Week 3 - Response to Content

Our Future as Human Cyborgs

In the text "Mind control and the Internet", Sue Halpern writes about technological innovations designed to improve and extend our human capabilities. As examples she looks at how scientists has been able to make machines that works as neural prosthetics and implants, and synthetic brains, suddenly making problems like memory loss, brain damage and paralysation a minor issue (Halpern, S.)

Jesse Sullivan is one of the persons which has benefited from this type of new technology. At the age of 54, he worked as a high-power lineman and was badly electrocuted in a work accident and had to amputate both his arms. He was rehabilitated at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and the scientists there fitted him with two prosthetic arms. Using electrodes that picked up thought-controlled nerve impulses they were able to control Sullivan's prosthetic arms with the power of his mind.

(http://www.ric.org/research/accomplishments/Bionic.aspx)

Michael Chorost is a man that has also benefited from brain-computer technology after turning deaf in 2001. After getting his hearing back using neural implants, Chorost has become a spokesman for technological innovations. He states that technology is evolving too fast for our natural capabilities and that our brain is too limited, increasing at a much slower rate than the technology. He supports his theory by referring to Moore's law saying that "There is no Moore’s Law for human beings", Mores law stating that the number of transistors that can be placed on a silicon chip doubles every second year, and that we should use the new technology to extend our human capabilities.

This is all a step closer in making mankind into human cyborgs, and in time, perhaps evolving us all into super humans.

For further reading on this subject i recommend these links:
http://www.stanford.edu/~palanker/publications/prosthesis%20design.pdf

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/meet-the-real-life-human-cyborgs-600543

Sources:
Marshall, G., 2009, "Meet the real-life human cyborg", Techradar.com, viewed 12 August 11, located at <http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/meet-the-real-life-human-cyborgs-600543>


Halpern, S., "Mind Control and the Internet", The New York Review of Books. Located at
<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/mind-control-and-internet/?page=3>, 17.August 11.

Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, 2011, "Introducing Jesse Sullivan, the Worlds First "Byonic Man"", Viwed 17. August 11, located at <http://www.ric.org/research/accomplishments/Bionic.aspx>.