posthumanity n.

‘At my age,’ Lindsay said, ‘if I were human I’d already be dead.’ ‘Now you’re talking. You’re as big as your dreams. That’s what they say in C-K, right? No rules, no limits. Look at the Mechs and Shapers.’ The boy was contemptuous. ‘All the power in the world, and they’re chasing each other’s tails. Burn their wars and midget ideologies. Posthumanity’s bigger than that. [...]’

I do not understand these things well. I do not know about Australopithecus and evolution and what you call transhumanity, posthumanity.

Now consider posthumanity. Our environment is entirely artificial—floating cities, the Martian subsurface, the Venusian and Jovian bubbles. Such habitats require social integration of a high order. A human could survive within them, possibly, but she would not thrive. Our surround is self-defined, and therefore within it we are the pinnacle of evolution.

Isolated pockets of Curious Yellow [sc. a computer virus] are probably still running, out beyond the liberated light cone, in the eternal darkness and cold—just as there may be outposts of free posthumanity who dropped off the net when the Republic of Is disintegrated.