What is Human Augmentation?

Welcome to the Hacking Human Blog, we will analyse, research and comment some of the most important aspects of human augmentation, such as neurotechnologies, CRISPR, enhanced learning and preimplantation diagnostic and the ethics involved with them.

We live in a world that is constantly changing and innovating. Technology has taken over our societies and has become crucial in todays’ world. As science keeps evolving, it gives humans the tools to engineer their own evolution. But what will it mean for humanity’s future?

The future of the human evolution is “Human Augmentation”. Human Augmentation (which is also called Human Enhancement) can be defined as “the technologies that enhance human productivity or capability, or that somehow add to the human body”. Thus, we can conclude that it is the use of technology to alter human characteristics and capacities, or that somehow add something to the human body.

Human enhancement technologies can promise numerous benefits in the future of human beings, considering it offers improvements in human health and quality of life. Moreover, it can be used not only for treating disabilities and diseases but also for enhancing human characteristics and capacities. 

From a different perspective, although these new options may sound very promising, some people are concern with the fact that it could bring not only ethical problems but could also raise distinct health, social, political and safety challenges. One of the most common argument used against human augmentation is that people will achieve their goals without any effort, and therefore, it undermines the accomplishment's value.

We can conclude that humans will have to decide if the opportunities that increased physical and mental acuity from human enhancement technologies are worth the challenges and potential problems to the society and the personal identify or not. Nevertheless, it will be imperative to establish principles and legal barriers to control the ethical conduct of human augmentation in the future, at a global level.

- Maria Conceiçao

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Bibliography

1.     “Cyborgs: The truth about human augmentation” - Frank Swain, September 24, 2014.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140924-the-greatest-myths-about-cyborgs

2.     “Augmenting Human Intelligence” - MIT Technology Review Insights, June 13, 2016.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601678/augmenting-human-intelligence/

3.     “The Ethics of Human Enhancement” - Andy Miah, September 8, 2016.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602342/the-ethics-of-human-enhancement/