Personal Self-Improvement and Cyborg Technology: Therapy or Enhancement?

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Published 28-09-2020
Jesús Parra Sáez

Abstract

From its beginnings, the equally known as “cybernetics” or “cyborg technology” has been used as a medical tool focused on the recovery of conventional human capabilities, such as hearing, seeing or walking. However, the development of biomedical technologies in the XXI century goes hand in hand with an interdisciplinary phenomenon whose objective goes beyond the use of these tools in a therapeutic sense, transhumanism. One of the main ambitions of this current of thought is to optimize the functioning of the human being above the merely natural levels. In this article, we will analyze the development of cyborg technology, and to what extent its use can go from therapy to enhancement in the coming years. To do this, we survey real cases in which cyborg technology has changed the lives of its subsidiaries, not only in a therapeutic sense but also in an optimizing one. Likewise, we examine the potential ethical, technical and legal issues derived from the non-therapeutic use of cybernetics. Finally, we conclude that scientific research in this kind of technology will be focused on enhancement and not therapy in the future, although this will require a reinterpretation of biomedical technologies.

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Keywords

transhumanism, cyborg technology, personal self-improvement, therapy, human enhancement

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Research Articles