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Using Technology to Enhance Humans
Roland Piquepaille writes "It's a well-known fact that technology can improve our lives. For example, we can reach anyone and anywhere with our cellphones. And people who can't walk after an accident now can have smart prosthesis to help them. But what about designing our children on a computer or having a chip inside our brain to answer our email messages? Are we ready for such a future? In 'Robo-quandary,' the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that many researchers are working on the subject. And as a professor of neuroscience said, "We can grow neurons on silicone plates; we can make the blind see; the deaf hear; we can read minds." So will all we become cyborgs one day?"
While I doubt we'll end up in some Ghost In The Shell - like world anytime soon, the urge to improve ourselves to the point of modification and beyond is a part of our own adaptability.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I was a hardcore geek for a long time. I've been using less and less the last few years however due to personal choice and quality of life choices. The more technology we seem to use these days the less social we seem to become. Answer honestly, when was the last time you had a chat with your neighbor? Do you even know their names? In my sociology class less than 5% of the students could answer yes to that last question or remember the last conversation they had. In most countries it's normal to know those around you, to have a sense of community. Here in America we're becoming estranged from one another, not completely because of technology, but it's a large contributing factor. I'll pass on the transplants. I prefer the natural me. These all seem like breast implants for technology nerds anyway.
will almost certainly involve adult entertainment.
Now, what was that question, again?
In theory, a nice idea. I mean, interfacing easier with the computer, all good and fine.
But when I look at today's systems and the surveillance surrounding them, who wants to tell me that whatever is plugged into my cranium is really "mine"? And the manufacturer doesn't think that he's still the one owning it?
We have operating systems that require you to let them phone home to see if you're no crook. We got content restricted with DRM (or DCE or whatever the buzzword of the week is). We even got corporations that don't even consider infecting your computer with a trojan to protect their precious.
And I should trust them with my thoughts? In today's society, I'd be wary with such an idea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thinking about this in relation to the previous story, what will happen if MS or some other company has tons of patents on the technology that helps you? What happens when patents restrict innovations in that area? What happens if your prosthetic arm BSOD's and causes you to veer into oncoming traffic but the EULA you signed to wear it means you can't sue MS?
That's exaggerating what role MS might play, but the question is valid.
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We can reach anyone anywhere who wants to be contacted with our cellphones.
When you don't want to be contacted, turn it off. When someone you don't want contacting you calls, hit the ignore button, or ban them on your phone. It isn't that hard.
We're no longer forced to socialize only with those in close proximity to me. I don't like my neighbours. I don't particularity want to socialize with them. They're fine people and I occasionally chat with them, but we have nothing in common aside from location, and they aren't terribly interesting.
"Because we can" isn't always the best answer"
Sorry but eliminating serious diseases "because we can" and preventing children from being horribly and mounstrously ugly is *ALWAYS* the best answer. Designer children will be the future and those who dont will be left behind and fade away into historical obscurity. You think someone is going to resist life extension technology? I can see many wars being fought once life extension is possible, I can only imagine what its going to be like not to be able to afford life extension for the millions of poor people who will be consigned to "death" in a market society.
Advancement is great, but if you start meddling with what makes us human, it doesn't matter how good, noble or ethically correct your intentions are. You will lose.
Spoken like a true Luddite. However, what I think you don't take into account is that "what makes us human" is always changing -- it's always just beyond our ability to change at any given moment.
E.g.: in the mid-19th century, the idea of swapping blood with someone else was pretty macabre. After all, "the blood is the life," right? Hence, it got used as a plot device in Dracula (among other novels), as a way of showing the 'human essence.'
But, once it became possible to routinely pump blood from one person to another, so that they didn't always die, and their personality didn't change, the criteria of 'what makes us human' got pushed back a little further. Okay, so we can now swap blood -- nope, that doesn't make us human; it's not what makes us unique. Suddenly, a blood transfusion doesn't seem so bizarre anymore.
Not too many years later, you have people getting their organs swapped. Although not too many rational folks really thought this would change one's personality, there was still some squeamishness on the part of the public, initially. But over time, it became accepted. Just because you have someone else's liver inside you, and maybe somebody else's heart and lungs, you're not them. Whatever makes you human? Not sure, but haven't hit it yet.
What about brains? We know that can cause personality changes. Seems pretty ghoulish. But there are thousands of people in the world today running around with implanted electrodes in their brains, allowing them to hear better, or not have seizures, or see -- are they still human? Yep.
The fear that we'll change "what makes us human" is the same sort of vague uneasiness that caused cartographers to draw giant sea creatures at the edges of their maps. It's a fear of the unknown, of change. But when you get close to it, suddenly it doesn't seem quite so scary anymore. That's how change happens. We'll make a change, realize we're still human, still here, afterwards, and push the "what makes us human" mark out a little beyond our current grasp. Repeat, over and over, and even if the end product isn't recognizable as a "person" to us today (just like Steven Hawking would probably be written off as some sort of carnival freak by anyone born in the 18th or early 19th century), people will never really question their humanity.
That thing that "makes us human" will always be one or two discoveries away, just like the sea monsters were always a little beyond the edge of the known map.
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