Transvision & Bostrom covered in Nature

Dr. Nick Bostrom: “I don’t think healthy people are going to be attracted by mechanical or electronic enhancements in the near future. You can get most or all of the same benefits from having the same device outside the body. If you want to access Google, you don’t have to have a fibre-optic cable wired into your visual cortex. You can just have a computer screen. That saves you a trip to the surgeon, and it’s easier to upgrade.”

ROTFLMAO! Obviously, it would be foolish to not agree (today) that such blatent enhancements are not a 20-30 years hence commodity. BUT, what about the mid to long-term? Say, 75 year? 175?

Bostrom adds, “One thing that has happened over the past five years or so is that bioethics has begun to take enhancement issues seriously. Bioethicists previously tended to ignore them or think of it as science fiction. Now there’s debate on a lot of ethical questions related to human enhancement, and interest is still on the up. These technologies are sufficiently likely that it is worth discussing them now.”

This is probably the single most promising development in the field in recent years. Just about every scientific and technological advance that comes to mind went through two meta phases: pre-credibility and post-credibility. It is very, very difficult indeed to make significant progress on pre-credibility advances; at least the post-credibility type stand a chance of being sufficiently explored toward the end of ultimately proving or disproving.

Sources: IEET “Transvision & Bostrom covered in Nature” and Nature, “The modern make-over.”