Transapients, in the fictional Orion's Arm universe

Orion's Arm

Orion's Arm, is a multi-authored online science fiction world-building project, first established in 2000 by M. Alan Kazlev, Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn, Bernd Helfert and Anders Sandberg and further co-authored by many people since...

, are post-Singularity

Technological singularity

Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...

 sophonts that have totally surpassed the human or equivalent sapient condition. They represent an intermediate ranking between ordinary sophont and archailect

Archailect

In the Orion's Arm Universe, an Archailect is an ascended post-singularity intelligence that has grown vastly beyond even the Transapient level...

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Their origins are diverse; they include posthumans or other ascended biological beings, ascended cyborg

Cyborg

A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...

s, ascended vecs (sophont robots), aliens, AIs

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, or other beings, remotes or agents of archailects, offspring of other transapients, or any combination of any of these or more. They may be human-like, or so alien as to be beyond human understanding. Some interact directly or through proxies in the affairs of ordinary sophonts, others choose to ascend to the rank of, or be incorporated in, higher toposophic beings.

Influences

The concept of Transapient presented here is directly based on transhumanist

Transhumanism

Transhumanism, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human...

 ideas regarding posthuman

Posthuman

Posthuman may refer to:*Posthuman, a hypothetical future being whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by our current standards...

s, and what it might mean to be posthuman and ascend past the singularity to the posthuman condition. The term "transapient" was chosen because it is more generic than "posthuman", and more precise than the alternative term of "powers" coined by Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge

Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep , A Deepness in the Sky , Rainbows End , Fast Times at Fairmont High ...

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