Letting Silicon-Chip Implants Do
the Talking
Source: The Washington Post
February 1, 2000
Over in England, a nutty professor is planning to hook
his central nervous system to his computer. He thinks it might improve
his sex life and maybe even save mankind from becoming slaves to
machines. He's touting his scheme in an essay called "I, Robot"--the
cover story in this month's Wired, a magazine that can be trusted to
go gaga over any cockamamie utopian idea, as long as it involves
computers.
The mad scientist is Kevin Warwick, a professor in the
Department of Cybernetics at the University of Reading. In 1998, he
had a silicon chip surgically implanted above his left elbow. The chip
communicated via radio waves with computers that, in turn, signaled to
machines that would open doors and turn on lights as Warwick
approached, and greet him with a cheery "Hello."
He loved it. He and his computer were, he writes, like
"a pair of Siamese twins." When the chip was removed after nine days,
he felt bereaved--"as though a friend had just died."
So he decided to get a second implant. This one,
scheduled for sometime next year, will attempt to tap directly into
his nervous system and relay its messages to a computer. That way, he
figures, he can store the neural messages of pain or pleasure or
drunkenness, and play them back to his brain later.
"When I'm happy, we'll record that signal," he writes.
"Then, if my mood changes the next day, we'll play the happy signal
back and see what happens."
And that's just phase one of his plan. In phase two, his
wife, Irena, will get a similar implant, and then the happy couple can
link their nervous systems together via the Internet. "If I sprained
my ankle," he wonders, "could I send the signal to Irena to make her
feel as though she has injured herself?"
And, of course, there's sex. "What if the other person
became sexually aroused? Could we record signals at the height of our
arousal, then play these back and relive the experience?"
This experiment could backfire, resulting in permanent
nerve damage, Warwick says, but he's eager to try it anyway. He
figures he's pioneering a form of computer-aided brain-to-brain
communication that will ultimately replace language. Who needs to talk
when your every thought and feeling can be broadcast directly to your
friend's brain? But Warwick doesn't speculate about what might happen
if these intimate messages were intercepted by less friendly folks.
It all sounds pretty wacky, but Warwick gets even
wackier. He figures humans and machines will ultimately merge into a
superhuman cyborg species. In fact, he writes, if we don't become
cyborgs, we will soon become slaves to our computers, which are
already more intelligent than we are.
"Otherwise," he writes, "we're doomed to a future in
which intelligent machines rule and humans become second-class
citizens. My project explores a middle ground that gives humans a
chance to hang in there a bit longer."
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/01/068l-020100-idx
.html