Engadget has reported on the 1000 day milestone of a device called the BrainGate microchip. The 4x4mm chip, inserted directly in to a human brain, has successfully achieved 1000 days of consecutive use. Its function? Giving a human the ability to control a computer with their mind.
Every 24 hours the human subject, known only under the foreboding designation of ‘S3’, was given two easy tasks to complete. S3 was able to manipulate a cursor with 90% accuracy for 10 minutes each day. For now cursor control seems to be the limit of the technology, but that’s not really the point, is it?
While this is undeniably one of the coolest things ever to make its way out of a Sci-Fi movie and in to the real world there’s still some wider-reaching implications that need to be considered. Namely that anyone with such an implant could be considered a real, honest-to-goodness cyborg.
Until now academicians and philosophers have postulated that with each passing generation of technology we, as a society, become more and more intrinsically linked with it. I, for one, have reached a point where without an internet connection, a mobile phone and access to a digital media library would be wholly and hopelessly lost. Does this dependence on technology already make me some kind of disconnected cyborg?
An organism that, while physically separate from its technological components, still relies on electronic devices in order to function could be conceived of as some kind of mid-way between the biological and the cyborg. But, for me, there has always been that reassuring gap that exists between me and my hardware. No matter how dependant on it I become I always have the option of turning it off and walking away.
But how does one walk away when the technology in question is connected to the brain? I guess my issue lies not with the technology itself or the proposed “mutilation” of the human form but of the philosophical idea of what it is to be “human”. While it’s true that people have been getting prosthetic limbs for untold years and still true that said technology is finally approaching a point where we can satisfactorily replace a lost arm or leg with a cybernetic aid, that kind of medical progress doesn’t strike me as worrying. Replacing a leg or arm that has been lost shouldn’t be seen as anything other than a miraculous gift of modern science. Where this kind of technology once only existed in Sci-Fi movies, perhaps most famously Luke Skywalker's robotic hand in Star Wars, we're now approaching realistic applications.
So why this trepidation? If people have been receiving mechanical replacements for their biological parts since well before my family’s name existed then why should I care about a tiny, harmless chip?
It’s all about the brain. I could lose an arm, a leg, even have my heart replaced with a mechanical one (yes, we can do that now) and I would still consider myself wholly human. But once you start messing around with my brain, the place from whence comes my consciousness, my mind, my ability to love, think, learn and feel then you’re really starting to mess around with me.
As Descartes famously said "Cogito Ergo Sum" - "I think, therefore I am". Are we now entering a world where we think, therefore we interface?
This kind of concept has been tossed around in the Sci-Fi genre for years. Futuristic narratives usually portray cybernetic organisms as evil, soulless creatures with a dehumanized physical appearance that signifies a similar, inhuman inner-core. I’m not conforming to the belief that we’re all going to end up like the Cybermen from Dr Who or The Borg from Star Trek, but I also can’t dismiss the fact that this is a first step in a direction that these narratives warn us against taking. After all, if we can bring Skywalker's robot hand to life, is it such a stretch to believe that these fictional robotic horrors could one day follow suit?
As an individual piece of technology BrainGate is definitely the most righteously awesome piece of tech I’ve heard about in a while (no small accomplishment for a tech journo). However, as a microcosm for our greater society’s growing dependence on technology it has sparked a little fire in my brain.
The wider implications of this argument are titanic and certainly can’t be covered in a single blog-post. But this has really got me thinking. Is this a classic case of “science going too far”, or do you think that we will be able to keep a firm grip on our new-found technologies as they arise and remain forever human?
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