Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/5203
34 winter 2009 Factories of tomorrow will be organized around converging technologies and increased human-machine capabilities as intelligent environments that achieve the maximum benefits of both mass production and custom design. The vast promise of outer space will finally be realized by means of efficient launch vehicles, robotic construction of extraterrestrial bases, and profitable exploitation of the resources of the Moon, Mars, or near-Earth asteroids. Formal education will be transformed by a unified but diverse curriculum based on a comprehensive, hierarchical intellectual paradigm for understanding the architecture of the physical world from the nanoscale through the cosmic scale. 2050 nBIc anD yoU NBIC will likely be used to enhance intelligence, mobility, cognitive qualities, vision and hearing. "I think we will stop short of eugenics but proceed to offer neurological and physical enhancements that improve the quality of life under the umbrella of medicine," writes James Canton of the Institute for Global Futures. "Industry is watching this debate closely. Boomers are also watching this debate and will influence the outcome, based on their health economic investments." Canton asks whether people in a free society have the right to enhance their memory, augment their intelligence, maximize their pleasure, and even change their physical forms on demand. He suggests that this will become a human rights issue in the 21st century. "longevity medicine, life extension, and the augmentation of human performance will become features of our global culture in the near future," he argues. Just as we battle over the right to life today, it's almost a given that we will battle in the future over the right to personal enhancement. New and radical choices will be available to parents who want certain characteristics for their unborn children — for example, augmentation of intelligence or corrective genetic procedures. Improvement and human performance enhancing drugs and neurotechnological devices are already entering the global marketplace. Some, like environmentalist Bill McKibben, argue that we are not in need of radical overhaul, improvement, or augmentation, that "we are plenty good enough." Clearly there will be those who choose to remain unenhanced as well as those who choose radical augmentation/enhancement. nBIc anD yoUR Dog oR caT "There is a lot of suffering in the natural world," suggests Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. "If we had the capability to mitigate this in some acceptable way, it seems to me that we would have a moral obligation to do so." If humans can be augmented and enhanced, then what about our fellow non-human Earth-bound species? This might bring to mind horrific images of the "Beast Folk" in H.G. Wells' story The Island of Doctor Moreau. There are clearly some very difficult moral questions in this area. Biological uplift is the act of biologically enhancing non- human animals. Bostrom acknowledges some uncertainty in this area. "As for cognitively enhancing animals, well, intuitively it seems like we ought to enhance/treat a brain-damaged human but that there would be no particular moral reason to uplift an amoeba (to take two extremes)," he ponders. "Perhaps one could think in terms of whether a being has a 'morally relevant interest' in being enhanced. Maybe the amoeba has no morally relevant interests at all." He cautions against rushing to conclusions regarding this controversial topic without more thought.