Pyro has the best access to the latest and safest physical and mental augmentations on the market. As soon as these products and services are on the market, you can get them from us.
What is the problem?
In the future, we will possibly see a continuation of the integration between people and technology. It may get to the point where we start to see it cross a boundary into our bodies for purposes that go well beyond a medical need. People are already deeply dependent on digital technology to monitor and tune large aspects of their life, but a lot of these services require active input from the user. In the future, we may find more technology around, on and even in us, that monitors everything from gut health to social dynamics. In addition to this model that simply collects massive amounts of data and feeds useful information to people, these technologies may begin to directly intervene in our physical being.
In this context, we can describe two potential issues and their interconnection.
- Firstly, if technologies become available, and they enable some people to perform professionally, physically, emotionally or socially at ‘higher’ levels than those without the technology, we may see divisions between people.
- Particularly, those who have access to these augmentations will likely be more privileged or wealthier than those who do not.
- The divide will only continue to grow as augmented people become more employable, earn more money and augment even further. People left out may find themselves trailing or working with inferior augmentations or being forced into using labour based augmentations, and people at the high end may find themselves in a kind of arms race.
- Secondly, there may well be issues with the public health response to these devices because the regulatory bodies required to approve or disprove them may simply be built on biomedical ideas of safety and may be limited in their capacity to consider the holistic effects of augmentation.
How Pyro responds
Pyro responds by offering the widest selection of cutting edge products in one environment where all the products have been rapidly and rigorously tested by a large panel of independent experts. In this way, Pyro gives people a complete view of all the products that are available and that can be relied on, ensuring that when they make such a large commitment they are doing so with full confidence and full access to experts and peers for support. People can compete in the world and augment their ambition, safely.
Reliable Reviewing System:
Pyro understands the dilemma people face with these new products and only offers products that have been comprehensively tested by their independent panel of reviewers. The panel of over 1000 reviewers from all demographics overcome the biases of the regulator and give first hand experience of the offerings rather than simply the biomedical impacts of a service. Pyro gives people assurance that they are making the right decision when they commit to a product they may be living with for years to come, but it also gives them that information faster than any other provider so they can always stay ahead of the competition.
Optimised Nutrition:
Pyro has an expanding collection of nutritional support offerings. For instance, ‘Bioview’ is a system consisting of an app and a body-powered camera that sits inside a person’s digestive tract. It analyses the contents of people’s gut, their biome and the overall condition of their system. The information is relayed to their AI system to assess their digestive health at any given moment. ‘BioView’ integrates perfectly with ‘Youtrition’, which is a more holistic service that assesses someone’s genetic predisposition to diseases and constantly monitors their hormones. This data, works in conjunction with it’s semi permanent skin patch, which can deliver the correct complement of vitamins and minerals through the skin. It can also integrate with their personal food services like UberEATS and FoodDirect to administer whatever is needed through people’s food to not only avoid disease but to keep them operating at their optimum all the time!
Deeply mental rest:
Pyro now has two products available that simply optimise the natural brain rejuvenating potential of sleep and meditation. ‘Samsa’ and ‘Spectre’ both use technologies that listen carefully to people’s mental activity as they try to sleep or meditate and delicately reciprocate with corresponding electrical signals, which help them enter rejuvenating sleep and mediation states on a far deeper level far quicker. While it is recommended that people use this to optimise their existing habits, it can also be used for those times when people simply don’t have the time for a full night’s sleep.
Social tools:
‘Relate’ is the first in the range of accessible social augmentations. It is a smart memory and recollection superpower. ‘Relate’ is an add-on to eyewear that has facial recognition, which combines with a conversation decoder and someone’s operating system to remember names and interesting facts as well as any other relevant information about the people they are around. It then gives them prompts the next time they see those people. They are never let down by their memory and can always be at their best.
What we
learnt
We demonstrated Pyro to users who had used technologies and products to improve their physical, mental or professional lives to a large extent and this is what we learned:
- Our users’ general responses to this concept and it’s enclosed offerings were a mixture of excitement and curiosity with large amounts of hesitancy and concern.
- To them and the people we explore this concept with, the proposition represents a world that they still see as fictional and highly problematic. But when considered as though it were real, people often overcome their aversion and imagine positive contexts in which they would engage with the services.
Emerging areas of interest around this proposition are about:
- what is required for people to overcome distrust of new technologies such as this; and,
- what they might mean for authenticity or employment.
Scared but willing
One of the most interesting symbols that emerge from this experiment is that most of the participants expressed discomfort with the concepts, but all of them felt that they would try them to some degree. A lot of the hesitations that people describe are as you would expect —They are concerned with permanence, side-effects, losing control by sharing their data, ideas of fairness etc. Some people had strong aversions to some of these concepts. However, even with these strong feelings, they often explained conditions under which it would be acceptable to them. For instance, if friends were doing the same thing, if there were safety assurances or if the pay-offs were high. Ultimately, some users described how their existing aversion would likely fade if the concepts became more accepted by people around them.
In some instances, they gave examples of using other performance enhancing offerings that they had previously held concerns about. This is a clear example of how people’s fears of drastically different futures may only be a temporary obstacle to the emergence of these technologies. Participants seemed frustrated that they can’t manage and control themselves exactly the way they want to in order to be who they want to be. If a service can help them get closer, they may overcome their concerns.
Influence on work
An area of discussion that this proposition rapidly presents is about these augmentations’ implications on work and on employment. People describe how the augmentations may help people progress professionally, but that in competitive industries those people may end up being required to augment themselves in order to maintain and perform or indeed to continue climbing a hierarchy. In turn, this creates a counter presentation to the idea that these products may bring people power and choice. On the other end of the spectrum, the people ‘below the API’, who may not have the means to access augmentations may find themselves less competitive in the job market and could even end up agreeing to be augmented by companies in order to work. In this circumstance, we are forced to examine more closely where the lines should be drawn between ourselves as people and ourselves as employees or as useful assets.
Authenticity and fairness
All participants also described a fear about the degradation of authenticity should these products become more ubiquitous. People described concern about the struggle that may ensue understanding which elements of a person are truly them and which are parts of a service they ascribe to (the same sentiment was expressed with physical capabilities( . There is seemingly a sense of unfairness and exclusivity about the availability of the augmentations that fractures people’s fundamental expectations of everyone they encounter in the world. Would this be diminished if everyone could simultaneously receive the same upgrades? At what point will our technologically enabled capabilities define us as transhuman?
Our new direction of exploration
If this proposition is progressed, the strategic question of relevance to our investigations is more along the lines of:
When trans-humanising products and services are readily available, where will their case be most compelling? How might the public discourse emerge? What might be considered acceptable? And how can people’s happiness be ensured?
Related to ‘Pyro’
Scenarios
Self expansion
People have augmented capabilities that boost their productivity and skills and can become working machines that produce non-stop. For them the line of separation between work and home may fade and financial success could simply allow the purchase of more skills in order to earn more money in a dangerous cycle.
