My daughter is expecting a baby. I remember when I was expecting her, I was very taken with a Louis MacNeice poem Prayer Before Birth. I read it again last week. The stanza
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine ..
made me shiver. We're dangerously close to designing a future where if we are not exactly cogs in machines, machines may increasingly be cogs in us: for example, we already have brain implants used to help manage Parkinson's disease, and an artificial retina to help people with retinitis pigmentosa.
This rapidly developing field of designing human performance enhancement (HPE), that makes use of the 'convergence of nano-technology , biotechnology , information technology and cognitive science is creating a set of powerful tools that have the potential to significantly enhance human performance as well as transform society , science, economics and human evolution.' (James Canton)
Advanced technologies like these change the relationship between humans and the way we interact with the world, (described well in this short video). Read Never Let Me Go or some of the many other dystopian sci-fi novels that describe the various worlds our yet-to-be-borns will live in. All chillingly touch moral and ethical issues that we are still far from getting to grips with. (If dystopia is not for you there is a list of utopian sci-fi novels too).
