There's an interesting new article at the New Yorker on the recent collegiate trend of "neuroenhancer" use. The piece, despite it's balanced presentation, reads a little like a warning of another plague of forthcoming horrible addictions.

 The  numbers are legitimate and spooky enough--some five to 35% of students polled from various universities admit to currently using or having used stimulants like Adderall (mmm... meth) and antinarcoleptics like modafinil to boost their cognitive and attentive capacities for academic gains. Academic sources themselves have pointed out that the community--up to and including your thesis advisor--seem to generally accept the idea.

Noteworthily, there is a positive correlation in the crowd of willing towards accepting and indulging in the odd--or not so odd--hoot. Though it is brushed by in a decidedly numeric fashion, the fact underscores a point that is missed in many discussions of the topic: "enhancement" is a culturally biased idea.

 Weed-smokers are prone to pointing out how their vice of choice  makes everything more fun. It's true: with enough tokes even the most derivative television kaleidoscopes out into a thought-provoking diatribe and tedious XBox titles become refreshing challenges. And in the game of relaxation, increased enjoyment is unarguably an asset--an enhancement.

Consider the parallel debate surrounding steroid use in world-class sporting events. The Antis ring in with a heavyweight moralistic argument about the honesty of any win propped up on weiner-shrinkers--did the athlete, their trainer and government program take the medal, or did the drugs? The Pros are quick to respond, though, that policing performance enhancement will become an exponentially more complex and hence expensive endeavor as we continue to become more artificial--what happens, for instance, when disabled athletes in Professor-X hoverchairs trounce the competition in a hurdle race? Are these folks immoral, their sport and country any less valid, because they sought out "enhancement" and ended up surpassing man1.0-level functionality?

 So unless we are going to ban advances in prosthesis to stop those damned war-amps from taking our precious olympic golds, the question becomes: how do we define enhancement?

Rest assured our cyborg descendants are sitting in their time machines, getting high and laughing at us right now, because our current picture is as naive as a post-DJ-Samantha-Ronson Linsay Lohan expecting that anyone still gives a fuck about her dried up bullshit."Enhancement" is a concept that inherently lacks objectivity; instead, one is considered "enhanced" when they are performing beyond means expected or accepted by whatever group of people is wont to and capable of make such determinations.

"Neuroenhancement" is only scary because its hard  to come up with the counterpoint. If there is something out there that makes you homo perfectus at your day job with only a marginal chance of raising your blood pressure beyond 180/140, it would be stupid to not to consider it. Even the US military agrees: recently they established prize money for anyone who can make their soldiers into deranged, sleepless overmen through means chemical, macro- or nano-technological.

Steroids bad cyberlegs good is definitely something that you should worry about--if you're an Olympic athelete. The IOC has the right to make such determinations; it's their game after all. Similarly, don't act all butt-hurt when you find out that some high-powered Hollywood executive/Harvard student will do anything to rationalize their Adderall/modafinil/cocaine/meth use and increased risk of oh shit my heart just exploded syndrome. It's only giving them the competitive edge. Better than all of that, though, maybe it's time to clear that chamber and admit that maybe--just maybe--grades and paycheques aren't the only dimensions it makes sense to enhance.