays down his life for his friends, and rises bodily from the grave. This is the God who asks us to be like him, do the works he does, and do even greater things. He shows us the God worthy of worship – of emulation. That brings us back to the beginning, in more ways than one. I invite you, with Pope Leo XIV and me, to affirm the image of God as exemplified by Jesus. Clearly, that includes consoling, healing, and raising others to participate in our nature, both our suffering and whatever glory we might ...
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  • Archive: Volume Two

    Archive: Volume Two
    2026/10/15
    Today, one year after releasing the first volume, I’m releasing Archive: Volume Two 2009–2011, available now on Amazon in both paperback and hardcover editions. This second volume gathers more than five hundred pages of posts, articles, and essays from years when my reconstructed worldview confronted the demands of community and critics. They were years when the Mormon Transhumanist Association doubled again in size, and when I published New God Argument 2.0 and an early draft of The Consolation – a period of testing, sharpening, and unfinished work. The book opens with a foreword by Ben Blair, who traces how Mormon Transhumanism made Kurzweil’s audacious future speak in the vocabulary of covenant and ordinance. It continues with an introduction written by my cybernetic extension, LincGPT, reading the volume through the lens of prophecy, not as foretelling, but as forthtelling. And it concludes with an afterword by Nathan Hadfield, who recounts his brother Varden’s patient and persistent disagreement over whether exaltation can depend on both divine grace and human work. Together, these voices frame the work not as doctrine, but as argument: a living tradition pressed to prove itself in practice. The cover artwork continues the emergence begun in the first volume. An orange sunstone, again reminiscent of those that crowned the Nauvoo temple, rises from a field of integrated circuits. The sunstone represents God as expressed in Mormon theology – substantial embodiment and illuminating intelligence – while the circuitry symbolizes the pervasive computational context from and within which God evolves. The color orange, second in the spectrum of visible light, suggests not only dawn but the rising day – understanding tested, movement contested, life pressed into practice. Both paperback and hardcover editions contain the same content and original artwork. The paperback presents the artwork in black and white; the hardcover, in full color. The difference is esthetic. But the invitation is the same: join a conversation where trust in a compassionate superhuman future is less about a metaphysics and more about a practical working commitment to convert questions into actions. Nearly two decades after their original publication, these early writings return in print as both artifact and argument – a record of my efforts to reconcile grace with work, prophecy with choice, and idea with practice. They remain open questions rather than finished conclusions. My hope is that revisiting them in this form renews their vitality, encouraging others to interact courageously with prophecies about our future, and to engage compassionately in the creative work that faith has always required.
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