The iWalk PowerFoot
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What traits could we engineer to “improve” people? Kurt Andersen talks with Greg Stock, a leading proponent of genetic engineering. We’ll hear from a double amputee and MIT scientist who walks using bionic legs of his own creation; and from a doctor and an artist exploring mankind’s ability to defy the limits of nature with the help of a bit of bio-enhancement.
Greg Stock: Redesigning Humans
Nearly a decade after the human genome was decoded, scientists are only now beginning to understand its implications. One of the leading thinkers in this field is the biotech entrepreneur Gregory Stock. A biophysicist by training, his 2002 book Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future ...
Making Memories with a Microchip
Ted Berger is trying to build a microchip that can remember things for us. He teaches biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, and his goal is to create a device that can take over for the hippocampus of the brain, translating thoughts into long-term memories. ...
Becoming the Bionic Man
Hugh Herr is a leading bionics developer at MIT and a double amputee following a mountain-climbing accident. Herr has developed legs that allow him to climb better than he could previously. With a generation of young injured veterans needing prostheses, the need to build mechanical ...
Greg Stock: Humans 2.0
Biotech entrepreneur Greg Stock tells Kurt Andersen he thinks technology may allow humans to break free of their natural life span. “We are like a dying animal,” he says, “we are stuck to our bodies and yet our minds can soar.” Stock believes therapeutic interventions to treat diseases ...
The Posthuman Future
Everything we’re able to do today to enhance humans — from genetic engineering to artificial limbs — simply improves on the base model we were born with. But for some people, that doesn’t go far enough. They think we shouldn’t be stuck with the factory-installed settings in our DNA. And they're not satisfied with a lifespan ...
They’re Made Out of Meat
We humans are pretty hot stuff — the most highly evolved species on the planet, or so we like to think. This parable by science-fiction writer Terry Bisson suggests otherwise. To some space aliens who think they’ve seen it all, we’re not just primitive. We’re gross. Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” was first published in ...
Neil Harbisson, Cyborg
Neil Harbisson is a painter, a musician, and a cyborg. Born with a rare form of colorblindness, Harbisson can only see the world in grays. In 2004, he collaborated with a scientist to create a device called the Eyeborg, which he wears everywhere — even in his passport picture ...
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Comments [3]
Lovely show. Very thoughtful!
Two thoughts:
First, I think if we are honest and wise, we will see that what we truly care about in Humanity is not so much the sort of physical form we have, organic or not, but the stories, both that we experience and that we share. And I think we shall find that stories do not have a specific biological form, nor a species, nor a native substrate. Given this, it would be a poor idea to define what we value in humanity around a certain shape of a thing that can experience, and share those experiences. I think that this would make for poor decision making even outside the realm of questions concerning transhumanism.
Second, I think that your guest's line, "it will get weird" is perhaps the most important line here. We're not just going to "get superhuman," we're going to become so many different kinds of things that the only way to unify us in the end, might really and truly be our shared act of experiencing the world.
One last note which doesn't really qualify as anything big, but one of your later guests made a comment about how being a great-great grandparent would poison the experience by generating so many offspring that there'd be no meaningful connection. As it happens there is a very old woman with a large number of great-great grandchildren. She describes the experience of holding a great-great granddaughter as, "like stepping into Heaven."
Just for the record.
Amputee alert! The best and most effective phantom pain fighter is the Night-Kap---I wear mine every night and it keeps my limb in excellent health by incresing the blood flow, and ta naturally increases your pain fighting ability--No drugs or bad side effects!
one of your best shows. Would love more pictures for your website and references to the books cited.
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