Hyperhumanism: Reclaiming Our Humanity in the Age of AI, with Carl HAyden Smith
Carl Hayden Smith is a Director at Noonautics, Founder of the Museum of Consciousness, co-founder of the Cyberdelics Nexus and a Professor of Media. Carl is focused on using both technological and biological means to study and modify the nature of consciousness; his research concentrates on the relationship between technology and the human condition. Carl is developing ‘Hyperhumanism’ which reframes technology as a catalyst for developing our own innate human abilities. Another key area of Smith’s research is Context Engineering, which emphasises the importance of designing appropriate contexts for psychedelic research.
Carl has also been very fortunate to be a participant of the N,N-DMT research at Imperial College London for the last eight years and has been through all three phases, including i) EEG ii) EEG+FMRI and iii) N,N-DMTx—aka, extended-state DMT. Carl was also the first person in the world to sustain the full 5 doses of DMTx during the pilot phase of the study.
Raising over £10 million in research funding, he has given over 300 invited public lectures, conference presentations, and keynotes in 40 countries and published more than 50 academic papers. His research interests also include Holotechnica, Embodied Cognition, Spatial Literacy, Umwelt Hacking, and Sensory Augmentation.
He joins us on Adventures Through The Mind to discuss how technology is reshaping human consciousness; and how we have a choice to either have technology control the shape of our consciousness, diminishing our humanity, or to choice to wield technologies in service to reclaiming and even enhancing our humanity—a concept Carl calls hyperhumanism.
We also discuss the attention economy’s impact on our minds; digital content’s invasion of natural perception; digital resurrection and authentic grieving; and practical approaches (including psychedelics) to becoming more human in an increasingly digital world.
What You’ll Learn About:
🌍 — Where humanity stands with technology and what we’re doing to other species
🧠 — Why VR is “sensory deprivation” and how algorithms harvest consciousness through the “attention war”
🤖 — Hyperhumanism vs Transhumanism – becoming more human vs. becoming post-human
Carl Hayden Smith is a Director at Noonautics, Founder of the Museum of Consciousness, co-founder of the Cyberdelics Nexus and a Professor of Media. Carl is focused on using both technological and biological means to study and modify the nature of consciousness; his research concentrates on the relationship between technology and the human condition. Carl is developing ‘Hyperhumanism’ which reframes technology as a catalyst for developing our own innate human abilities. Another key area of Smith’s research is Context Engineering, which emphasises the importance of designing appropriate contexts for psychedelic research.
