Could we use technology and drugs to enhance our cognitive, emotional
and physical capacities and become super-humans? This idea, or dream,
is certainly riddled through contemporary popular culture, from the
Bourne Supremacy to Iron Man, from Limitless to the transhumanist
computer game
Deus Ex.
But
now the idea seems to be leaping effortlessly from comic books into
academic philosophy. Even the sober dons of Oxford have been caught up
in the enthusiasm. Here, for example, are Guy Kahane and Julian
Savulescu, two members of Oxford's
Future of Humanity Institute, from the introduction to their 2011 book,
Enhancing Human Capacities:
It
appears that soon we will be able to radically enhance human
capacities well beyond the normal range. In some circles, there is even
talk about an approaching post-human era, a prospect that is
horrifying to many, but enticing to others.
I can't
help but hear that paragraph in a Dr Strangelove voice...We're at this
strange moment in human history, where we're facing the prospect of
climate change and serious human casualties, and this prompts a sort of
millenarian last-gasp optimism: 'Zis may be the end of man, but
perhaps it is ze dawn of...SUPERMAN!'
Despite the transhumanist
fever, there is some interesting research being done amid the
superhype. Among cognitive enhancements, two promising lines of
research are transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and the
smart-drug Modafinil.
This week's
New Scientist cover story,
for example, is called 'Zap your brain into the zone: fast track to
pure focus' (sounds like they're properly plugged in at the New
Scientist offices), and it looks at a US Army DARPA research programme
which suggests tDCS improves people's learning ability and their ability
to detect threats. Last week, Radio 4's Today show also
explored tDCS. And
this feature
from Nature magazine lays out several of the research projects under
way today. Apparently, a mild electric current from a tDCS helmet
improves our brain's plasticity and thus our ability to learn new habits
and aptitudes (God knows how...by heating and softening the brain like
wax?). The Army is now experimenting with tDCS helmets for troops, and
I came across one report of an advertizing executive who used a tDCS
device to overcome writer's block.
There's a similar buzz (sorry)
around the cognitive enhancement possibilities of the smart drug
Modafinil, or Provigil as it's sometimes called, which apparently
enhances working memory, wakefulness, attention, reaction time and even
humour. Oxford's Anders Sandberg
suggests we
should prescribe Modafinil in schools to enhance human intelligence
and make the entire species a bit smarter. 'Surely', he says, 'anything
that improves the ability to learn is a good thing.'
Armies,
schools and corporations have experimented with the use of stimulants
in the past: German soldiers and Japanese factory workers were given
amphetamine to improve performance during the war, and the US Army
still gives soldiers and pilots amphetamine to improve wakefulness
(this came out in a 2003 law case, when
it emerged that two American pilots in the Iraq war had mistakenly bombed a Canadian unit while themselves bombed on speed).
In fact, my great-grandfather, Charles Moran, who was Churchill's doctor during and after the war,
prescribed
Churchill both barbituates to help him sleep, and amphetamine to keep
him awake (Churchill nick-named these pills 'Morans'.). It seems that,
in both politics, the military, sports and show-business, the greater
the demands we make on high performers, the more we turn a blind eye to
providing chemical assistance to power their superhuman performance.
Though of course, these super-powered humans often crash spectacularly,
Icarus-like, from over-dosing.
