Smart Drugs

“Many so-called “smart drugs” today can be traced back to the Chinese herb, ma huang (ephedra), a drug used for thousands of years before being synthesized in 1887 and adopted in medical practice in the 1930s as amphetamine. Alongside distinct local histories of substances like cannabis, coca, and tobacco, as well as the rise of prescription drugs like Adderall and Ritalin or illegal and grey market drugs like methamphetamine and Modafinil, many so-called smart drugs are part of a global rise in stimulant use. This new “economy of speed” is understood to “give you more energy, more working hours, ‘more life’” (Pine 2007). The mainstreaming of contemporary performance enhancement elixirs designed to improve focus, endurance, creativity, energy, productivity, and the like, includes substances used to optimize our capacity for study and work, physical and mental health, among many other moods or micro-vitalities. Smart drugs are also enmeshed or enfleshed with smart technologies and computational networks.” – Joshua Neves

Joshua Neves is Canada Research Chair in Global Emergent Media at Concordia University, Montreal (Canada), where he is Director of the Global Emergent Media Lab. He is investigating, among other things, neuropolitics and technologies of enhancement.