This document discusses the evolution of concepts of individual and collective rights from documents like the Magna Carta to modern discussions around posthumanism. It traces how views have shifted from prioritizing individual rights to collective rights and back again over time. The document raises questions about how to preserve human dignity and rights as technology changes concepts of life, liberty, and property, and as ideas like corporate personhood and the posthuman emerge.

1. CONFIGURABLE
COLLECTIVES
& POSTHUMAN RIGHTS
Aram Sinnreich
Rutgers University
School of Communication
& Information
Cornell Tech
Oct 17, 2014

2. The Exception

3. The Rule

4. Magna Carta (1215)
“No free man shall
be seized or
imprisoned, or
stripped of his
rights or
possessions…”
Individual rights in service
of collective rights

5. John Locke (1690)
“Every Man has a
Property in his
own Person. This
no Body has any
Right to but
himself.”
Collective rights in service
of individual rights

6. Declaration of
Independence (1776) “All men are
created equal, that
they are endowed
by their Creator
with certain
unalienable Rights,
that among these
are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of
Happiness”

7. Universal Declaration
of Human Rights
(1948)
Affirms “the dignity and
worth of the human
person … All human
beings are born free
and equal in dignity and
rights. They are
endowed with reason
and conscience.”

8. “Life”
vs.

9. “Liberty”
vs.

10. “Property”
vs.

11. Romanticism (1812)
Friedrich,
Wanderer above
the Sea of Fog

12. Objectivism (1957)

13. Postmodernism
Life? Liberty? Property?

14. Configurability

15. Systems Psych/Biomics

16. Posthumanism/Cyborgism

17. Corporate Personhood

18. Singularity
(Yeah, I know…)

19. Kopimism

20. Posthuman Rights?
How do we preserve dignity as the
fundamental premises of “life, liberty and
property” and the modern individual continue
to erode?
Life Liberty Property

21. THANK YOU.
Aram Sinnreich
Rutgers University
School of Communication
& Information
Twitter: @aram
sinn@rutgers.edu