From Publishers Weekly
Imagine a person severely disabled by a stroke who, with electrodes implanted in his brain, can type on a computer just by thinking of the letters. Or a man, blind for 20 years, driving a car around a parking lot via a camera hard-wired into his brain. Plots for science fiction? No, it's already happened, according to future technologies expert Naam. In an excellent and comprehensive survey, Naam investigates a wide swath of cutting-edge techniques that in a few years may be as common as plastic surgery. Genetic therapy for weight control isn't that far off--it's already being done with animals. Countless people who are blind, deaf or paralyzed will acquire the abilities that most people take for granted through advances in computer technology and understanding how the nervous system functions. Naam says the armed services are already investing millions of dollars in this research; they envision super-pilots and super-soldiers who will be able to control their planes and tanks more quickly via thought. Some of the author's prognostications, with their Nietzschean overtones of people being "more than human," may frighten readers, but Naam is persuasive that many of these advances are going to happen no matter what, and that despite the potential for abuses, they offer hope for our well-being and the survival of the species.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Booklist
Naam is optimistic about technological advancement. He surveys applications of genetic and computer engineering to the human body and pronounces them good. Naam notes but does not totally allay the disquiet of critics who think otherwise, so readers more interested in what's happening now in the biotechnology industry will get more from this work than those concerned with the bioethical implications for human identity. Naam is a software engineer, and this is his first book, so his writing about human physiology is predominantly descriptive, albeit enthusiastically so. Naam relates how the technologies--gene therapies, genetic splicing, cloning, and neural/computer interfaces--function at the cellular level and details how they may improve on the injuries, afflictions, and conditions of life (intelligence and aging). Both the researchers and the companies developing biotechnologies receive Naam's positive attention, and he avers that over time their inventions will become widely affordable. This confident, libertarian sentiment suffuses Naam's approach; for a more doubtful posture toward the brave new world, see The Future of the Brain, by Steven P. R. Rose (p.1038).^B Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
