포스트휴먼 과학 기술의 현재와 SF의 상상력

Abstract

This article focuses the relationship between various aspects of “posthuman” based on the development of science and technology and the science fiction imagination, by examining TOBI Hirotaka’s The Angel of Abandoned Garden series, which includes The Thousand Year Beach(2002) and Raggid Girl(2010). In this series, TOBI sets up a virtual attraction Theme park called “Numerical Beach”, and Humans turn into data information and access into it. In this respect, the series can be thought of as belonging to the lineage of cyberpunk imagination at first glance. However, this SF's settings, which include sensory space called “Numerical Beach” and BMI(Brain Machine Interface) such as “Thalamic Card” and “Informational Similar Appearance”, are based strictly on currently actively researched science and technology such as neuroscience, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Thoroughly on that direction, this text is to imagine human beings and the future society. In this sense, the world of The Angel of Abandoned Garden series is not a fictional daydream, but shows the persuasive power as a hard SF. And that direction is fundamental change which is driven by the “desire” of real human beings. Also, as you can see from the fact that this text is being named The Angel of Abandoned Garden, this direction of science and technology is not necessarily utopian. Such science and technology bring about fundamental changes in human (category) and human society, while raising issues of ethics such as human control of science and technology and non-human rights.