Postsoldiers

I'm not normally in favour of many things to do with the military, but they do have one very useful aspect, which is that they get away with doing all sorts of interesting things in their efforts to improve soldier performance. Those technologies are being developed for use in combat, but just like the Internet, they will have major impacts on healthcare too. I'd quite like a Glove to help me train more effectively at the gym - and Mark Roth's work on human suspension is one of very few current ideas that stand to have a dramatic impact on trauma death rates (the main cause of death apart from those addressed by SENS).

In fact, the aforementioned Wired article's table of DARPA projects reminded me strongly of Ander's page on potential human enhancements, which was among the very first transhumanism-themed documents I ever read. It's funny though that even DARPA is having to contend with the bioconservatives in this regard.

And even if you don't like the prospect of supersoldiers, at least every defence dollar spent on DARPA is one not spent murdering Iraqi civilians.