The returning is the movement of the Tao
The weak is the utilization of the Tao

– Tao Te Ching

4 billion years of evolution were, in the main, spent refining the perception-action mechanisms that guide effective action.

– Why Brains Are Not Computers, Why Behaviourism Is Not Satanism, and Why Dolphins Are Not Aquatic Apes

After losing a wager with the King of Deception, a man loses his sight and becomes a modern-day Splinter. After several years confined within four rough walls, he develops sensory abilities beyond that of others in more accommodating environs.

Yan Kun later goes underground to live by a canal where he trains his son in the arts of enhanced perception, with only rudimentary tools at his disposal, such as a well-worn hardcopy of an ancient classic and water droplets coalescing on ceilings and walls.

Yan Fei, the son has battles of his own to wage. His opponent across the table was the grasping, quintessential villain, Haijie. The latter, unable to compete with what nature endowed him with, undergoes electrostimulation to jack up, among other things, his reaction times. Here, the viewer for various reasons comes to develop a visceral abhorrence for the villain.

One reason could be that electrostimulation was somehow viewed as not only unnatural but perhaps against nature and akin to doping. This is the implicit and shared (between director and audience) paradigm when Drago is shown leveraging fitness and medical technology while Balboa trains with elements of nature and primitive tools.

Ability enhancing technology has been in some artefacts of the popular imagination, depicted, as scary, intrusive and dehumanising – the process looks painful and to the extent weakness is reduced, subjects become less human.

While access to technological affordances might offend some innate baseline notion of fairness, it is interesting to note that what appears to be an affront is the unequal playing field. The unfairness arises because only one side has access.

What if both had access? Is there anything fundamentally wrong with utilising technology to do or experience more than what is otherwise possible?

Anthropologist Louise Barrett shows that it is artificial to distinguish between nature and technology because nature lends itself to ability enhancement. She points to blue fin tuna, which are, “able to swim faster than their own physical capacities allow because they find naturally occurring currents in the water and then use their tails to create additional vortices, which they then exploit to gain extra propulsion” (Barrett, 2015).

In other words, animals and plants, what we would consider as nature, avail themselves of affordances in their surroundings to further their objectives. It is entirely natural to seek advantage with whatever is within reach.

An example from the “plant kingdom” would be the Roridula, a carnivorous plant. This plant is unable to “absorb or digest the insects it catches” but relies on the “assassin bug” which “waits among” its leaves. Insects which fly towards the plant get stuck on the glue-like substance on its leaves. The bug eats the insects and then “produces dung” which the plant subsists on (Goodall, 2013).

These examples are probative of the notion that the environment, body structure and the brain work in consort to effect desirable outcomes (Barrett, 2015). Researchers in the past, who studied how learning occurs suggested that, all learning is merely conditioning, through environmental stimulus, rewards and punishments. This view is what is known as behaviourism and it discounts the role of an independent and free mind.

For a long time, behaviourism as an explanation of how learning occurs was considered rudimentary and as disempowering. Cognitivism was in the ascendent. Cognitivism in essence suggests the brain is like a computer which processes input and orders the world around it. It underplays the role of the environment.

As in most things, the truth appears to lie at the overlap between strict boundaries. According to Barrett, brains do not “mould the world around us but” instead, “guide and control action in an inherently dynamic, unpredictable world”. The cognitive system should “include environmental structures” which “contribute to the kinds of flexible, adaptable behaviour we associate with intelligent systems”.

Neural responses are influenced by the environment. As, Warwick, in Homo Technologicus: Threat or Opportunity, puts it, “the human brain is affected by the technology around us. It develops over time to interact more efficiently with that technology”.

The environment is becoming more technologically rich. AI in its current iteration is able to, though not consistently and far from impeccably, produce text and in this respect replace manual labour. Applications which translate, mimic human language and predict have occupied public discourse for a while now.

What has been less discussed and is in the works is the development of superhuman abilities. For example, Neil Harbisson from New York City has been recognised as the world’s first cyborg (Hong, 2017). Harbisson was afflicted with “Achromatopsia, a rare form of colour blindness that effects (sic) one in thirty-five thousand people” (Williams, The World’s First Posthuman? – Neil Harbisson and the Eyeborg).

It is one thing to, in the words of Brother William of Baskerville, to adorn, oculi de vitro cum capsula which are a help for man’s weakness. It is something else when a human person can “hear” colour. Or is it?

Harbisson is reportedly able to, with the assistance of camera and an “actuator” “permanently” attached to his head, discriminate between a wide spectrum of “colour saturation as well as colour hues” (Warwick, Superhuman Enhancements via Implants: Beyond the Human Mind).

In Umberto’s fourteenth century abbey, Brother William described eye glasses as “a part of my very body” without which, “many learned” “had virtually died, as far as reading and writing were concerned, after their fiftieth summer”. During that time, eye glasses were cutting edge technology and a fellow monk remarked, upon laying eyes on the invention that it was “a wonder… And yet many would speak of witchcraft and diabolical machination…”.

Brother William replied thus, “But there are two forms of magic…a magic…that aims at man’s downfall… and a magic that is divine…and it serves to transform nature, and one of its ends is to prolong man’s very life”.

Technology already existing or in the works to transform nature to exceed what has been imagined include the following (Warwick, 2016):

i) RFID (chip implants to “open doors and switch on lights” without using hands”)
ii) Magnet implants (to sense distance and temperature of objects)
iii) Deep brain stimulation (electrode implants in the brain, currently used to treat, for instance, Parkinson’s disease)
iv) BrainGate (multi-electrode array implant in the brain, to perform a number of tasks which include, changing how the colour of jewellery was perceived through neural signals and “overcoming paralysis” – using thoughts to move robotic arms)

It appears indeed to be, in Miranda’s words, “a brave new world” with many a “goodly” creation. The question seems to have shifted from what if to what now. Warwick (2016) says, “While the vast majority of present-day humans are perfectly happy for interfaces, such as the BrainGate, to be used in therapy, the picture is not so clear when it comes to enhancement”.

He speaks of the creation of a new species of human – Homo technologicus who would be superhumans come to the real world and asks if they would treat Homo sapiens like “how humans presently regard cows or chimpanzees?”

Regardless of misgivings or enthusiasm, technology continues to advance at a blistering pace. Apart from concerns of automation replacing labour and unequal access to such technology, there is also the concern of unequal playing fields between humans and superhumans.

According to some operating in the AI enabled automation space, there has always been a premium on creativity and automation has only served to increase this premium, for example where writing is concerned. An automated writing application would not be able to for instance, incorporate pragmatics, exhibit cultural awareness or create timeless works of literature.

When Hamato Yoshi got doused with Mutagen, he developed rare, potent and potentially lethal abilities. The four turtles he had bought also “acquired humanoid bodies and intelligence” (Fandom.com). However, with his newfound prowess, he did not at once hanker after an eye for an eye.

In his dark underground home, he instead turned his attention to a discarded book on Renaissance art and named his sons after artists of the period. To complement his humanoid fighting edge, he also had April’s “rare sensitivity gift” (Fandom.com).

Students then can focus on two areas in light of current trajectory of developments. First, they could learn what exactly it means to be creative and practise creativity in more than just subjects which expressly require unique expression.

This would mean challenging assumptions in traditional modes of task execution. For example, they could experiment with writing compositions entirely in the present tense. Indeed, there are narratives which are written this way, such as, The Main by Trevanian and On a Chinese Screen by Maugham.

Second, they could learn how to practise sensitivity and decide that if they are going to become a force, that they would be one for the good. This would mean focus on liberal arts to gain a deeper understanding of the human condition, as a necessary complement to the STEM subjects. In this way, they could embrace technology to prolong not just life but the good life.

It has been said turtles live long lives because they move slowly.

The Brain Dojo