This TV ad promoting Verizon’s Droid DNA phone is weird, cringe-worthy and also promotes something else: Transhumanism. Indeed, the ad does not only sell a smartphone. Not unlike movies and music videos, it normalizes the concept of “upgrading” humans by merging them with machines.
While most of us already entertain a somewhat unhealthy, dependent relationship with our cellphones, this ad makes things creepier by showing the device completely modifying the user’s body and genetic makeup. Yes, it is “only a commercial”, but all of the concepts behind it are real and will be available to a very rich and limited public very soon. Here’s the ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYIAaBOb5Bo&feature=youtu.be
The ad takes place in some kind of transhumanist lab where the “Droid DNA Augmentation” process begins. Right from the start, we hear the usual vocabulary associated with transhumanism such as “augmentation”, “upgrade” and so forth. Many people believe that the human body is the most advanced machine on Earth. Not transhumanists.
The ad ends with a purely transhumanist slogan: “It’s not an upgrade to your phone, its an upgrade to yourself”. Yes. And then, if they don’t like you, they’ll just re-format your Quad-Core processor brain and re-install a better version of you. Go transhumanism!