Brain-controlled robotic arm toasts success with a drink
A study on people with tetraplegia has shown participants were able to control a robotic arm and hand over a broad space without any explicit training.
The Conversation: 17 May 2012
Into the Matrix: the future of augmented reality (and you)
The growth of augmented reality will almost certainly change the way we visually experience the everyday world.
The Conversation: 8 May 2012
Best evidence yet that a single gene can affect IQ
A massive genetics study has revealed what is claimed as the biggest effect yet of a single gene on intelligence – although the effect is small.
New Scientist: 16 April 2012
No modest proposal: bioengineering humans for global warming
You know the situation is getting desperate when three bio-ethicists propose genetically modifying humans to reduce our environmental impact.
The Conversation: 16 April 2012
How engineering humans could combat climate change
Drugs to help you avoid eating meat, genetically engineered cat-like eyes to reduce the need for lighting, a wild interview about changes humans could make to themselves to battle climate change.
The Atlantic: 12 March 2012, By Ross Andersen
Will you live long enough to live forever, or upload your brain
Could we reincarnate ourselves as non-biological beings that persist for eternity inside a laptop? That and more realistic directions in neuroscience.
Scientific American: 5 December 2011
Bionic contact lens could project floating emails
Contact lenses take a leap forward with a new technology that projects text and images before your eyes.
CBS News: 22 November 2011
Sydney Morning Herald: 23 November 2011
better pics in SMH article
Nanotechnology and religion
By Jason Major
TechNyou
It is no longer a revelation that for religious people, their religion can have a large influence on their perceptions and acceptance of emerging technologies. This has been shown in a number of studies to date, and their analysis also reflects what I have also talked on about in previous posts: that much of our perception and acceptance or otherwise of emerging technologies is influenced by personal values. Knowledge about the science or technology has relatively minimal influence.
Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist in the University of South Carolina NanoCenter, has done a new study that examines actual religious commentaries about nanotechnology from a variety of faiths. Toumey assembled a collection of seven religious reactions to nanotechnology from a variety of faiths.
His paper (Seven religious reactions to nanotechnology) will be published in the December issue of NanoEthics. Unfortunately, access to the full paper is unavailable at the moment, so I only have his short version for Nanowerk to go on.
On the slippery slope to transhumanism
One of the themes that came out of his research was many religious persons worry that nanotechnology will contribute to re-defining human nature in ways that are amoral or dangerous. This is a sense that transhumanist values are the enemy of religious values, and that nanotechnology, especially nanomedicine, is implicated in a transhumanist agenda.
Indeed, six of the seven religious reactions included a concern that nanotech will contribute to changing our sense of what it means to be human, and that this is clearly undesirable.
If I can play the devil’s advocate here, what if part of being human is the need to constantly improve ourselves? That is, the desire for transhumanism is being human. For instance, think about how much money we spend on plastic surgery, face lifts, drugs to make us stronger, or more mentally alert. Should it ever become possible and available, I bet there will be a queue of people lining up to get cognitive enhancements, or some therapy that will turn them from the 10 stone woos to the muscly, athletic dude prancing around the beach in their budgie smugglers.
One only has to look at previous human cloning claims, closely followed by the large number of people requesting to have various dead family members or themselves cloned.
A second question posed by Toumey is whether nanotechnology has a purpose, a set of its own values that are different from transhumanism?. Personally, I don’t think the manufacturer of the stain-free nano clothing is thinking anything other than the purpose of nano is to give me a marketing edge in the clothing market. He is not considering whether his technology will be somehow used in the field of transhumanism. The Biomedical specialist, however, trying to work on gene therapy techniques to treat Parkinson’s Alzhiemers or rebuild muscles in those with muscular dystrophy is more likely to be considering how their advances in knowledge might be used for other purposes, for example enhancing cognitive function or muscle building in disease-free people.
For a bit of an insight into the ethics of bioengineering our brain check the following TedX talk
No right or wrong
Australia’s religious views are not the same as those in the US, so I suspect our judgements on emerging technologies would be more secular than in the US, but still with a heavy emphasis on personal values and natural biases. Regardless of the root of those values, I agree with Toumey that if we are to have any debate on the use of these technologies move forward, policy makers, scientists, industry and society in general need to consider these values, possibly even embrace some of them.
Boosting mental capacity: beyond the caffeine fix
By Jason Major
TechNyou
Large numbers of us pop pills to boost our mental powers apparently. Good or bad, is this any worse than your morning hit of caffeine, shot of energy drink, or students popping no-doze (caffeine pills)?
If we are OK with this, and plenty of people I talk to are, then what about if we make this a more permanent thing by manipulating genes or re-wiring our brains? Surely a society with better cognitive abilities could only be an improvement?
Below is an extract from a New Scientist article exploring the ethics of taking drugs that boost mental capacity. The questions posed in the article’s survey are similar to ones I pose in TechNyou workshops on human enhancement. Similar also are the answers, which suggests the demographic of the New Scientist survey could be broadened somewhat.
The drugs people said they had taken included modafinil, normally prescribed for sleep disorders, and Ritalin and Adderall, taken for ADHD. The range of experiences is striking. One respondent wrote: “It helps me extend my concentration. I can study a topic for six hours, for example, that would have me bored to tears in two.” Another wrote: “Did not help me do anything but feel anxious and excited, could not sit still even 15 hours later.”
When asked about the drugs’ potential impact on society, people reported concerns beyond safety, for example warning that the drugs might create a two-tier education system in which some can afford the drugs and others can’t. They voiced wider concerns too, such as: “If society has come to the point that we have to take cognitive enhancers to function or perform to certain expected levels, then it is a society that has placed performance over happiness and health.”
Extending the demographic and the question
Similar to your first caffeine hit of the morning, these drugs are temporary fixes, though with some having addictive qualities one might argue they are on-going temporary fixes. I go one step further in TechNyou workshops and ask people how acceptable it might be if we tweaked our genes or used some medical intervention such as rewiring the brain to make such enhancements permanent. These are realistic possibilities, though unlikely to be technically possible for many years ie decades.
Because a lot of people use these drugs, it would follow that these same people have no problem with society as a whole using them. I am unsure, however, whether, when they take these drugs, they are contemplating the potential societal affects, or just the effect it has on them personally.
Because I have yet to have anyone in my workshops that has admitted to having anything stronger than a double shot latte or large can of Red Bull, it is hard to know what such people would say about permanent mental enhancements. But workshop participants do bring up some familiar arguments against this is form of permanent human tweaking. Dominant is that we are playing with nature in potentially dangerous ways with unknown consequences. This maybe the case, although it depends on how you want to define ‘nature’. I would argue that humans are an integral part of nature and maybe this is simply part of being human. That is, the constant need to improve ourselves is part of being human. It is what we are hardwired to do. Our brain also has the capability to, at least in theory, think about the consequences of our actions.
Another argument against such permanent enhancements is the same as the pill popping version, that is will create the divided society – the enhanced versus the un-enhanced. Again, this may be so, but this is true of any technology or even of the basic essentials such as clean water, adequate nutrition, and basic medical care. The rich put their kids in the top schools, with private tutors, are given perfect teeth via expensive orthodontics, while us plebs get pot-luck with public education and will never get a chance at Australia’s next top model because of crooked teeth. Society has always been split this way. Mind you that doesn’t make it right or that we should accept it. In the same way I don’t have an answer for world peace, I don’t have the solution to avoiding the intractable societal inequalities.
Those in favour say Ai
I don’t experience purely negative sentiment such permanent enhancements. Equally there are some that embrace the possibility, though this is largely from the younger generation. And one might agree with them, what is wrong with a society that has greater mental capacity? The issue may be when parents choose to tweak their child’s embryo to have such traits. Then such choice is taken away, but then that is what parents continually do isn’t it? Make choices for their children that they think will make them better people or give them greater opportunities in life. As I am about to become a first-time father (all going well) I do want to give my child the best opportunities in life, so if this technology was available to me, would I use it? No is the short answer, but then I can understand why others would, and how this might create an uneven playing field. This is starting to read like the script from GATTACA. Haven’t seen the film? You should. For its time, it is disturbingly prophetic.
Don’t get me wrong, our scientific capability to make the GATTACA-type society a reality is a long way off, but we know enough to know it is possible. Today, we have the ability to screen and select for embryos with specific genes; with mice and rats we already genetically manipulate them to have certain human-like traits, or bigger muscles…and so on. So technically there is no reason why we couldn’t do it with humans. Ethical and societal constraints are all that is stopping us going down that road.
Many tribes
Even those in my workshops that are considerably uncomfortable with permanent enhancement, few dismiss outright the technologies potential in this area.
The problem is of course, as nearly all acknowledge is that although we may be uncomfortable with the concept there will be plenty of people who will be lining up for mental boosts should they become available and legal, though legal doesn’t usually stop anyone.
So regardless of what we think, are we going to be able to stop it? Not everyone, or every culture has the same values. What about different generations? What values will our grandchildren have? And you can’t put a moratorium on the science because the same knowledge could also help many suffering from diseases of the brain such as stroke, Parkinson’s or Alzhiemers. It will be the same knowledge, just used for different purposes.
It’s just a stick
I like to use my stick-spear analogy when people propose a moratorium on research they think will put us on the “Slippery Slope” to doom. Pretend you are a pre-historic bloke that hunts to provide for his family. It is hard and extremely dangerous and usually involves waiting for larger animals to finish picking over a carcass so you can try and extract the few morsels left behind. One day you pick up a long straight stick to help you walk home after twisting your ankle and it occurs to you that if you make one end of your stick sharp it might make a good tool to hunt for food. Your idea works and your family thrives, the bonus being you can also defend yourself better against animals trying to hunt you. Your neighbour on the hill sees all this and forms a plan. He steals your sharpened stick, kills you and runs off with your family. Same stick; two different purposes. Do you deny the first guy the ability to develop the stick and make his life better, just because there is a possibility some goose may have a different purpose in mind for it?
Or as Brad Allenby succinctly puts it: “If a particular technology gives a nation or a culture an advantage, won’t it over time be developed anyway? …You want the future? You can’t handle the future, but it is coming anyway.” His full article from which this is extracted is worth a read.
Further stuff for enhanced cogitation
The Conversation: Drug that enhance us will enchant us
Ageing process slowed down in fruit flies
Activating a gene in a fly’s intestine that affects mitochondrial activity has increased its lifespan. The same gene is found in humans.