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What are serious instances of next generation human capability augmentation?
Most examples I come across are charlatans, or well-meaning artists or biohackers. I don’t think turning your hand into a Bluetooth door opener is interesting—forgive me if that sounds judgmental, but I don’t think such applications augment human capabilities because at best you’re augmenting your subjective experience (which is fine), as done via virtual or mixed reality.
Here is how I describe human augmentation, feel free to correct me: it is a capability which enhances the baseline capability of a similar nature for a person, or adds a new property to an existing capability.
Some examples: 1) hearing aids, 2) vision correction, 3) exoskeletons, 4) stimulants, 5) gene therapy, 6) life extension, 7) symbiosis with digital organisms, 8) control over nature. I am sure there are examples I am forgetting.
I listed the above in order of difficulty, and to me “next generation” are 5-8. So what teams are seriously working on this? Are there conferences or workshops I can submit philosophical and simulation papers to on this subject? I came across one philosophy related conference, so I’ll target that. But most (maybe public) work on transhumanism is currently philosophical, and I also think the concept of Singularity is misguided.
To answer any question on “why do this”: the way I think is simple—if God (doesn’t exist, is a philosophical framework) created man in his image, then man should be god-like.