Summary
Chapter 15 describes the 5 categories of human enhancement, how they have been used in the past and currently, and their future potential. First and second involve the least risk: enhancement to rid human DNA of inheritable diseases, and enhancement to assist the handicapped. The third type of enhancement is for improving ordinary performance in "relatively linear, modest, and predictable ways-- [for] better memory and better health" (198). Fourth is enhancements that would intensify the advantage of certain people over others, what Woodhouse calls “winners versus losers”. The final type of enhancement is about “changing what it means to be human” by melding human biology with technology, or transhumanism. Woodhouse argues that a lot of the violations of fairness, a lack of intelligent trial and error, and controversy seen for technologies in previous chapters can be seen in human enhancement technologies. He asks whether this technoscience will truly be for the people as they cry ‘no taxation without representation!’; "If the American Revolution were occurring today, would forefront technoscientists be the allies or the adversaries of the common people?" (210)
Analysis & Synthesis
At the end of the chapter, Woodhouse describes human enhancement in society today as violating "many of the requirements for intelligent governance of technological innovation” (208), and that "the speed at which enhancements are proceeding clearly violates the requirements for intelligent trial-and-error learning from experience" (209). He argues these are the downfalls of this form of technoscience and asks the final question of whether they currently truly are “allies or the adversaries of the common people?” (210). I wanted to go through how exactly the enhancements embody these two faults and what those involved would need to do to keep them as a technology by the people, for the people.
I took Woodhouse’s claim of violation of intelligent governance in regard to Chapter 12 on the political activities of engineering, where politics is partially defined as “the struggle for who gets what, when, and how” (148). Here a lack of intelligent governance of basic technologies like cars, electricity and dams has led to pollution, controversy, public unrest, inefficiencies, dangers to citizens, and class division. Generally, any kind of “mild enhancement capacities tend to flow towards those already advantaged in money, education, militarization, or other attributes conducive to understanding, purchasing, and utilizing the new potentials" (204). While great funding and publicity go towards extra testing for the upper class’s pregnant women, sickle cell anemia remains mostly ignored; ”that it mostly afflicts African-Americans arguably is one reason for the slow progress" (200). The greatest need is not being addressed first, causing unfairness, controversy, and inefficiency. The answer to intelligent governance lies in "that limited resources can go to the highest priority needs rather than to the niftiest forefronts of innovation" (203). Energy and funding needs not to be aimed at military or biological prowess, but rather an ”alternative version of how widespread suffering theoretically could be erased" (208).
Under this governance, Woodhouse argues that ”most generally, engineers as a whole have contributed to a pace of innovation that pretty clearly is ill-suited to the relatively slow pace of human learning and adaptation" (156). The way innovators can create effective technology that works with the pace of the human race is described in Chapter 6 as intelligent trial and error. A lack of this is clear in the controversy of military R&D for human enhancement, where fears of unintended consequences of nano science and terrorist intentions/capacities cause skepticism and mistrust from the public. Tax money is contributed toward projects without informing the public; any advancement or research in related technology inevitably feeds enhancement technology, such as immune system, neural pathway, image processing and other biomedical work. Implants and vitamin regimes are being advertised and used on a daily basis without knowing the long-term effects. People are potentially being put in danger for years in the future, and currently the public is working against attempts to implement enhancement technologies. Further R&D with intelligent trial and error would allow the public to be informed on the known and unknown consequences and current uses of enhancement innovations before being implemented into daily life, ridding them of the uncertainty and misguidance. In turn, this would allow the innovations to be more effective, supported, and desired.
All of the change must come from politics, as good versus bad innovation "depends in part on how those with greatest influence approach their tasks" (69). Fair and public-centered governance will produce and encourage intelligent trial and error as it seeks to create the most safe, effective products possible. All of this change is not easy, as described in previous posts in detail, because of pressures in all directions for innovators to do otherwise. Only when the U.S. has a new cycle that perpetually encourages this type of innovation would citizens be able to say human enhancement is an ally. Under current conditions, while it may offer certain benefits to certain people, it is currently perpetuating the harm and unfairness in the U.S.’s system of innovation— an adversary of the common people.
