My personal thanks to kwolph, the unidentified fellow who was nice enough to stop by and forward me the link to this rather interesting infographic. Courtesy of the Keithley Center, which designs electronic systems for measurement and analysis, this infographic shows how advances in nanotechnology might aid us in reinventing and augmenting the human body.

These include augmenting our brain chemistry by either delivering drugs directly to our receptors (which can include anti-depressants, stimulants, or pain killers), or the more audacious approach of enhancing our thought pattens and memory by actively building and repairing neural tissue. As such, things like mental illness, brain injuries and trauma could be overcome at last.

In addition, there’s plenty of enhancing our hearts, lungs, reinforcing our bones, repairing muscle tissue, enhancing our eyes, reflexes, strength, endurance. And, as they point out, by virtue of the female model, the scourge of breast cancer, which effects one in eight women, could be be wiped out. No mother’s or young women dying before their time anymore!

And of course, other entirely too common ailments, heart disease, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer, and every form of degenerative disease, could be nipped in the bud either through regular maintenance of the bodily tissues, or by correcting the fault at the genetic level.

There’s really no limit to what programmable nanomachines could do, once the technology was realizable of course. And above all, proven to be safe and effective. And since it would mean that human beings no longer would be subject to disease or degenerative conditions (a la aging), lives could be extended indefinitely, which is part and parcel of the whole “transhuman”, “posthuman” and “postmortal” concept.

Naturally, they used the image of a very pretty young woman for the display. Had it been a man I’m guessing they would have gone with a six foot tall dude with washer board abs and only 1 percent body fat. Why can’t they ever use a porked out old dude with man boobs? That’s what I’d like to know? Well, for one, such regular individuals don’t exactly inspire confidence in the consumer market, do they?