More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement by Ramez Naam is a new book which predicts that the future is all about a New Designer You. A preview of the book is available on the book’s website. Here is an excerpt from the website’s summary of the book:
"More Than Human is about our growing power to alter our minds, bodies, and lifespans through technology – the power to redefine our species – a power we can choose to fear, or to embrace."
"In 1990, a professor at the University of Colorado discovered that changing a single gene doubles the lifespan of tiny nematode worms. In 1999, researchers searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease genetically engineered a strain of mice that can learn things five times as quickly as their normal kin – super-intelligent mice. In 2002, scientists looking for ways to help paralyzed patients implanted electrodes into the brain of an owl monkey and trained it to move a robot arm 600 miles away just by thinking about it."
"Over the last decade researchers looking for ways to help the sick and injured have stumbled onto techniques that enhance healthy animals – making them stronger, faster, smarter, longer-lived, even connecting their minds to robots and computers. Now science is on the verge of applying this knowledge to healthy men and women. The same research that could cure Alzheimer’s is leading to drugs and genetic techniques that could boost human intelligence. The techniques being developed to stave off heart disease and cancer have the potential to halt or even reverse human aging."
"More Than Human takes the reader into the labs where this is happening to understand the science of human enhancement. It also steps back to look at the big picture. How will these technologies affect society? What will they do to the economy, to politics, and to human identity? What social policies should we enact to regulate, restrict, or encourage the use of these technologies?"
I’ve always been someone who feared the pains of aging. The rash of new books promising hope is encouraging.
Leary’s Design For Dying hinted at many of the same ideas presented here. They are both fascinating and a little frightening. Fascinating because of the potential they have… But frightening in their capacity to be abused by governments and corporations.
VOTE FOR PYNCHON!!!!!!!
The People’s Choice of The Man Booker International Prize 2005
http://www.manbookerinternational.com/peoples/authors.php?oby=post&MR_allA=130
I saw Ramez spaek at Mind States this past weekend. One of the most interesting bits of neurotech he mentioned was a wireless cortical implant that allowed the implantee to communicate with a computer (to enable vision or process motor functions with prosthesis). Of course, the obvious extension is to wonder if such tech could allow wireless communication between implantees – a sort of digital telepathy. I could also imagine a strong user sending thoughts into a weak user, or perhaps controlling their robotic limbs via the cortical wifi.
Amazing, bizarre, scary, and wonderful!