A panoramic overview of biotechnologies that can endlessly boost human capabilities and the drastic changes these “superhuman” traits could trigger
Product Code: 8302
ISBN: 9780807066621
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published Date: 09/06/2016
Availability:In stock
N/A
Price: $22.00

Biotechnology is moving fast. In the coming decades, advanced pharmaceuticals, bioelectronics, and genetic interventions will be used not only to heal the sick but to boost human physical and mental performance to unprecedented levels. People will have access to pills that make them stronger and faster, informatic devices will interface seamlessly with the human brain, and epigenetic modification may allow people to reshape their own physical and mental identities at will.

Until recently, such major technological watersheds—like the development of metal tools or the industrialization of manufacturing—came about incrementally over centuries or longer. People and social systems had time to adapt: they gradually developed new values, norms, and habits to accommodate the transformed material conditions. But contemporary society is dangerously unprepared for the dramatic changes it is about to experience down this road on which it is already advancing at an accelerating pace.

The results will no doubt be mixed. People will live longer, healthier lives, will fine-tune their own thought processes, and will generate staggeringly complex and subtle forms of knowledge and insight. But these technologies also threaten to widen the rift between rich and poor, to generate new forms of social and economic division, and to force people to engage in constant cycles of upgrades and boosts merely to keep up. Individuals who boost their traits beyond a certain threshold may acquire such extreme capabilities that they will no longer be recognized as unambiguously human.

In this important and timely book, prize-winning historian Michael Bess provides a clear, nontechnical overview of cutting-edge biotechnology and paints a vivid portrait of a near-future society in which bioenhancement has become a part of everyday life. He surveys the ethical questions raised by the enhancement enterprise and explores the space for human agency in dealing with the challenges that these technologies will present.


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Welcome to the Future

PART I: HUMANS REDESIGNED

One: Envisioning the Future: Between the Jetsons and the Singularity
Two: Pharmaceuticals
Three: Bioelectronics
Four: Genetics and Epigenetics
Five: Wild Cards: Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Synthetic Biology

PART II: JUSTICE

Six: Should We Reengineer the Human Condition?
Seven: Who Gets Enhanced?
Eight: A Fragmenting Species? Cultural Preferences Inscribed into Biology
Nine: If I Ran a Zoo: Adventures along the Plant-Animal-Human-Machine Borderlands

PART III: IDENTITY

Ten: Mechanization of the Sel
f Eleven: Turbocharging Moral Character
Twelve: Shared Intimacies: Monitoring and Transmitting Mental Information
Thirteen: Virtual Reality and (Yawn) This Reality
Fourteen: Till Death Do Us No Longer Part: Implications of Extremely Long Healthy Spans
Fifteen: New Sounds for the Old Guitar: Sex, Food, Privacy, the Arts, Warfare

PART IV: CHOICES

Sixteen: Why Extreme Modifications Should Be Postponed: Or, the Singularity Can Wait
Seventeen: Humane Values in a World of Moderate Enhancements
Eighteen: What You and I Can Do Today
Nineteen: Enhancing Humility: Some Concluding Thoughts

Selected Filmography
Selected Bibliography/Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

“In the future, accelerating technology and unexpected, revolutionary events—most of which will never be predicted by futurists—may produce a society as alien as some of our tools. Bess delivers an insightful philosophical analysis of how we must adjust.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Rejuvenation therapies that could potentially extend human lifespans to 160 years or more, chemical or bioelectronic cognitive enhancement that could double or triple IQ scores, bioelectronic devices for modulating brain processes including ‘pleasure centers,’ so-called ‘designer babies,’ and much more are poised to cross the threshold from science fiction to reality in the near future. Michael Bess offers a sober prediction of how such advances will directly affect human society, and the ethical dilemmas that could result. Our Grandchildren Redesigned is fascinating from cover to cover and near-impossible to put down. Highly recommended!” —The Midwest Book Review

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