Spectrum of Abilities – David Orban

We have many skills, many senses, many ways of coping with the world, absorbing the information, changing it, structuring it, and then acting on it.

As our civilization evolves, the technologies that we invent and deploy complement our biological skills, with nonhuman or even superhuman abilities.

There is an interesting interpretation of our fairly recent care for disabled humans: people who are paralyzed and they drive a special car and they have a reserved parking space or a reserved toilet and other parts of the environment. We are certainly caring and empathic in setting these up. These spaces create inclusive human environments in our cities, so that everybody can participate regardless of where they sit in the spectrum of abilities.

But we are also smart because in reality we are preparing ourselves to look in the mirror and to recognize that it doesn’t matter how good we are in certain tasks, and how refined in certain skills. We are still not at a pinnacle of a perceived ordering, we are on a spectrum of abilities in a specific position. Superhuman abilities are going to rapidly surround us, and we’d better make sure that the society that we are building is inclusive to include us as well.