Institute For The Future

From #10YF2014: Magna Cortica

Featured in The Atlantic: “The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All Upgrade Our Brains”

In the coming decades, the clash between new developments and existing norms will be especially visible in the realm of brain modification. Whether focusing on cognition, empathy, or something else entirely, brain modification has the potential to alter fundamental aspects of who we are. What's more, this is not a speculative future problem; we are already well into the first generation of technologies allowing us to measurably change the way the brain works.

This situation needs us to determine the right set of rules to guide the research and development of cognitive augmentations. Not a definitive set of laws -- more basic than that. Fundamental principles that, as our technologies and our experiences grow, we'll build upon to construct ethical guidelines that are both relevant and meaningful. A "Magna Cortica," if you will.

The 2014 Ten-Year Forecast Annual Retreat explored the landscape of change over the next decade by inviting attendees to contemplate ten projects that—if successfully undertaken today—could change the paradigm in their fields in the next ten years. These bold projects are already taking shape in the dark underside of the internet, in the foundations of our global cities, in the no-man’s land of our prisons, and in the microbes of our bodies and our planet. They are rapidly recoloring our world.

During this retreat on May 1-2, 2014, Jamais Cascio explored the effort to make explicit the kinds of rights and restrictions that would apply to the rapidly growing set of cognitive enhancement technologies: a Magna Cortica.

Over the next decade, we're likely to see the continued emergence of a world of cognitive enhancement technologies, primarily but not exclusively pharmaceutical, increasingly intended for augmentation and not therapy. And as we travel this path, we'll see even more radical steps, technologies that operate at the genetic level, digital artifacts mixing mind and machine, engineered microbes, and even the development of brain enhancements that could push us well beyond what's thought to be the limits of "human normal."

The legal and political aspects cannot be ignored. We would need extensive discussion of how these cognitive enhancement technologies will be integrated into legal frameworks, especially with the creation of minds that don't fall neatly into human categories. How can we make rules that apply equally well to the known and the unknown?

All of these would be part of a Magna Cortica project. But for today, we can start with five candidates for inclusion as basic Magna Cortica rights, as a way of... let's say… nailing some ideas to a door.

1.     The right to self-knowledge. Likely the least controversial, and arguably the most fundamental, this right would be the logical extension of the quantified self movement that's been growing for the last few years. As the ability to measure, analyze, even read the ongoing processes in our brains continues to expand, the argument here is that the right to know what's going on inside our own heads should not be abridged. Of course, there's the inescapably related question: Who else would have the right to that knowledge?

2.    As the Maker movement says, if you can't alter something, you don't really own it. In that spirit, it's possible that a Magna Cortica could enshrine the right to self-modification. This wouldn't just apply to cognition augmentation, of course. The same argument would apply to less practical, more entertainment-oriented alterations. And as we've seen around the world over the last year, the movement to make such things more legal is well underway.

3.    The flip side of the last right, and potentially of even greater sociopolitical importance, is a right to refuse modification. To just say no, as it were. But while this may seem a logical assertion to us now, as these technologies become more powerful, prevalent, and important, refusing cognitive augmentation may come to be considered as controversial and even irresponsible as the refusal to vaccinate is today. Especially in light of...

4.    A right to modify or to refuse to modify your children. It has to be emphasized that we already grapple with this question every time a doctor prescribes ADHD drugs, when both saying yes and saying no can lead to accusations of abuse. And if the idea of enhancements for children rather than therapy seems beyond the pale, recall the controversy surrounding Louise Brown, the first so-called "test tube baby." The fury and fear accompanying her birth in 1978 is astounding in retrospect; even the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, James Watson, thought her arrival meant "all Hell will break loose, politically and morally, all over the world." But today, many of you reading this either know someone who has used in-vitro fertilization, or you have used it yourself or may even be a product of it.

5.    Finally, there's the potential right to know who has been modified. This suggested right seems to elicit an immediate reaction of visions of torches and pitchforks, but we can easily flip that script around. Would you want to know if your taxi driver was on brain boosters? Your pilot? Your child's teacher? Your surgeon? At the root of all of this is the unanswered question of whether the identification as having an augmented mind would be seen as something to be feared ... or something to be celebrated.

And here again we encounter the terrifying and the exhilarating: we are almost certain be facing these questions, these crises and dilemmas, over the next ten to twenty years. As long as intelligence is considered a competitive advantage in the workplace, in the labs, or in high office, there will be efforts to make these technologies happen. The value of the Magna Cortica project would be to bring these questions out into the open, to explore where we draw the line that says "no further," to offer a core set of design principles, and ultimately to determine which pathways to follow before we reach the crossroads.

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This post is from our 2014 Ten-Year Forecast, which explores 10 bold projects that have the potential to change the world over the next 10 years.

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