Today we have the Olympics — exclusively for competition by able-bodied athletes, until recently; the Paralympics — for competition by differently-abled athletes; and the Special Olympics, which provides "year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities."

But Oscar Pistorius' participation in the Olympics this year was monumental, not only in that it marked the competition of a double-amputee with regularly-abled athletes, but also because cries arose from some who claimed that Pistorius' prosthetic legs gave him an unfair advantage. He has been dubbed "the fastest man on no legs."

In an era of records by Barry Bonds and other professional athletes listed with an asterisk, due to their use of performance-enhancing substances and practices, I wonder: Do we need to start keeping records for the organic athletes separate from records scored by enhanced athletes?

Where, I wonder, do we draw the line?

After all, we already live in the era of voluntary amputation and prosthetic replacement.

Professional athletes frequently use performance-enhancing technologies. Take contact lenses that filter certain spectra of light, for example:

The gray-green lenses allow golfers to better differentiate distance on a golf course. Golfer Justin Leonard has commented that with the gray-green lenses he is able to separate out every blade of grass. Baseball players benefit most from the amber lenses because amber blocks out blue light which is called 'visual noise' by vision experts while the red colors, such as a baseball's seams, are accentuated. Mark Maquire was and Chipper Jones is a wearer of sport lenses." "



In the movie "Limitless," Bradley Cooper plays Eddie Moora, a character who stumbles across NZT, a top-secret drug that allows users to utilize 100 percent of their minds. Eventually, Moora, with his augmented mental capabilities, even irons out the drug's side effects. Would using NZT really so different from using other performance-enhancing drugs or strategies?

What about the practice of storing one's own red blood cells ahead of competition, then loading them into one's body to provide increased blood-oxygen capacity and endurance?

As a former Austinite, I've followed the performance-enhanced saga of Lance Armstrong throughout his seven Tour de France winnings and the allegations of drugging that followed along. Armstrong announced earlier this year that he would no longer fight allegations that he used performance-enhancing substances; as a result, US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has stripped Armstrong of his Tour de France titles and banned him from the sport for life.

At NPR, philosopher Alva Noë makes the point that, being as naturally inclined to use tools as we Humans are, we are natural-born cyborgs, prompting him to make the following observations: "[Lance Armstrong] is a trailblazer. One of the greats. He didn't win races on his own. No, like each of us in our social embeddings, he created an organization, one drawing on other people, and the creative and effective use of technology, the mastery of biochemistry, to go places and do things that most of us never will, and that no one ever had, before him."

Noë makes an interesting point: We are already cyborgs — it's just that most of humankind doesn't think of things that way. When I use my eyeglasses to see more clearly, I am, to an extent, a cyborg. When I use my smartphone as an outboard memory module and store contact information there, rather than memorizing it, I am even more so. My students are so integrated with their technology that they can hardly see that fact; I pass them texting avidly as they walk between classes every day.

Further, we are becoming an ever-more-networked species. Michio Kaku discusses this a bit in the Big Think video below:



No less than Stephen Hawking points out that humankind is entering "'a new phase, of what might be called self designed evolution, in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA.' Showing impatience with biological evolution, he said, “There is no time to wait for Darwinian evolution to make us more intelligent, and better natured."

And if technological upgrades become available to augment my intelligence, my memory, or my health, or that would add to my longevity and quality of life, I would be interested in pursuing them. To me, that's only human.
In fact, instead of the conventional, ink tattoos I have, I'd much prefer to get an LED tattoo system installed (provided it's safe), such as the one below.



So perhaps a more useful path forward would be to admit and accept our technologies, our advances and our advantages. Perhaps the more productive path, rather than destroying the careers of athletes who have taken advantage of our technological advantages, would be to maintain separate sets of records for the augmented/enhanced and the organic/unenhanced.

An Enhanced Olympics could arise from this, as the other aforementioned athletic competitions have arisen to serve specific communities — a set of competitions that embrace augmentation and technological advantages, as would two categories of sports record books — one for organic athletes, one for the enhanced competitors. And while I would never endorse the use of steroids or Human Growth Hormone to enhance competitiveness (due mostly to the dangerous side effects of both), I think that Pistorius, the fastest man on no legs, would be welcome in such a competition, and without the controversy.