Slashdot Mirror
Permormance-Enhancing Contact Lenses
coastal984 writes "With all the allegations, criticisms, congressional hearings, and suspensions concerning performance-enchancing steroids and supplements in sports, namely Major League Baseball, Nike has now introduced performance-enhancing contact lenses. These new lenses, which give players wearing them a scary orange/amber tint to their eyes, block out useless blue tones and make colors such as red (i.e. the seams on a baseball, vital to batters) easier to see. They also block out sun rays and help ease shadows, as well as improve overall vision. There are also versions for golfers and other sports, and soon to be versions for night contests as well."
If there are no negative health effects, then what's the big deal? I can't understand why making ourselves better in these kinds of ways is in any way bad. . This anti-human-improvement sentiment that goes around whenever anything like this is announced reminds me of Vonnegut's Story about 2081 where everyone is finally equal.
IMHO, I see it as a deeper cultural trend that originally started with Frankenstein. With every technological improvement, especially if it is augmenting human capability people are expecting some sort of Daedalus ironic ending. It's in a lot of sci-fi movies. Think Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, Terminator, The Matrix.
We are a species that, naked, dies from cold or sun. Our clothes are our skin. So are contact lenses our eyes, and cars our feet?
If anything this and similar are gradually working to deconstruct the idea of the natural born human as a standalone unit. Rather, all humans are necessarily "cyborgs". Creating and integrating with tools to extend the self is the true species specialty.