Posthumanism

The term "posthuman" refers to a human who, due to genetic engineering and/or synthetic augmentations, posesses superior abilities compared to the original Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

Since the vast majority of the 23th century human population are posthumans referring to themselves as humans, posthumanism seems to be more of a philosophical than a sociological term at first glance. However, while posthumans call themselves humans, they use a different word (imps) to natural, unmodified humans, therefore they are aware of the difference. Also, posthumans are very far from being uniformized and thus, one can distinguish several degrees of transition between humans and posthumans.

Imps
Imps (officially: genetically impure people, unofficially: imps or impures, derogatorily: God's children, dirtbloods or monkeys) are the only remaining pre-singularity humans in all senses. During the 21th and 22th centuries most of humanity's gene pool have been modified by the Albrecht Institute to eradicate genetically programmed diseases and to grant a longer and more healthy lifespan. Certain religious groups, however, refused to participate in the program, claiming that since humans are God's perfect children, modifying them is hubris and a mortal sin. These groups were originally mostly Christians, Muslims and Sikhs, though many new sects appeared during the last centuries. They are also opposing other posthumanist technologies like human augmentation and life extension.

During the early 22th century, state-organized forced modification projects and violent pogroms against the "monkeys" almost resulted in their complete assimilation/extermination, but they eventually managed to gain the sympathy of many posthumans and protect their human rights. Contemporary politics tends to view them as an endangered species with high historical significance and tries to confine them into reservation areas, not unlike the way 19th and 20th century USA treated Native Americans.

Reservations have a dual purpose. First, they offer isolated, nearly self-sufficient communities for the imps who would find it near impossible to get a job in a world

Since living an imp life (and preserving the unmodified bloodline) is increasingly difficult and imps can be easily modified into posthumans by gene therapy, the numbers of umods are dwindling, counting about 11 million system-wide. The remaining groups live in isolation and don't interfere with the rest of the human gene pool, partly due to the fear of posthumans from "recontaminating" it, and partly due to their own fear of "contaminating" their own bloodlines. Also, Terran umods are forbidden by law from interbreeding with posthumans.

Unags
Unaugmented humans (unags for short, softheads derogatorily) are people who possess engineered genes but oppose even basic human augmentation like neuronics. There are approximately one billion unags in the Solar System, mostly in Terra, Mars and Mercury. Most of them chose to avoid augmentation for religious or spiritual reasons, or to avoid debt trap.

The extremely dangerous mental disorder cyberosis first observed in AIs may also affect very advanced posthumans.