Allen Buchanan, “Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves” (Oxford UP, 2011)

New Books in Technology · Mar 1, 2012 · 1h 17m

Popular culture is replete with warnings about the dangers of technology. One finds in recent films, literature, and music cautions about the myriad ways in which technology threatens our very humanity; most frequently, the lesson is that the attempt to harness technology for the betterment of the world always backfires. It’s no wonder, then, that when it comes to biomedical technologies that promise to enhance human physical and cognitive capacities, many people tend to express deep unease or opposition. But once one recognizes that technological enhancement, including biomedical…