Sticking to the script? Superheroes, enhancement, and the challenge of steering technologies in socially desirable ways - Part 2

Guest post by Michael Morrison (Oxford, HeLEX)

[O]ur proper response to the inexorable march of progress that has brought us to this place and time in the history of civilization is to find a way to confront it responsibly. Not modestly. Non unself-conciously. Not with faith in a greater power than ours to descend from the sky and set things right despite our best efforts to screw up. We have an obligation to know who we are and what we can do. We have an obligation to understand the ramifications of the things we do, and to choose to do them  - or not – with our eyes open.

-- Elliot S. Maggin in his introduction to Kingdom Come collected edition (DC Comics 2008).

Instead of treating technologies as simply neutral things that can be used in either good or bad ways, we might think about technological consequences in a more nuanced way by examining the (social) relations their use promotes.

One thing all enhancement technologies do is create a difference between enhanced people and those who are not enhanced.

Sticking to the script? Superheroes, enhancement, and the challenge of steering technologies in socially desirable ways - Part 1

Guest post by Michael Morrison (Oxford, HeLEX)

'With great power there must also come – great responsibility!' Penultimate caption of Amazing Fantasy #15 (Atlas Magazines/Marvel 1962) which introduced Peter Parker/Spiderman

The idea behind the Costumed Visions initiative is that superheroes, as represented in comics, movies and other media, provide us with a useful way of thinking about what human enhancement might look like and what it might be like to live in a world where enhanced beings existed.

Why is this important? Why might it be worth taking a world with human enhancement seriously?

One reason is that, in recent years, a number of high profile policy documents have discussed the use of technology to create people with enhanced capabilities as something that could become a scientific and social reality. The first, and perhaps the boldest, of these is the report Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science compiled by Mihail C. Roco and William S. Bainbridge for the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

Finding and Sharing New Frames for Enhancement Discourses?

By Shawn Harmon

Frames are associations that ‘cluster around a single image or phrase, directing the reader into certain familiar channels of cognition’ (Huxford, 2000). Often these frames are less ‘in’ the text, and more projected ‘onto’ the text by the reader on the basis of cues or invitations. Framing is often a critical component of presenting information for consumption, and so for making sense of the world (Cappella and Jamieson, 1997; Fowler, 1991). One of the central frames for the ethical discourses around technology-instigated enhancements in human beings has been that of ‘human nature’, a frame that often allied to competing imaginaries, one utopian and the other dystopian. Those opposed to enhancement are concerned about a loss of humanity, and they construct dystopian narratives characterised by disembodiment, inequality, and a loss of touch with our nature. Those who embrace enhancement see human nature as dynamic and evolutionary, pushing against and beyond limitations, and they construct utopian narratives in which people can better align their physiology with their identity; it is a future of ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’, both grounded in how technology will allow us to unshackle our true self.