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Engineered Enhancers Closer Than You Think
Roland Piquepaille writes "Happy 2035! Thirty years from now, we'll use bionic eyes giving us 'zoom vision' for faster reactions. Nanobots injected in our bloodstream will complement our immune system. Artificial muscles built with electroactive polymers will help us to be stronger and faster. So you think it's science fiction? Not at all. You'll see that some people are so convinced that this kind of human enhancements will happen that they predict than in a few decades, all sporting events 'will be split up to accommodate enhanced and unenhanced athletes.'"
Perhaps in thirty years we could obtain some degree of enhancement for our eyes that would be optically based. However, a more pressing (and needed) benefit will be a cure or fix for folks with vision loss. "Zoom lenses" and such could relatively easily be accomplished with bionically enhanced optics, but the real trick is going to be designing and implementing the hardware/wetware interface and creating true bionic retinas. Bionic implants for retinal degenerations as currently implemented are not going to work for a variety of reasons (read my doctoral dissertation to find out why), but there are other approaches that can be taken or modifications that will be successful (part of my current work). Also alternative ways of implementing the interface cortically will likely have some success (not my work, but it is of my colleagues). Artificial retinas are going to be harder than artificial cochleas for the hearing impaired or cortical control of motor functions which are both applications that are having some success currently. The retina is a much more complex tissue with (in our eyes) 55-60 different classes of neurons all wired together in a precise manner to generate proper signals for image interpretability. As an interesting aside, I have said this before on Slashdot, but human eyes are pretty pathetic in terms of their sophistication. Birds, fish and many reptiles have much more sophisticated retinas that perceive what we would term a multi-spectral visual world. A visual scene much richer that the simple three-space world we currently see.
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Sigs cause cancer.
Nanobots injected in our bloodstream will complement our immune system.
Actually, I do not think we will have a choice in the matter on this one. Before too long, there will be hostile (or just poorly designed and self-replicating) nanobots that will kill us when they get into our bodies. We will need some sort of immediate defense against this new threat; if anything, an outbreak caused by a malicious type of nanobot will spurn the development of the nanobot that complements our immune system and defends against the malicious nanobot. This sort of thing has long been addressed in science fiction novels, but it seems like something that is closer than we might imagine.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
1) Augmented memory. No more forgetting names or passwords. Though it does add some real interesting issues for DRM (can you force me to forget a movie after remembering it X times)
2) Direct connect to the net - the ability to check GPS to figure out what I might be looking at, or the apocryphal doing google searches when asked a question would be very useful.
Just my .02 worth...
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You'll see that some people are so convinced that this kind of human enhancements will happen that they predict than in a few decades, all sporting events 'will be split up to accommodate enhanced and unenhanced athletes.'"
What's the difference between enhanced and unenhanced?
Isn't the athlete from a rich country with well-equipped training facilities, tailored nutrition and good trainers already an enhanced athlete compared to an athlete from some small 3rd world country?
This dichotomy to what constitutes enhancement and what doesn't smacks of a medieval perspective of the human condition.
Yes, and whats ironic is that the sensory overload of modern life is precisely what causes vision loss.
Nonsense. And why yes, I am a vision scientist.
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Your subject line might be more appropriate than you think. I am actually concerned about the use of Viagra, because it is a phosphodiesterase inhibitor.......If you read about how photoreceptors work, phosphodiesterase does have a role in the transduction of vision and there is overlap with the activity of Viagra with the phosphodiesterase subtypes found in photoreceptors. Are we setting a bunch of folks up for vision deficits down the road a few years?
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We've had folks 3-4 times stronger than other folks for generations and nobody asked whether one or the other might not be human... okay so maybe they have, but they shouldn't have.
The questions for whether someone is human include; can they interbreed with humans? Are they sentinent? Are they responsible to themselves and a threat to others. If so, they should be legally and biologically be considered humans. Driving a car doesn't make you less human. Having an artificial heart doesn't make you less human. Having a bionic adaptation shouldn't either.
If you're going to exclude someone from the category of human you should have a functional moral, ethical, legal or biological reason for doing so, and your categorical exclusion would only be as broad as your reason was.
My question (borrowed from the X-Men) is; when should enhanced abilities be considered weapons or threats, in the same class as firearms or knives? Do you not let certain people into an area because they're unusually strong or capable?
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.