Splashlight
Key Concepts
- College students and executives ingest stimulant drugs to enhance routine mental performance, although the compounds were never approved for that purpose.
- Some ethicists and neuroscientists have raised the prospect of making these drugs widely available for enhancement of healthy people who do not suffer from dementia.
- Questions remain about whether any drug that tinkers with basic mental functioning will be sufficiently safe and effective to be consumed like coffee or tea.
More from the Magazine
October
2009 Issue- News Scan The First Synthetic Organelle
- Antigravity Birth of a Notion: Implicit Social Cognition and the "Birther" Movement
- Sustainable Developments The Failing U.S. Government--The Crisis of Public Management [Extended version]
- Buy the Digital Edition
The symbol H+ is the code sign used by some futurists to denote an enhanced version of humanity. The plus version of the human race would deploy a mix of advanced technologies, including stem cells, robotics, cognition-enhancing drugs, and the like, to overcome basic mental and physical limitations.
The notion of enhancing mental functions by gulping down a pill that improves attention, memory and planning—the very foundations of cognition—is no longer just a fantasy shared by futurists. The 1990s, proclaimed the decade of the brain by President George H. W. Bush, has been followed by what might be labeled “the decade of the better brain.”
Read Comments (22) | Post a comment
RSS Feeds
Blog
Podcasts
Mobile
Widgets