Enhancement Technologies and Children

2021 ◽  
pp. 329-341
Author(s):  
J. T. Eberl
Keyword(s):  
Enhancement Technologies

No longer raising eyebrows: The contexts and domestication of Botox as a mundane medical and cultural artefact

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 887-909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peta S. Cook ◽  
Angela Dwyer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cosmetic Surgery ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Spatial Organisation ◽  
Cosmetic Procedure ◽  
Cultural Artefact ◽  
Botulinum Neurotoxins ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

Cosmetic enhancement technologies have been subject to extended sociological and feminist critique, but botulinum neurotoxins (Botox) have been sidelined in this discussion. This has occurred despite Botox’s popularity and accessibility as a non-surgical cosmetic procedure. While Botox shares many similarities with cosmetic enhancement technologies such as cosmetic surgery, we argue that the fields and the socio-spatial organisation of Botox – where Botox is performed and by whom, which we collectively call contextual Botox – not only differentiate it from other cosmetic enhancement technologies but expose how Botox has gone beyond normalisation to become hypernormalised, a domesticated, mundane technology that has largely disappeared into the flows and routines of everyday life. In addition, Botox is a distinct medical and social practice that is multifaceted, being determined by the contexts in which it is found and the forms of cultural capital therein. It is for these reasons, in addition to being the most popular form of cosmetic enhancement, that Botox should be critically scrutinised.

Redefining the Boundaries of Humanity and the Human Body

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Galván ◽  
Rocci Luppicini
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Technical Ability ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

What are the boundaries of humanity and the human body within our evolving technological society? Within the field of technoethics, inquiry into the origins of the species is both a biological and ethical question as scholars attempt to grapple with conflicting views of what it means to be human and what attributes are core to human beings within the era of human enhancement technologies. Based on a historical and conceptual analysis, this chapter uses a technoethical lens to discuss defining characteristics of the human species as homo technicus. Under this framework, both symbolic capacity and technical ability are assumed to be grounded within the free and ethical nature of human beings. Ideas derived from Modernity and Postmodernity are drawn upon to provide a more encompassing view of humans that accommodates both its technical and ethical dimensions as homo technicus.

Technic Self-Determination

2014 ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Franco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) will be (a) dehumanizing and a threat to human dignity and (b) a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. Contrarily, HET can be shown to constitute the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, this chapter elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination (i.e., control over the determining circumstances and conditions of our own selves and lives), which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, arguably, the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular as it is today and has been in the past. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity and characteristic that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

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