Human Augmentation: Dawn of a new paradigm

link to supposed PDF from Ministry of Defence

This is a PDF I came across which seems authentic. It refers to what seems to be efforts in the UK to "augment" humans to become.... better or different. This mostly involves gene technology and something they call "non invasive brain interfaces" but also seems to include some type of armored "exoskeleton" type clothing. It is kind of bizarre and I wasn't sure what to make of it. There is a timeline in the PDF which I screenshot in order to post here so you can see. It seems they are aiming to have these things going by 2030, depending on public opinion. It seems to suggest that the only thing holding them back now is that public opinion is somewhat negative toward genetic experiments.



I thought some here would find it interesting. Or perhaps be able to debunk it.

a reply to: Chalcedony

Interesting, Germany is involved, too.

Will read now and post my thoughts tomorrow

a reply to: Chalcedony

All the big boys and girls are working on different ways to enhance the war fighter/human. China or the US seem to be the leaders in these endeavors if what we read is true. Either way that is the way the horses are running presently.

This is where it was always going, civilization was never going to just stay strictly human forever. Either aliens find our world or we redesign our species to brave the final frontier and find theirs.

I just read the article, fascinating.

Not frightening because it is inevitable and we can all see it coming.

They had a good analysis of the ethical concerns. A totalitarian regime may "force" particularly military personnel to augment, and some employers may require employees to augment. Leaving ethical concerns if the augmented person commits an unethical, immoral, or illegal act that was forced upon them by their augmentation.

There will be growing pains as it is implemented, and I am sure it will be. But in my lifetime we have faced many ethical challenges as technologies were implemented and then became normative.

I believe we are in such an upheaval now with social media being abused, even by politicians, to bully people; to control the direction of the thinking of the masses; resulting in a horrifically unethical and immoral cancel culture of doxing/cyber bullying/demanding people be fired for wrong thinking/destroying peoples lives and reputations for very minor politically incorrect "infractions".

Anyway, highly interesting, but the challenges will be met after going through hell like our current social media driven toxic cancel culture of left leaning "politically correct thinking" being demanded 24/7 of the population with the underlying threat of personal destruction for disobedience.

The further we as mankind stray from nature the further we get from God. I have no interest in being ‘augmented’, however, I have no issues with others choosing it for themselves. I just find the idea of it being forced on people to be repugnant.

It would be a cool party trick kill goats with my amplified brain powers.

a reply to: Chalcedony

What they fail to realise is everything has a compromise if you enhance one thing you diminish something else. The majority of people don’t realise/utilise their potential as it is.

They don’t want to create a super human, they want to make humans more like machines. That are easier to program and control.

There are some potential developments listed that would be very beneficial to mankind, for example, prosthetic limbs that can be seamlessly controlled by a neural link.

Yet some of the other projects seem troubling to me. The buzzword I've heard in reference to this research is the march towards immortality or some such thing. The implications of this are troubling, not only in regard to the question of resource consumption (how long can the Earth sustain a race of 7-10 Bn immortals?), but the natural logical extension of that concern into a conversation on the /ethics/ of human augmentation or immortality (when some large X% of the 7-10 Bn realize they ain't getting the life extension treatments....then what?)

For an interesting read, albeit somewhat sensationalized for a sci-fi/space opera milieu, see the works of Peter F. Hamilton. He has written some very good stories that give treatment to the idea "human augmentation" and how the intersection of genetic study and neural research could yield an existence of practical immorality.

Whos betting what actually happens will be more like the release of CyberPunk?

We will have people flying through walls,getting stuck in floors everywhere,glitching out.
Augments will get viruses,go haywire,explode.
New dangerous types of psychosis will develop in those with too much/black market augmentation,or as they reach crazy ages.

Its going to make people cry and beg to have regular clown world back.

Life should take its time.


God might be slow, but somehow catches up all the time.

a reply to: Chalcedony

If we wish to travel in space for extended periods of time of colonize other worlds.

Human Augmentation is a must both genetically and cybernetically.

Because if we don't we wont really last very long.

Okay I read it twice, the first time I cut them some slack and really tried to ignore the red flags, to stay unbiased.

It looks innocent on the first look... but then there are some huge red flags. It's very informative though and I highly recommend this to everyone who has not looked into the topic of transhumanism and augmentation.

Some things makes my hair tingly though. Like technology or functions enabled "on a need to know basis". There is secrecy and control already woven into it. This is evil on a whole new level because with the technology described they could also switch off natural skills or functions. Like stopping your heart. They specifically bring up an example how a chip or AI could mitigate a stroke. If it has the ability to mitigate, it has the ability to cause one too.

They say innocently we have to act now until it's pushed on us, but if you read everything twice and stay concentrated throughout, THEY are the one's going to push it.

I rather die before I get augmented, not with me and not with my child until she can decide for herself.

a reply to: andy06shake
Going up to space and developing technology is one thing. We have famine here, sickness and are polluting the planet. We're not even acting as a single species.

We don't need to set focus on colonizing new planets or solar systems, we can't even figure out or social problems. It makes no sense to colonize a different world now, even if we could because we would just bring all our problems with us.

Like short sightedness.

a reply to: ThatDamnDuckAgain

What we need to do is focus on colonising and industrialising low Earth orbit, then the Moon.

There is your new Golden age right there.

As to famine yes we do indeed, but produce twice the amount of food we require to feed our race, and choose to fling half of it in the bin. Logistics and transportation being the main problem to contend with there.

We have not even found any new planets that could conclusively support human life aside from Earth so calm down there.

In some respects we do act as a single race when needs be, but yes we could do better in that department.

We are the problem ThatDamnDuckAgain, and we will carry our baggage where ever we go i imagine.

Need to work with the tools we have available all the same, not ready to go anywhere just yet.

a reply to: andy06shake
That's why I am advocating a single world government *ducks away from the first stones flying in* that values cultures and embraces it. How we achieve this, no clue! Certainly not as long as we have religions that embrace the thought that it's okay to maim and kill other religions.

Or burn witches, rape children and own stocks in weapon manufacturing companies.

My uncle always told me that religions are important for morality and I agreed with him on a level that it brings community and fixed rules. However we're now in 2021 and spirituality is very low. Religions kill spirituality, I believe in a higher power though. The power of soul, not necessary an entity but more like a field propagating around living beings.

In some respects we do act as a single race when needs be, but yes we could do better in that department.

Can you give me an example about it? I can not come up with one.

a reply to: ThatDamnDuckAgain

I don't necessarily disagree with the majority of that.

How we get there through, its probably going to be a painful process, given the current paradigm humanity seems to follow.

Far to many have nots, far to few haves, and a massive class gap that only seems to get wider as the days go by.

As an example of the nations of the world coming together, well look at the pace we managed to produce numerous different COVID 19 vaccines and get them out to our respective populations.

Let the haters hate ThatDamnDuckAgain and doubt but that was quite the feat and required massive amounts of cooperation and trust worldwide.

a reply to: Chalcedony

most of us are already augmented.

we got vaccines as children, i have titanium plates in my hand, my mom wears glasses and most importantly we carry the sum of all human knowledge in our pocket.



but i get what you mean

You can't put the monkey back in the cage.
That chimp is going full 'Bonzo.'
Adapt or die.

a reply to: Homefree

No, but you can keep it trapped on Earth, at there arse end of the Suns gravity well, until it works out the physics, math, and material science, to dig itself out the hole.