>>12422532Not a utopia nor a dystopia awaits us but new complexities, new potentials and new conflicts. Augmentations mostly won't be developed in black clinics but will be product of medical research and follow it in its application the supply/demand rule of all emerging technologies. Human modifications will be less horrific and glamorous than many think, because people do underestimate the therapeutic time humans will need to adapt to their augmentations. Transhuman technologies will not be the next computer or cellphones, but will become the next house.
The biggest issue with human augmentation is the growing gap between the rich and poor. Coupled with automatization your common baseline will not be able to compete with augmented rich or get access to the necessary enhancements. That's why I see a need to establish a Universal Health Care System that does not just seeks to treat people but to enable and enhance them. A society will benefit immensely if its children will all be born healthy, fit and smart and if it lets no potential go wasted by enabling anyone to have access to good augment treatments. In developed nations this might work out, but then the already existing gap between rich and poor countries will grow even larger. In 100 years a citizen of the develped world will differ fundamentally from anyone that grew up in a third world.
Just like the computer, cars or penicillin at first the rich will be the users, but the rules of demand/supply will enable anyone to get augmentations.
Most diseases, even aging will become treatable. The costs for augmentations will not stay high, especially biological ones will see a fast decline in prize thanks to CRISPR. The first Ford of human augmentation will become a trillionaire, augmentations won`t stay a product for the rich - it will become avaible to the masses a decade or two after hitting the market, sooner than what happened to the car and computers.
