[ X + Y ] Citizen Cyborg, (Part 2)
"Isn't all life suffering, and spiritual peace found in just accepting the way things are? Perhaps all this technology is a distraction and we should accept the human condition as it is. If we really take that approach, why do anything? Why try to improve the world or our own lives with technlogy, politics or any effort at all?".
Is from this strong topic that Huges starts his discussion about the "world to come", a new prospect on science focused on the progressive improvment of humankind through technology.
Citizen Cyborg is divided in 3 main sections, each one compsed of some chapters: Tools For A Better You, The New Biopolitical Landscape and Freedom And Equality Among The Cyborgs.
In the first part he analyzes what we could be able to do for people with congenital abnormalities: there's a huge chance to prevent these kind of birth, not only with abortion (eugenics is not a bad idea at all, there no reason to give birth to people who will be unhappy or affected by disabilities - if they would be able to choose, what would they choose?) but even with pre-genetic therapies that change parents' sperm or eggs, or the early embryo (germline therapies). "Besides, a shortcut around some of the safety and ethical objections to germline therapies comes from artificial chromosomes", Huges says, which can be turned on and off at will.
Moreover, he is writing about modafanil, the new treatment for narcolepsy sold as Provigil, that permits people to perform at a peak of attention with just a couple hours of sleep for days at a time, without the side effects, and other issues as prospects for gender modification.
In the "Living Longer" chapter he's talking about the convergence of seven biotechlogies which will allow us to achieve indefinite life spans by the middle of this century and the impact of Nanotechnology on the aging process.
On this topic he says "Francis Fukuyama writes on his book Our Posthuman Future (soon reviewed in 5inDUSTries - ndGatsu) that life extension will lead to rigid, risk-adverse societies, ruled by slowly decaying seniors ogling the shrinking number of young bodies [...] All possible, but none of it different from the changes we have already seen in the last century. Because of longer lives and changing family structures in the twentieth century we had to invent nursing care system, and some children have to wait until they are 60 to get their inheritance [...] but we have adapted, and we didn't tell anybody they weren't allowed any more medicine after the age of 80 because that was the natural limit to life. We didn't tell people in the developing world they weren't allowed to have medical technology because they were living too long given their overpopolation". The issues of rich people able to "buy more life than poorer ones" is also discussed in a - almost - convincing way.
In this first part of the book, intelligence amplification through biotechnology and "upgrades" available on the market are discussed too. On this topic Huges claims: "Securing our rights to become the most that we can be will require not only a fight for our individual rights to use technology to control our own brains, but also a fight to ensure universal access to intelligence-amplifying techonology". On this point I'm a little bit uncertain, but I'll discuss this later.
I'll talk about the second part of the book, in the next post, this is enough for today :)
Is from this strong topic that Huges starts his discussion about the "world to come", a new prospect on science focused on the progressive improvment of humankind through technology.
Citizen Cyborg is divided in 3 main sections, each one compsed of some chapters: Tools For A Better You, The New Biopolitical Landscape and Freedom And Equality Among The Cyborgs.
In the first part he analyzes what we could be able to do for people with congenital abnormalities: there's a huge chance to prevent these kind of birth, not only with abortion (eugenics is not a bad idea at all, there no reason to give birth to people who will be unhappy or affected by disabilities - if they would be able to choose, what would they choose?) but even with pre-genetic therapies that change parents' sperm or eggs, or the early embryo (germline therapies). "Besides, a shortcut around some of the safety and ethical objections to germline therapies comes from artificial chromosomes", Huges says, which can be turned on and off at will.
Moreover, he is writing about modafanil, the new treatment for narcolepsy sold as Provigil, that permits people to perform at a peak of attention with just a couple hours of sleep for days at a time, without the side effects, and other issues as prospects for gender modification.
In the "Living Longer" chapter he's talking about the convergence of seven biotechlogies which will allow us to achieve indefinite life spans by the middle of this century and the impact of Nanotechnology on the aging process.
On this topic he says "Francis Fukuyama writes on his book Our Posthuman Future (soon reviewed in 5inDUSTries - ndGatsu) that life extension will lead to rigid, risk-adverse societies, ruled by slowly decaying seniors ogling the shrinking number of young bodies [...] All possible, but none of it different from the changes we have already seen in the last century. Because of longer lives and changing family structures in the twentieth century we had to invent nursing care system, and some children have to wait until they are 60 to get their inheritance [...] but we have adapted, and we didn't tell anybody they weren't allowed any more medicine after the age of 80 because that was the natural limit to life. We didn't tell people in the developing world they weren't allowed to have medical technology because they were living too long given their overpopolation". The issues of rich people able to "buy more life than poorer ones" is also discussed in a - almost - convincing way.
In this first part of the book, intelligence amplification through biotechnology and "upgrades" available on the market are discussed too. On this topic Huges claims: "Securing our rights to become the most that we can be will require not only a fight for our individual rights to use technology to control our own brains, but also a fight to ensure universal access to intelligence-amplifying techonology". On this point I'm a little bit uncertain, but I'll discuss this later.
I'll talk about the second part of the book, in the next post, this is enough for today :)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home