Biografie als Design – Human Enhancement 2020

There has been a future conference (Übermorgenkongress) on October 19/20 in Oldenburg. The issue was living in 2020: food, body, luxury, identity in 2020.

I have had the opportunity to go a bit beyond my focus there as a technology analyst and care for my more speculative side as futurist. Normally I resist the temptation to talk about time horizons like this one, when there is no really deep research before, but in this case it was more like a nice “thought experiment”. See for yourself – sorry, preso is only available in German up to now.

This presentation is “post hoc”, the slides have not been shown at the event, since the event format was delibertely “no powerpoint please”. This is to avoid some disadvantages of powerpoint presentations, but I created this one to share my thoughts with a broader audience.

Human Enhancement Technology – Logical Evolution or Pandora’s Box?

The realm of technologizing the human being is a persistant issue in foresight, let alone science fiction. I guess that I am in a minority position in the futurists crowd with my rather skeptical views. Most of anthropologists and philosophers like Martin Heidegger have identified technology as a core part of human nature, starting with use of tools observed in pre-human primates. This “future open identity” of homo sapiens sapiens as a species leads to the bluring of any simple distinction of nature/culture and nature/technology.

Anyway, we as human beings are in a certain control to accelerate/hinder the interpenetration of humanity with its created technology. Wether in the style of cyborg implants, genetic modification or pharmaceutical enhancers – I think, this all has to be politically assessed and regulated just because of the huge impact for our culture and living.

More about Übermorgenkongress, organised by the business think tank forward2business: http://www.uebermorgenkongress.de/

Addendum (German): Memorandum Neuro-Enhancement

Sehr passend zum Thema ist im Monat Oktober ein sieben führende Experten ein Memorandum über Chancen und Risiken des kontroversen Teilgebiets Neuro-Enhancemet veröffentlicht. Die Problematik zeigt sich recht deutlich in folgender Passage:

“Um keine unerwünschten sozialen Entwicklungen zu fördern, müsste jeder einzelne Bürger verantwortungsvoll mit den Möglichkeiten des pharmazeutischen NEs umgehen. Jeder sollte sich daher vor der Entscheidung für die Nutzung eines NEPs diese Fragen stellen: Was sind
meine Motive? Geht es ausschließlich um persönliche Vorteile – und bestehen diese vor allem darin, Konkurrenten auszustechen? Sind die Vorteile es wert, das Risiko unerwünschter Nebenwirkungen einzugehen? Bin ich bereit, neben beabsichtigten auch unerwünschte Persönlichkeitsveränderungen in Kauf zu nehmen, die kaum vorhersagbar sind, …” (S. 11)

PDF zum Download auf wissenschaft-online.de: Gehirn_und_Geist_Memorandum.pdf

Update 2009-10-28