In the 1970s US television series The Six Million Dollar Man, the lead character, Steve Austin, was rebuilt to be “better, stronger, and faster” with the help of the latest technology, after a near-fatal accident. With technological modifications, a man barely alive turned into a bionic man, a cyborg whose physical and cognitive capacities outperformed ordinary human beings. Can we call Steve a human, or a superhuman, or a transhuman? Although Steve's story is just fiction, this special issue of EASTS intends to shine a spotlight on the issue his case raises: What happens when technology merges with the human body? One thing that was made clear in the TV show is that Steve's technological interventions were done for therapeutic purposes, in the sense that lost bodily functions were replaced and restored. And yet at the same time those therapeutic interventions resulted in the enhancement of his capabilities.
This special issue brings together original scholarly articles whose research concerns the interrelationship of the body and technology. Human enhancement is about applying science and technology to expand our cognitive and physical capacities. Enhancement technologies point to interventions to improve human functions or characteristics beyond what is necessary to sustain health, blurring the boundaries between therapeutic and augmentative (Hogle 2005). Contributions to human enhancement come from developments in fields as diverse as surgery, sports medicine, stem cell research, gene therapy, pharmaceuticals, cybernetics, prosthetics, nanotechnology, and computer science and engineering. Enita A. Williams (2006) has pointed out that one major factor driving the development of enhancement technologies is the convergence of four research areas: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science.
