What superpowers are possible and plausible? According to Io9’s Alasdair Wilkins, there are some plausible superpowers that we as a world can do without. Let’s look at a couple of them today: invisibility and telekinesis. Why the world is a better place without these two powers ought to be easily recognizable. On the other hand, some of these technologies offer clearly beneficial results to some individuals that make it very likely they will be developed in the future. Nonetheless, determining who is using these superpowers, as one may guess, is likely to be a very tricky problem, not without sensitive equipment at any rate.

First, let us look at invisibility. There are already ways to make objects a few inches high invisible via natural light, and there are schemes to make Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks that would make what was underneath them invisible by warping the way light progressed through them. Clearly, such a technology would be easy to hide, and also easy to exploit. An invisibility cloak would make spying and surveillance work a lot easier, and it would also make thievery a lot easier. Trying to keep such a tool from bad guys would mean that one would no longer be able to trust the eyes, and might require the use of non-visible light to sense the disruption, making ultraviolet and infrared scanning more prevalent. Like we need that.

Next, let us look at telekenesis. For one, telepathy (a related power) is itself not unreasonable, if there were a way to strengthen the electromagnetic waves of the brain beyond the strength of the mass of radio waves in which we swim. Research is currently underway on devices that allow computers to move based upon the thoughts of computer users. Once our thoughts can move objects (even digitally), the age of telekensis has come. The dangers and opportunities of that are pretty obvious. On the plus side is the ability for quadriplegics and other people with crippling physical disabilities to be full users of technology. One can imagine, therefore, that these devices will be further developed.

On the other hand, though, such a power of the manipulation of thought and nerve activities in the brains can easily go wrong. For example, the same sort of technology that would allow a computer to respond based on the thoughts of a user would also allow human brains to be hacked. This is a very severe potential problem, where a device would allow the brain waves to be changed remotely, thus leading to a change in behavior. This is a more subtle and advanced solution to attempts several decades ago to engage in electroshock treatments for depression, based on a correspondingly more subtle understanding of the brain. Seeing the power to control brains being in the hands of other people is an extremely unpleasant possibility, one this world would do a lot better without.

The difficulty with technology is not that it is good or evil. In general, our advances and technologies are morally neutral—whether they are used for the good, for evil, or (as is more usually the case) for a mixture of the two depends on our own moral nature. The problem with technologies like invisibility and telekenesis is not to suggest that anything is wrong with such “superpowers,” but rather that we as a species are not sufficiently morally developed to make the possibility of invisibility cloaks and hacking into brains anything less than a painful and possibly disastrous occurrence. Perhaps (we may hope) such developments never occur, or that we are wise enough how to handle them when they do. Knowing the past, I’m not particularly optimistic.