Human Augmentation?
Understandably, human augmentation is an iffy subject whether it be mechanical or nano-tech based augmentations as in the Deus-Ex universe or extensive genetic engineering as seen in others. The idea of adding or modifying humans to such an extent to many removes what it means to be human making them seem “more man/woman than machine”.
However, regardless of what the majority chooses, when given the chance, it is undeniable that some people would begin to augment themselves. Having augmented people who could do things better than the average non-augment humans would give the “non-augs” a large incentive to become augmented so they could compete, a positive feedback loop that’d continue until some wall stops it.
What piqued my interest in the article, and further the subject in general is, what will the tipping point of such a transformation be in the common person? With modern science, it is possible to build prosthetic limbs, albeit limited prosthetic limbs, that can do many of the tasks that limb it would replace would do. To a disabled person, the limited prosthetics of today (when compared to that of the Deus Ex universe) would provide an advantage to them over people with a similar disability. However, to a normal person, the prosthetics we have today would likely not be a better substitute to stock human limbs.
Like we saw in class, for many network effects, there is a sort of critical point that occurs after the initial set of users that leads to a runaway use of the product. However in this case, the network effect is more of a sense of the amount of “hurt” these augmented people do by being better. If only one person in a large set of people is augmented, the value or “hurt” that the person might do to you (a.k.a. by taking your job) exists but isn’t likely overwhelming; however, if you were the only person in a large set of people who wasn’t augmented, the “hurt” or value that you’d have to being augmented would likely be overwhelming.
Nice Article, Human Augmentation has Great Scope in coming years Human Augmentation Market worth $1135 Million by 2020
Download Free PDF Brochure: http://cutt.us/cXN5g
The development and adoption of the human augmentation technology in the medical and defense industry has revolutionized the human augmentation market.This report profiles all the major companies involved in the human augmentation market such as B-Temia Inc. (U.S.), BrainGate Company (U.S.), Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (U.S.), Google Inc. (U.S.), and Raytheon Company (U.S.), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd (South Korea), and Vuzix Corporation (U.S.).
This is a very interesting topic, check out this blog from IE Business School discussing the business aspect of these technologies https://hackinghumans.blogspot.com.es/