Fortean Slips: Simple Cyborg

Simple Cyborg

by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com

No one pushes Billy Hunt around,
Well they do, but not for long.
When I get fit and grow bionic arms
The whole world's gonna wish it weren't born.

-- Paul Weller

In the time-honored depiction of cyborgs in science fiction, there's generally some element of desperation that forces a person to surrender his humanity and become part machine against his will. After Steve Austin, Robocop and Luke Skywalker were maimed or pulverized into liverwurst, technology was able to rebuild them, and make them better, stronger, faster -- even though they didn't ask for it.

But our increasing cultural acceptance of high-tech gadgetry has led to a new way of thinking: robotic implants could be so advantageous that people might actually want to become cybernetic organisms, by choice. The popularization of the cyberpunk genre has demonstrated that it can be hip to have a chip in your head. And now a cybernetics expert has taken one small step for man, and one giant leap for robotkind, claiming to have turned himself into the world's first cyborg.

Kevin Warwick, head of the cybernetics department at Reading University in England, had a computer chip implanted into his body on August 24, 1998. The implant was a tiny glass capsule measuring 23mm by 3mm, containing numerous silicon chips and an electromagnetic coil radio receiver. Warwick didn't stick it inside his brain, as one might imagine, but rather in the much less dramatic location of the inside of his left elbow.

"Man and machine have always worked separately. Today, for the first time, we have united to make a better world," Warwick said. "Being a professor of cybernetics, which is all about the interaction between man and machine, it is particularly exciting to be the world's first cyborg." He proudly described the chip in his arm as the "ultimate man-machine interface."

So what does his cyber-chip do, exactly? Not much, really. Warwick is pioneering a brave new frontier, and one can't expect this debut model android to have superhuman strength or be able to shoot laser beams out of his fingertips just yet. The chip is basically limited to being an identification device. A series of sensors placed around his department and at his home can detect his presence and "interact" with him in rudimentary ways.

For instance, when he enters his office, a computer voice says, "Welcome, Professor Warwick," and tells him how much e-mail he has. His secretary can track his location at any given moment on a computer monitor. When he comes home in the evening, the lights turn on automatically, music begins to play, and a hot bath starts to fill in the tub. That's right, folks: the world's first cyborg is the human Clapper.

"The chip allows computers to communicate directly with my body," Warwick said. "As I walk around the building, lights go on and computers burst into life every time I scratch my head. It can be quite scary."

Scary is right. And Warwick's chip is undeniably nifty and neato, too. But does it make him qualify as a cyborg? Peter Lipton, a science history professor at Cambridge, says that Warwick may be overstating the revolutionary magnitude of his body's bionic component.

"It is similar to the sort of clicker we use to lock and unlock our cars. The fact that the chip now goes under the skin should not be exaggerated as a breakthrough," Lipton said. "But because it is under the skin it is harder to remove. This raises all sorts of ethical problems which, while not new, have certainly not yet been resolved."

Warwick is no stranger to the philosophical debate of man vs. machine. Ironically enough, the cybernetics professor has previously made a name for himself by trumpeting the threat that robotic technology poses to humanity. His book The March of the Machines argues that computers and robots with artificial intelligence could one day assume control of the planet, and we will be helpless to stop them.

"Humans are dominant currently," Warwick once said. "Robots can now think like insects. In five years it will be cats. In ten years they will have a brain equivalent to a human. ... In contemplating the next millennium and our future, we should prepare ourselves now for a society in which a more intelligent life-form than ourselves will exist."

So how are we to understand what Warwick has done now? "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"? It may be instructive to note that the chip implant is only the latest in a long series of colorful cybernetic achievements for which Warwick has won note. He created a renowned group of proto-AI "robo-insects" nicknamed the Seven Dwarfs, which demonstrated signs of learned behavior. Warwick also invented the first robots capable of programming one another over the Internet, without human input. More recently Warwick has taken up the challenge of building a robot that can move around independently without bumping into things. He tried to demonstrate his progress by creating the first robot to run in a marathon against human competitors, but to Warwick's embarrassment, bright sunlight threw off the robot's infrared sensors and it wrecked itself in a pre-race trial.

Warwick's latest headline-grabber is not entirely a triumph, either. It turns out that the world's first cyborg will also be the first to be transformed back into a man again, because the chip implant is only temporary. Warwick explained that his cyborg adventure is a "research experiment" designed to collect preliminary data, and the chip will have to be removed promptly for safety reasons. The doctor who implanted it warned him not to leave it under his skin for more than ten days. Warwick's health could be seriously jeopardized if the glass capsule broke or leaked inside his body, and he is taking antibiotics to fight the danger that the implant will cause an infection. This is perhaps the best indicator that Warwick is not entitled to call himself a true cyborg -- after all, you never saw the Terminator have to worry about needing Neosporin.

In discussing the possible future usages for cyber-chip implants, Warwick has speculated that they will one day be able to cure paraplegics and create near-flawless prosthetics. But that beneficent application is a long way away, and he notes that we will much sooner be able to use the chips for subcutaneous data storage. To some extent, Warwick has advocated this notion, saying it would be worthwhile for implants to carry a record of our medical histories, or to track the attendance of students at school, or to identify persons with criminal records and prevent them from buying or operating a firearm. He is more hesitant on the issues of chips tracking every citizen or being used as the much-feared universal Mark of the Beast ID/credit card implants without which no man might buy or sell, and so on and so forth.

"We have to ask ourselves if we want to hand control over to machines," Warwick said. "It is a desirable technical advance, but we have to decide on the moral and ethical issues of 24-hour surveillance of everyone fitted with a chip."

So I suppose you might say Warwick is making some kind of ingenious and noble statement about the dangers of cyber-implants, sort of like an anti-nuclear activist who exposes himself to radiation just so the rest of us will think about how awful it is. Or you might conclude he's a cheap publicity hound who stuck a Duracell in his arm just so the news media would write about him one more time.

But I think neither is entirely accurate. Warwick reminds me of those Anne Rice fans who file down their teeth into fangs, or those Trekkies who wear their Starfleet uniforms in everyday life. He loves the object of his obsession so much that ultimately he had to become it. It's hard to decide if he's really cybernetic, or just pathetic. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's obsessive geeks who make the world go 'round, if you ask me. I commend Professor Warwick for injecting some conscientiousness into this field of scientific exploration while injecting that thing under his skin. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

	Click Here for More Fortean Slips!
	Fortean Slips message board: Share your views