GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
sideranautae said:
Note that my response above was predicated on the availability of the Mongoose ATU License. Every universe is different.
For the OTU, I don't see a broad-spectrum move toward transhumanism just sort of happening. Localized movement is a different matter.
We have no evidence of the Vilani or the other two early spacefaring races exploring the idea during those first 5-7000 years, and the Vilani in particular lacked the biological know-how to get very far. The Geonee might have, based on some art from later eras, but there is no direct evidence. The Terrans didn't show up until the Vilani, Suerrat, and Geonee had been using Jump drive for thousands of years. With no direct evidence again, it appears that the Terrans didn't go much farther down that road (than we have already) by the time a thousand years of war with the Vilani, running the resulting state, and attempting to manage the collapse distracted them.
If the OTU's humans explored transhumanism at all prior to the current era, it would probably have been either during the Ancient's Era or during the Long Night. Superscience would have driven the Ancients Era experiments, while the Ancients themselves would have used a combination of tech and psi. The Long Night would have varied from place to place, but suggestions in an MT-era fanzine place the center of technology-based experiments in Dagudashaag (what a map in MT calls the Lancia Cultural Region), while psionic experiments might have been anywhere.
Why the psionic component? Because a number of fiction sources strongly imply that connectedness is a big component of the social side of transhumanism. Sufficiently broad psi, which Traveller assumes, also allows some of the external capabilities often sought by transhuman endeavors. To the inhabitants of the modern OTU, psionics is certainly a branch of science, if not a well understood one, and what cannot be attained by one branch of scientific endeavor might be attained by another.
As such, the modern OTU, were it to embrace prionic, technologic, or biologic transhumanism beyond what it has already done (Imperial/Solomani geneering, Droyne community mindedness, Zhodani society molding, and the proposed Lancian cybernetic path, as well as the old JTAS computer implant) would probably stick with the same fields.
--Long-term adaption to environments seems to be a priority (in the Imperium, at least) over short-term, since completely external technology appears to have that handled. The Imperium appears to have a broad tradition of not mucking with already existing people and being very cautious about making new types, while the Solomani appear to have entirely material goals and freely tinker for fun and profit.
--The Droyne are static to all casual observers, but probably have more tricks that they don't show outsiders.
--We really don't know if the Zhodani are looking for that next step in development or are just trying to keep the masses fat and happy. Which direction they go with hypothetical transhuman experiments is really down to that examination of motives.
--I'll have to pull out that issue of Signal GK to see if the Lancians trend that way, or are tied to short-term goals. I don't think Transhumanism was even a word when that article was written.
The OTU is too diverse to follow one path, in other words.
