Using Technology to Enhance Humans 293
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?"
Re:I'm using less technology these days (Score:4, Interesting)
In a village, everyone knows everyone. It's a small world and people know their neighbors, help them, gather together, whatever. Since the distance between villages also tend to be rather large, and mass transport usually is either nonexistant or laughable, kids also tend to form friendships in the neighborhood.
In larger towns, you usually have the luxury to choose your "neighborhood". You can pick your friends, simply because the pool is larger. The need to know your neighbor because, well, he's the most accessable person around, is not there.
We are The Borg. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have always been fascinated by the notion of hive mind and I truly wish that one day, humans will have their brains connected to the net by wifi or something. Each time we have a question, instead of thinking we could access the net of minds. We could have one big hive mind with all of the knowledge or have a distributed system where the knowledge is distributed among our brains. Also, only the most advanced researchers could access the core to change the official knowledge database. We could always have a core that works like the current Wikipedia too. Who knows what's the best way to manage a hive mind?
I'm already answering tons of queries in my job thanks to Wikipedia and Google. I just wish we could go one step further...
Re:Correction (Score:4, Interesting)
"In the year 2000" (Score:3, Interesting)
If you asked a scientist who worked with ENIAC some 50 years ago if he believed that you could put a billion transistors into a 1cm^2 chip, would he believe you? After all, a single transistor was the size of a light bulb back then.
This is why we have to think the unthinkable when speaking of technology. We all know that having a chip inside our head sounds weird and kind of repulsive, but once we have 10 guys doing this, we will have 100 following them, and 10,000 following the first 110.
I personally don't know or care what the outcome will be, but I am sure that we can eventually create organic computers. For example, your left finger nail could in fact be a small computer.
Understanding nature (Score:4, Interesting)
Then we get to our assumptions about animals. It was thought that if we sequence a genome, all would be revealed. We now know that the story is very much more complex that simply saying this gene sequence does this. The orientation of the genes seems to be an issue. Genes seem to activate or not depending on the presence of other genes. The high school analysis of genetics seems quite inadequate, and the old yarns about improvement through cross pollination seems as antiquated as staying home to make sure one doesn't miss a phone call.
I don't think we are anywhere near the point where we can predict the side effects of messing with complex natural systems. We can't even predict the side effects of delivering psychotropic drugs to kids. We do so because we want our kids to be 'normal' and succeed in school and life, and then get angry when the negative side effects emerge. Of course they will be negative side effects. Nothing is free. Entropy is always increasing, and nature will have her way. I have no doubt we will engineer our children. I just hope that our courts are not tied up by the whiny parents with fantastic dreams of the perfect kid, and we approach the process to create a more holistic child, and not just to further the Aryan state.
Re:Will we all be cyborgs?? (Score:3, Interesting)
This article only scratches the surface (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Culture (Score:1, Interesting)
Physiology
Techniques in genetics are advanced to the point where bodies are freed from built-in limitations: severed limbs grow back, sexual physiology can be voluntarily changed from male to female and back (though the process itself takes time), sexual stimulation and endurance are strongly heightened in both sexes (something that is often subject of envious debate among other species), any pain can be 'blanked out', possible poisons or toxins can be bypassed away from the digestive system, automatic reflexes such as breathing can be switched to conscious control, and bones and muscles adapt quickly to changes in gravity without the need to exercise them.
Hormonal levels and other chemical secretions can also be consciously monitored and controlled. Furthermore, the humans of the Culture are equipped with drug glands in the base of their skull which secrete on command any of a large selection of chemicals, from the merely relaxing to the mind-altering: "Snap" is described in Use of Weapons and The Player of Games as "The Culture's favourite breakfast drug", and presumably resembles super-charged caffeine. "Sharp Blue" is described as a utility drug, as opposed to a sensory enhancer or a sexual stimulant and helps in problem solving. "Quicken", mentioned in Excession, puts experiences in slow motion. Other such self-produced drugs include "Calm", "Gain", "Charge", "Recall", "Diffuse", "Somnabsolute", "Focus", and "Crystal Fugue State".
Enhancing internal mental experience (Score:3, Interesting)
We know that all of our experiences are the result of the workings of and inputs into our nervous and sensory systems, and ultimately our brains. If the goal is to enhance our own experience, it seems that ultimately direct input to our nervous and sensory systems and even the brain by electrical signals is the most effective, most efficient, most sustainable means of enchancing our own experiences.
There is no jet fuel to pollute our water and air when you fly across the world in an airplane in your mind. There are no natural disasters in this world if you do not want there to be. There is no death to see or experience if you do not want there to be.
And there is no reason to believe that experiences grounded in physical reality are the most enjoyable experiences to have. Evolution and geological processes are not directed to enchancing the quality of human mental experience, and to the extent they have enhanced it, by no means do we have reason to believe they have maximized it. And it may be technically very difficult to simulate the fullness of experience of the real sensory world to the mind. But perhaps raw emotions and sensations coupled with abtract realities can be every bit or more enjoyable.
There is also the matter of induced dreaming. Dreaming is a very cheap way to simulate experiencing the world - or some other - in a way that often seems very enjoyable to many people. If we could find ways through technology to induce and enhance the dreaming experience, we could relatively cheaply improve the quality of experience for many people.
Dreaming seems to consist in very real and compelling experiences, or at least the sense of having had real and compelling experiences. I retain very little of what I dream about, but at the moment I awake or perhaps just before, if I have had a dramatic dream, I have the very real experience of remembering having just had real and compelling experiences (whether I have or not I do not know).
If enhancing quality and duration of experience is our aim, then I think these will be ultimately the most rewarding courses to pursue.
Unfortunately, perhaps, I stubbornly believe there is much more to life than enhancing the quality and duration of experience.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Interesting)
Me? I usually just leave my phone on silent, and people know that if I do not answer during the day I am at work and there is a good reason. And if it is my day off - well they have no reason to be calling me, do they?
Expectations are what *you* set. If you answer the phone every damn time and call back ten minutes after, people will begin to expect that of you. If you don't, people won't.
-shrug-
We must evolve ourselves or be replaced (Score:3, Interesting)
At some point in the near future, people will figure out how to make a machine that can learn. At that point, it will only be a matter of time before there are machines that will be more intelligent than a typical human, and will be able to build bodies for themselves which are far superior to our biological bodies.
If we haven't learned how to evolve ourselves, either through genetics and/or cybernetics at that stage, we _will_ be replaced as the dominant life form in this region of space.
I'll take one. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Goatse! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Correction (Score:2, Interesting)
Why being a cyborg scares people?! (Score:2, Interesting)
This IS evolution fellows, not "natural" evolution, mind you, but still evolution.
Thus... assimilate or perish!
(if being human means staying with recognized "design flaws" then it's ok for some of us to be called another species)