Medical Enhancement: A Destination of Technological, not Human, Betterment

With the rapid advance of scientific understanding and technological manipulation, many utopian prognostications have come into the public domain predicting the future of a new and improved humankind. One of the most far-reaching visions of a technological human future can be found in the reports from the NBIC confer ences sponsored by the National Science Foundation, along with other organiza tions. A statement from their website explains the basic perspective of the conferences: “The convergence of nanoscience, biotechnology, information tech nology and cognitive science (NBIC) offers immense opportunities for the improve ment of human abilities, social outcomes, the nation's productivity and its quality of life.”

As seen by the NBIC proponents, the scope of these opportunities is limited only by our imaginations. In the overview chapter from the 2003 report, the promise of an NBIC convergence is described in the following manner: “The twenty-first century could end in world peace, universal prosperity, and evolution to a higher level of compassion and accomplishment” (Roco & Bainbridge 2003: 6). This 2003 report goes on to discuss how this NBIC convergence will offer humankind much longer, disease-free, lives, with various opportunities for interfacing with machines and computers in order to extend one’s abilities and capacities.