Nietzsche's Ubermensch as a Precursor to Transhumanism

...over a century ago, Nietzsche wrote, in Also Sprach Zarathustra, that the ultimate purpose of humankind was to create a being transcending human abilities, an ubermensch. While ubermensch is often translated into English as “super man”, it is actually much closer to the concept of H . The ubermensch was a person above all weaker beings, an empiricist who gained knowledge from his senses just as H will gain knowledge from trillions of sensors. The ubermensch would not be constrained by...

 Vernor Vinges' Zones

You could study your whole life, and not know. How long must a fish study to understand human motivation? It’s not a good analogy, but it’s the only safe one; we are like dumb animals to the Powers of the Transcend. Think of all the different things people do to animals—ingenious, sadistic, charitable, genocidal—each has a million elaborations in the Transcend. The Zones are a natural protection; without them, human-equivalent intelligence would probably not exist.” She waved at the...