Engineered enhancers closer than you think

January 3, 2005 | Source: EE Times

In the next few decades, futurists say, athletes and soldiers will call on artificial muscles to lift heavier loads and run faster. Bionic eyes will let them see distant targets, while nanobots enhance their cognitive abilities and genetic-engineering techniques boost their performance under pressure.

Many of those enhancement techniques, some based in electronics, are already in the works, such as artificial muscles made from electroactive polymers and researchers placing chips inside human brains and isolating DNA strings that could be manipulated to alter human talents and behaviors.

Jerry Glenn of the American Council for the United Nations University, for example, has embarked on a study of how human augmentation would affect the International Olympic Games. The study considers the possibility of separate Olympics for augmented and nonaugmented athletes.