Draft Piece on Consumer Medical Electronics for Class
You may be disappointed to learn that in the near future, the organic combination of flesh, blood and bone will no longer be sufficient to qualify you as a healthy human being. You are going to require, shall we say, electronic assistance. Try not to look so surprised. We both knew it was bound to happen in our lifetime. Our fear of the machines has reached a point where we have decided the only way to really control them is by internalising them. At least you can console yourself with the thought that the electronic pills you will hopefully soon be swallowing are not capable of passing the Turing test, so you are not engaging in sapient cannibalism. Yet.
This is not to say we should effect a collective transformation into a commune of Neo-Luddites. For those of us fortunate enough to live in the developed world (and let us be honest, who do you think is actually most likely to benefit from this new medical technology), technology has embedded itself in our way of life to such an extent that abandoning it is liable to result in utter chaos rather than a pastoral idyll. What we do need to do, however, is seriously consider the implications of our technological advancement. In this case, it seems to me that medical biotechnology is beginning to raise questions about just what it means to be human.
For as a species, we are clearly not averse to synthetic intrusions. We pierce our ears/eyebrows/noses/tongues; we insert pins to hold broken bones together as they heal; we use pacemakers to regulate heartbeats; we replace knees. It seems like a very short step from all this to slipping microprocessors under our skin or swallowing miniaturised cameras. After all, what is a bit of synthetic material compared to the wellness of the organic whole? The problem is where to draw the line. What would you say to implanting a microprocessor to boost your brainpower? How about nanobots that can repair your body at the cellular level, destroying cancerous cells before they have a chance to proliferate? How far are we prepared to go before we acknowledge we can evolve into posthumans, technologically-enhanced beyond recognition by our ancestors from just a century earlier?
This is not to say we should effect a collective transformation into a commune of Neo-Luddites. For those of us fortunate enough to live in the developed world (and let us be honest, who do you think is actually most likely to benefit from this new medical technology), technology has embedded itself in our way of life to such an extent that abandoning it is liable to result in utter chaos rather than a pastoral idyll. What we do need to do, however, is seriously consider the implications of our technological advancement. In this case, it seems to me that medical biotechnology is beginning to raise questions about just what it means to be human.
For as a species, we are clearly not averse to synthetic intrusions. We pierce our ears/eyebrows/noses/tongues; we insert pins to hold broken bones together as they heal; we use pacemakers to regulate heartbeats; we replace knees. It seems like a very short step from all this to slipping microprocessors under our skin or swallowing miniaturised cameras. After all, what is a bit of synthetic material compared to the wellness of the organic whole? The problem is where to draw the line. What would you say to implanting a microprocessor to boost your brainpower? How about nanobots that can repair your body at the cellular level, destroying cancerous cells before they have a chance to proliferate? How far are we prepared to go before we acknowledge we can evolve into posthumans, technologically-enhanced beyond recognition by our ancestors from just a century earlier?