Part 2 – Human augmentation technologiesSleep
Increasingly sophisticated ways of studying the brain while we sleep is producing a
wealth of data that we are only just beginning to understand.^5 The benefits of adopting
good sleeping patterns will deliver huge benefits to both individuals and society. Nearly
every aspect of our daily lives such as mental and physical health, public safety and
productivity would improve, yet so many individual and organisational approaches fail to
recognise this. In a military context sleep optimisation is difficult to employ but important
to get right since it directly affects physical ability and resilience as well as attention and
decision-making.
Personalised nutrition
Improved understanding of our genetics and general health could make precision nutrition
a realistic possibility. Diets designed around an individual’s biology have been proven
to help prevent disease and improve physical and psychological performance.^6 As an
example, the trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in our gut – collectively known
5 Walker, M., (2017), Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams.
6 Personalised nutrition partially overlaps with related terms such as precision nutrition, nutrigenomics,
nutrigenetics and nutritional genomics. Ordovas, J. M., et al., The British Medical Journal, (2018),
‘Personalised nutrition and health’.
The future of wearablesCurrent or emerging technology in this field includes: increasingly accurate heart rate
monitoring; earrings that measure body temperature and pulse; shoes that generate
their own power to sense bodyweight and movement; contact lenses that analyse
tears to predict your emotional state and project information; clothes that sense
your physiology and give you small directional taps on your shoulders to provide
screen-free Global Positioning System (GPS); and ‘smart buttons’ in clothes that
collectively understand your habits and inform other linked technologies – from car to
coffee machine – to optimise your life. Wearables to monitor chronic health conditions
such as diabetes are a notable growth area and may even develop towards
closed-loop systems that measure and treat symptoms in the future.