Cognitive Augmentation in Speculative Writing

Abstract This article explores how predictions about future nanotechnological and neuropharmaceutical applications to medicine further anti-ageing discourse in the present. Products of both research areas enable physiological augmentation, with uses way beyond accepted traditional goals of medicine. But most “nanodreams” have not come to fruition, yet; as such, much popular scientific writing about nanotechnology is “thoroughly science-fictional” in how it imagines its future. Projections about these technologies contribute to devaluing the ageing experience and neglecting the need to address challenges of ageing in the present. To make these points, this article will read two speculative texts alongside one another: a piece of creative science fiction and a predictive popular science account. Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind propagates brain–computer interfaces, and Jeffrey Moore’s The Memory Artists deals with neuropharmaceuticals. Such parallel reading risks conflating different genres, narrative forms and contexts, obfuscating the purpose and possibilities of either genre. But it helps illustrate how ideas of an augmented human species have begun structuring social belief systems that shine through creative writing that joins in pitching, rather than effectively critiquing, these technologies as holding the fountain of youth.