WaPo ran a feature story today about smart drugs: pills that help a person think, work, retain, and stay awake. Excerpt:
These drugs represent only the first primitive, halting generation of cognitive enhancers. Memory drugs will soon make it to market if human clinical trials continue successfully.
There are lots of the first-generation drugs around. Total sales have increased by more than 300 percent in only four years, topping $3.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information company. They include Adderall, which was originally aimed at people with attention-deficit disorder, and Provigil, which was aimed at narcoleptics, who fall asleep uncontrollably. In the healthy, this class of drugs variously aids concentration, alertness, focus, short-term memory and wakefulness -- useful qualities in students working on complex term papers and pulling all-nighters before exams. Adderall sales are up 3,135.6 percent over the same period. Provigil is up 359.7 percent.
I think this area of development could have the most far-ranging implications for America, including its political environment. Awhile back, I remember reading about research that questioned parents about a hypothetical drug that would allow their children become premier pianists with less effort. The results were evenly split: half would give the drug to their children, the other half wouldn't. Moreover, if memory serves, both sides were rather "dug in" with respect to their positions.
As I've mentioned previously, the coming political battles won't be waged between liberals and conservatives. They'll be waged between techocrats and traditionalists: those that will use anything to get ahead and submit themselves to any mechanical process, and those who will resist such things.
I honestly can't fathom that the traditionalists will win. If the traditionalists resist, they'll end up on the bottom, as the technocrats get the best scholarships, best jobs, and most money because of their enhanced abilities. Sure, we'll eventually see the downsides (they'll develop neuroses, or their hearts will explode, or they'll be shown for spiritual monsters, or some such thing will happen; it never fails), but in the meantime, until such evidence is established (and you know there'll be technocrats who dismiss the evidence or say "Just a little more tweaking"), the ability enhancers will grow among the general population and the resistance can either join or become second-class citizens.
I'll be dead. But I weep for my children. They're growing up right into the jaws of the techno beast. So how do I help them?
I'll have to think about that one. A lot.
