Tough reading

I've been reading two books this week that I'm finding particularly difficult. But for different reasons.

The first, Kevin Warwick's I, Cyborg, is really hard going because the man's arrogance screams through the pages, and you have to wade through it to get at the actual science being described.

All I can wonder is, if this man is like this in writing, what is he like in real life???

The other book I'm having trouble with is also making me disappointed, because I hoped to find some good arguments in it.

Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future tackles the challenges genetic engineering is creating for public policy. This should be good. It should balance the pro-technology writing of the scientists I've been reading lately. I want to hear from someone not involved in the science about the kinds of issues that we should be keeping in mind while contemplating the social effects of these kinds of technologies.

Fukuyama should be it. But the book is sorely lacking in actual arguments. Which is incredibly disappointing.

Now I will admit that I knew before I picked up the book that I probably would not agree politically or philosophically with Mr. Fukuyama. But I had really hoped to find some arguments worth thinking about, perhaps challenging my beliefs, and spurring me to think about and reformulate my own thinking about what posthumanism might look like, and whether we want to embrace it or fear it.

Some of the arguments I just found unbelievable, mostly because they were presented as statements without examples of how he got to that statement in the first place. For example, on pps 78-9 he states that genetic engineering will not change human nature because "modifying, eliminating, or adding to those alleles on a small scale will change an individual's patrimony but not the human race's. A handful of rich people genetically modifying their children for greater height or intelligence would have no effect on species-typical height or IQ". Okay, I buy that. Certainly one of the criticisms of genetic engineering is that only the rich will benefit from it and the divide between rich and poor will become larger as it also means it is a divide between engineered and not-engineered. (think de-gene-rates in Gattaca)

Then, only a few pages later, he claims that the state would make technology available to all its citizens, not just for the rich to prevent the creation of a two-tiered human species. What?!! Can anyone out there see the American government (all of Fukuyama's examples are based on an American model of science and government) funding genetic engineering for the poorest of its citizens? It doesn't even fund basic health care right now! Why would it fund enhancements?

He also argues that complex behaviors are influenced by large number of genes - an argument that most scientists adhere to. It's hard to imagine that there is only one gene for intelligence, for example, or athletic ability. That's pretty much a given for most geneticists. But then, in order to throw a scare into his readers, he throws out the proposition that we may find complex behaviors controlled by simple genetic interventions!

While it's true there's no telling what we'll discover as we go along, this statement is highly unlikely to become a reality, yet he introduces it as a means of making the point that the rich could easily change complex behaviors with simple (but presumably expensive) genetic interventions.

Overall, the arguments slip and slide around a lot in this book. Most annoying is Fukuyama's habit in the first half of the book of saying things about how a particular technology will affect policy making, but not saying how. I was looking forward to the second half of the book, hoping it would outline some suggestions for policy creation, but it was mostly just a description of existing policy. Interesting, but certainly not as helpful as if he had put his money where his mouth was and actually made some suggestions... but he does have a political career to think of as well, so I guess I wasn't really surprised...

All I know is I was disappointed by the book which held so much promise of good counterarguments to much of the other material I've been reading lately.