Anthropologist Grant McCracken discusses the
use of neuroenhancers by college students and what it has to say about transhumanism. One interesting bit:
Still, it looks as if some kids on campuses, to judge from Talbot's story, are using Adderall in order to fund several lives: one as an accomplished student, another as a 'party-hearty-Marty' party animal, yet another of someone with a hedgehog's passion for one thing, or a fox's passion for everything. And this is huge news.
Gen Y have been defined as a generation of "rules and regs," devoted to doing the right thing. This is another way of saying that THIS youth culture choose not to engage in the protest, rebellion, rites of May liminality that we have come to expect from youth. But here in Talbot's article we see evidence that Gen Y may have found a way out of it's orthodoxy. With the pharmacological intervention made possible by Adderall, it is now possible to have one's cake and eat it too, to be a "good kid" and a "wild child" at the same time. And if this is true, it would tell us that we are on the verge of seeing youth culture as alternative culture flourish once more.
Read it all. Who knew?
