Talk for the IOC Future of News and Sport Reporting meeting, London 2012 de-brief, at USA Today, New York City, April 2013.
!["I, Scientist" at TEDx Warwick [VIDEO]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/563face7e4b06c325c739ba9/1447019575958-NVZOYLTVWZ2QEWH1TPEM/image-asset.png)
Some photo highlights followed by a Flickr set
Genetically Evolved Technology, keep your eyes out for Luke Bawazar
all of us incredibly indebted to Lucy Hooberman for kickstarting this
Fabian's photographic art will change how you see the world
Bob Bishop has pretty much been involved with every technological development ever and that's no exaggeration ;) I had some great chats with him
My photo highlight from the day, Derek Paravicini is simply extraordinary
A real treat to see Sir Philip Craven and to chat with him about things he really didn't expect someone at this event to know :)
a lovely end to the day, such a great team
A new piece written by Emma Rich and I follows a twitter seminar we ran a couple of weeks ago. Here's what we learned.
Miah, A. (2013) Justifying Human Enhancement: The Accumulation of Biocultural Capital, in More, M. & Vita-More, N. The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, Wiley-Blackwell. MORE INFO
Here are the editors talking about the book...
Extract of my Chapter
The argument on behalf of biocultural capital claims that the pursuit of human enhancements is consistent with other ways in which people modify their lifestyles and is analogous in principle to buying a new mobile phone, learning a language, or exercising. It is a process of acquiring ideas, goods, assets, and experiences that distinguish one person from another, either as an individual or as a member of a community. While one might – and should - scrutinize the merits of such individual choices, we should recognize the limits of this task. Furthermore, the argument for biocultural capital considers that it is unreasonable for enhancement choices to be imposed upon individuals by the state. The normative transhumanist concept of morphological freedom emphasizes this prohibition. (More, 1993; Sandberg 2001) While general consensus on enhancements might have legal force, they will not necessarily have universal persuasive value – not everybody would wish to be tall, stronger, or whatever it may be - since enhancements only confer positive value within particular cultural contexts. As such, the precise value attached to any particular enhancement cannot be assumed to be a shared, universal good, particularly where choices of enhancements involve a trade-off.
The argument from biocultural capital explains that the designation of a biological modification as a human enhancement does not correspond with some prescribed or abstract value claim. There is no necessary “good” that, in itself, can be objectively identified to justify (or reject) enhancements. For instance, if I were to enhance the efficiency of my digestive system to allow me to assimilate foods that are generally shown to be unhealthy, it is difficult to argue that this is a tangible enhancement, other than through its allowing me to satisfy the desire of always wanting to eat foods that I find tasty but which would, otherwise, be unhealthy. While such a modification would be beneficial to me, it is unlikely to withstand the scrutiny of those who have no such desire. Such a choice also faces the criticism that one’s taste cannot develop in a positive sense if one closes off the potential to find value in experiencing other tastes. So, if I were a twelve year old and really like McDonald’s food, I might enjoy enhancing my metabolism to assimilate such food, rather than to treat it like junk food. In doing so, by failing to choose alternative foods, I also restrict the possibility of developing tastes for other foods.[7] Yet, again, it seems premature to panic too much about such a prospect. Rather, it may emerge that one’s taste develops alongside such new alternatives to consumption and that moderation will thus emerge.
Importantly, and as enshrined in the idea of morphological freedom, this argument on behalf of human enhancements does not extend to the freedom to modify others – for example, through genetically engineering embryos. Rather, this argument presents an initial position as to why certain obstacles towards human enhancement may be overcome by acknowledging the limits of concerns over rationalizing medical resources and avoiding a slippery slope towards undesirable circumstances, I have endeavored to explain the value of pursuing self-regarding, biological enhancements and, as such, to suggest why such freedom of choice should not be withheld.
In conclusion, asking why we should enhance ourselves limits the discussion prematurely. It prescribes a particular kind of moral justification, which would explain a choice that makes sense only in the particular case. However, treating such actions as micro-ethical processes, contrasts with the macro-ethical task of regulating the commercial and non-medical use of such interventions. In short, via this argument, one cannot offer a good reason for why all people should enhance themselves in a specific way, since each reason would require embedding the clause within a particular context that another individual might not deem to be valuable at all. So, understanding the value of improving attention span or enhancing sexual function would require understanding the specific context that give rise to such an interest. Instead, one may give reasons for why a motorcyclist might value an enhancement to protect the durability of her head, or why a ballerina might welcome enhanced strength in specific parts of her body, or why a mathematician or a chess player should value cognitive enhancements. These are all sensible human enhancements for particular kinds of people, but are not generally good enhancements for all kinds of people.
The rise of a privately funded human enhancement market and the possibility of commodifying life are each relevant moral concerns that should concern the governance of such industries. While a publicly-funded system for human enhancements may be preferable to a privately-funded one, areas of human desire are always likely to outweigh the limited funds available to accommodate such desires on a nationally funded system, even if one can aspire to a certain level of social care throughout a population. As such, it is sensible to presume that a transhuman future will be brought about within a commercial structure, though as argued earlier there are reasons to presume that some forms of enhancement will eventually ease the burden on a national health care system, by ensuring more people are less vulnerable to common illnesses.
Some old guys consider their relevance when confronted with the next generation
Social Learning 2.0: A New Teaching Ethos for Universities
by
Dr Emma Rich, University of Bath (@emmarich45)
&
Professor Andy Miah, University of the West of Scotland
Around the end of 2011, a few geeks in Sweden set up the Swedish Twitter University, which brought lectures in a series of tweets to a class of, at least, around 500 followers. It may have been the first time that Twitter was used to deliver higher education and with the recent debates about massive open online courses (MOOCs), it seems apt that we reflect on what Twitter might do to transform the classroom and open up a new space for public education?
This week, we put together an experiment that tested these limits, creating a seminar that took place entirely within Twitter, using a bespoke hashtag to bring together all of the content. Running a seminar in Twitter might sound like a relatively simple exercise: ensure students have devices through which to tweet (mostly their own, but if not then a computer or loaner, or share), then position your Visiting Professor - aka Andy Miah - in front of his computer and let rip.
There was a bit of prep time involved too. Emma was in the classroom, doing some pre-reading and preparation with the students, who were all in the same place. They need not have been, but this introduces an interesting debate: is there something to gain by being ‘Alone Together’ as Sherry Turkle would say. While mobile devices can allow us to remove the physical classroom all together, there value may be analogous to going to the cinema or watching television. Both involve watching a movie, but there’s some additional value in the physical, shared experience. In this case, not by design, but more by last minute planning, the students were all together. They also watched a livestream of all tweets, introducing an additional dimension to the experience - literally a silver screen of collective content. The session was pitched as a Q&A based on something Andy had written and over 40 minutes around 110 tweets flew through cyberspace.
Did it work? Was there much gained by this experience? Did the students get anything more - or less - than they would have, if they had just had Andy in the room giving them a talk? This is a difficult question to answer, but it was certainly different and, you could argue that universities need to prepare their students for communication in the ultra fast lane of social media.
This Twitter seminar gave students the rare opportunity to ask questions and post comments to Andy through tweets and receive individual replies. You can read the discussion via storify, here . The method encouraged reciprocity, instinctive thinking and recognised a shift in how education takes place in the 21st century, from a reliance on formal education to a recognition of spaces like social media as important sites for learning. This unique social media event gave the students an opportunity to experience public pedagogy first hand, in addition to developing their own sense of working within the public domain, a crucial skill in a world of 24-hour connectivity.
Spontaneity and immediacy are of course seen as some of the celebrated strengths of social media like twitter. Consider its role for example in alerting the public of information or news about significant events such as natural disasters before it even breaks in the mainstream. Responding in the twitter debate, within seconds, students were receiving replies from Andy and thinking on their feet. But conveying a message in 140 characters is challenging, particularly if one wants to avoid over simplification in complex, critical debate. Do we prepare students well for this? Quick thinking and summarising you views carries potential risk which for many means a fear of ‘tweeting’ and putting critical views in the public domain.
Just this week, the BBC published an article on Twitter users: A guide to the law, which suggests that ordinary social media users need to have a grasp of media law. Through the defamation bill and other laws, it may be clearer to us what we can and can’t say on platforms like twitter. Perhaps clearer social media law will offer both staff and students clarity and confidence in engaging with social media in the classroom. However, this law doesn’t of course address issues of reciprocity, etiquette, or how we make ‘cold’ connections in the networked world.
If the Twitter debate hadn’t been facilitated in a formal capacity, many of the students would not felt it appropriate to contact a Professor (or other ‘esteemed’ twitter user) in the way they did during the debate. We do not know the future of these emerging technologies and so ‘demarcation and rules’ do not seem so fruitful here. Fluidity, flexibility and responsiveness seem like important skills for students to develop as part of their learning. Apart from anything else, it’s a great way to bring some additional life into lectures and encourage students to think about their online presence; something they inevitably will have, but which is usually separate from their learning.
Piece published in the Huffington Post
Listening to the Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair’s ruling was a drawn out process with tweets indicating that Oscar Pistorius could have taken a flight around the world and arrive back in time to hear the verdict. But after a little under 2 hours, Nair granted Pistorius bail, which was immediately followed by an audible ‘Yes!’ from members of his entourage.
Granting Pistorius bail was no easy verdict to reach and at times it sounded as though Nair would have to just toss a coin, as there seemed compelling gaps in both side of the argument as to what really happened. Why had Reeva Steenkamp locked the door to the bathroom? Why didn’t Oscar Pistorius say anything before taking a shot? How could he have passed by the bed and not noticed she was out of it?
Equally, the lead police officer on the scene was given a telling off for having bungled a number of elements on the scene and for offering inconsistent stories, such as the nature of the steroids found or the distance of the witnesses who heard shouting were from the house.
Just over half way through the lengthy lecture on South African law and its history of granting bail that preceded the ruling, it became clear that the Magistrate considered that the prosecution had done enough to jeopardise the legitimacy of Pistorius’ bail appeal. However, it was the fact that Pistorius was not deemed to be a flight risk that seemed to clinch it for him.
When they started the hearing, I really wasn’t sure what to think still, but as it went through, I found Pistorius’ case increasingly credible and felt myself leaning towards the eventual outcome. There did not seem to be a sufficiently strong enough case against him at this point, even if there were serious peculiarities in his testimony, as reported by the Chief Magistrate.
At best, it looked like this was going to a case of someone behaving terribly wrecklessly, which may be a disposition born out of a life with a disability in a nation with a terrible criminal history and a predilection for gun ownership. These explanations were not given of course, but I expect they will come out in the trial. Chief Magistrate Nair mentioned that Pistorius offered an unusual amount of detail in his testimony for a pre-mediated murder case and that this was to his credit.
It is still hard to believe that Oscar Pistorius could be convicted for pre-mediated murder. All of the testimonies are generous to his personality, which is consistent with the status he has enjoyed over the years. In part, this is why the case is so fascinating, as it threatens to completely destroy our impressions of a person. Such public betrayal is always going to be big news. This is likely to be the trial of the decade.
This entry was initially published as a blog piece, but later in the Huffington Post
It was only a few days ago that the world of sport was talking about nothing but Lance Armstrong. However, the case surrounding Oscar Pistorius dwarfs any kind of doping scandal, past or present.
A lot has been written about how the tragedy will mean the loss of a hero for the sports world and for people with disabilities. But, Pistorius isn’t just any old sporting hero. He is the most important athlete of the 21st Century and this fallen idol will mean that our social world will suffer a little longer from prejudice than it would otherwise have. Unlike most athlete superstars, Pistorius transcended what happens on the field. Debates about him were of significance for society at large.
His capacity to rival the speeds of so-called able-bodied athletes brought into question the use of that term at all and made us believe that a bionic Games that was faster and better than today’s was just around the corner.
In this world, it would be the technologically modified athlete we celebrate and it would be a world where disability no longer mattered. Everybody could compete on a level playing field and sponsors would fund Paralympic sport as much as Olympic. There may even no longer be a division between the two. There would be only one Olympic Games and only the best athletes competing.
This is now all jeopardized by the fact that Oscar was the only Paralympian campaigning to bridge the two Games. No other athletes have made this case and so the issue may simply disappear from the headlines. The IAAF may have an easier time because of these events and the world of sport may generally breathe a silent sigh of relief that there is nobody else pursuing the same campaign.
Just before the London 2012 Olympics, I wrote an article saying that Pistorius would be the most remembered athlete of the entire Games. I think this is even more likely now, but obviously for very different reasons
This is the second most tragic element of the circumstance, after the loss of a human life. An athlete whose entire future was still yet to be written, but which promises so much, seems like it is now etched in stone.
Unless Pistorius finds a way to redeem himself through the trial, then we may never know how much the world has lost by his absence in public life. It wouldn’t be the first time that a celebrity has later found sympathy from the public and managed to recover their place as a role model.
Oscar Pistorius is so young, with so much still ahead of him - as an athlete, an advocate, and an ambassador - the entire world will be made worse of by this recent, horrific event, if no recovery is possible.
Yesterday’s doping news from the Australian Crime Commission raises three crucial questions for the world of sport.
First, why do athletes dope? Second, how prevalent is doping in elite and recreational sport. Finally, how far beyond sport does performance enhancement extend? You might have noticed a new acronym in their report – PIED – Performance and Imaging Enhancing Drugs. This is not the first time it has been used in anti-doping jargon, but it is a crucial signal to the broader culture of performance enhancement that confronts elite sport. Back in 2006, the American Academy of Pediatrics made clear that to just pursue elite athletes is not going to address the wider culture of doping in society and it is this part that the sport’s world still does not understand.
People dope because they want to win. They want to win because it brings rewards. Rewards increase one’s social status and capacity to live a good life. This is one version of what’s happening. Another is that athletes dope because they want to push their bodies even further and reach new limits. In this version, the reward is having transcended what others have achieved before, going beyond what we thought to have been humanly possible, and securing one’s place in history as a result.
One of the crucial omissions to yesterday’s news was precisely how prevalent doping is in elite sports. Admittedly, nobody knows, but they did say the report revealed it is more common than we were led to believe. Some figures on that claim are crucial, as is a better way of figuring out what’s really going on. It’s not easy to do, but the answer would dramatically shape the policy response, and so it should.
However, the really big problem facing elite sports is that they don’t operate in isolation from the rest of society, no matter what they might like to think. Certainly, in sports you can commit acts of violence that would be criminal outside of it, but I’m talking about the broader culture of performance enhancement that surrounds us in daily life. Whether it is a cup of coffee in the morning – or a few cups – or steroids, the so-called problem of performance enhancement in sport will never be solved without a shift in our values. However, I’m not sure that we need to change. We just need to protect people more effectively from taking excessive risks. Anti-doping goes well beyond this.
Being the best that has ever been is an aspiration that underpins people’s lives, especially when they are young and this can drive the desire to win at all costs. This may be an argument to get rid of elite competitive sport specifically or to remove competition from society more generally, but WADA won’t do that all on its own. In any case, it would distinguish this kind of dangerous competition from healthy competition. I suspect you cannot have one without the other.
Just published in the Huffington Post
If you can read Dutch, then you can now read my Lance Armstrong piece (the second version) in De Morgan, a Belgian daily newspaper. Out today.
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about a new, radical article on Lance Armstrong. That article never made it to print, at least not yet. A number of news outlets looked at it, many editors said they loved it, but just couldn't run it. So, instead, I wrote another one and sent it to Wired who immediately accepted it. Here it is. The sentiment is similar to draft one, but the tone, method and overall style is very different. The other one may be published elsewhere, one day. Until then, only a select few who asked for it have read it.
On Saturday 9th March, I'll give a talk as part of TEDx Warwick. This will be the second time I've spoken at Warwick, the first being at the Virtual Futures event in 2011. My laptop broke on the way there and I ended up giving a somewhat retro talk using one of the latest pieces of software out there. It looked like this.
I've not yet decided how I want to focus the talk this year, but I want to bring together bioethics, bioart, biopolitics, biotechnology, citizen science, and social media to consider how we need to advance a compassionate, yet aggressively innovative, assault on our knowledge economy. Alternatively, I might just use it to explore a term I've been developing recently along the lines of 'viral cities'. This might work well since the theme is 'building bridges'. I want to build them with DNA infused data. Now there's a nice title.
I've been tweeting recently that I have written a radical new piece about Lance Armstrong. A few people are still helping me find the right home for it, but here's an opportunity to read it before it's published. If you'd like to receive it, then please do the following.
1. Use your Twitter account to tweet 'I'm about to read @andymiah on #LanceArmstrong'
2. Email me at email@andymiah.net with 'Lance Armstrong' in the subject header.
3. Once you've read it, please don't share the contents. If you like it, or hate it, then you are certainly encouraged to say so publicly, but I don't want to kill the publication by its contents being shared before it's out, so I'd be grateful if you kept the secret.
I really hope you enjoy the piece.
Best wishes,
Andy
PS. the wristband broke in 2005. It was clearly trying to tell me something :)
This is the title of an article published in the New York Times on 20 January, 2013, written by the Atlantic's David Ewing Duncan. It responds to the recent confession of Lance Armstrong about doping, quoting me in the process. Worth a read. He concludes by inviting readers to consider which they would prefer to watch, enhanced sport where all are doping, or clean sport where we are always in doubt?
