Amped: A Sci-Fi Novel Asks Whether "Transhumans" Would Still Be Human

June 22nd, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By David Sydiongco | Slate.com

After years of fighting claims that his artificial limbs grant him an unfair advantage over other runners, South African Oscar Pistorius has a chance to become the first double amputee to compete in the Olympic Games.

What if the debate over enhancement technology that made some people better than human went from just one man to a whole population? Thats the premise of the latest sci-fi novel from roboticist (and Future Tense contributor) Daniel H. Wilson.

Amped depicts a near-future United States struggling with discrimination and social unrestcaused not by racism or economic injustice, but by transhumanism.

Transhumanism is the concept of integrating technology with ones body in order to improve the human conditionfrom prosthetic limbs to or imbuing brains with zettabytes of storage space.

Wilsons novel focuses on the political and social disruption caused by the advent of the amp, a tiny device of the placed in ones prefrontal cortex. It sends electrical impulses to specific parts of a users brain, resulting in a wide range of miraculous benefitslike the elimination of all disability, both mental and physical, and seamless synchronization with prosthetic limbs. The amp also dramatically improves ones mental capacities, allowing those of once below-average intellect to perform machine-fast probability computations.

Observers of transformative technologies often worry that they will promote further disparity between the rich and poor, as the wealthy can afford the new enhancements and the poor remain old-fashioned humans. But Wilsons novel flips this. Many people believe that implantable technology will be something rich people use to oppress poor people. But Tony Stark isnt going to be the first person to get this stuff, he told me in an email. He argues that super-enabling technology such as this would first be adopted by the desperate. Nobody else will be willing to take the risks inherent in having a nascent technology put into your skull, he said.

[…]

Read the full article at: slate.com
Image: Source – Runner Oscar Pistorius. Duif du Toit/Gallo Images/Getty Images