An itch between my shoulder blades this morning while showering set off a train of thoughts I thought I would write down for posterity - or whatever. (Or is this just a form of self-obsession? Many of us are so connected these days. We're blogging and tweeting and Facebooking to share so many details of our lives. Well, not me so much. I'm too much of an introvert. Anyway, not trying to get philosophical here.)
Back to my hard-to-reach itch. I got to thinking how frustrating the physical limitations of human bodies can be and that led me to think about how different it could be when humans merge with machines in more complete ways. (Here's a line I ran across that nearly had me rolling on the floor: Sexbots will heighten our ecstasy until we have frothy, shrieking, bug-eyed, amnesia-inducing orgasms.) This process has already begun, of course. (There is the woman who had a tooth that I seem to recall was hollowed out, fitted with a camera lens, implanted where an eye was and attached to a retinal nerve. Not entirely sure I have the details exactly right. There are people with amputated legs that have been fitted with protheses that are in some limited ways superior to what they had and this is stirring debate about unfair advantages in sporting events.) But I'm getting sidetracked again. I got to wondering about how some possible scenarios might play out in Cyborg World. Specifically, how fierce the debate would be about how far is too far. I think we can be pretty sure it will get nasty. Maybe it will only be a vocal few. Perhaps fears real or imagined could escalate into legislation or persecution. I guess the possibilities are endless and ultimately unpredictable.
Except perhaps one: religious fundamentalism. My idle musings in the shower about obstacles to technological advances (no doubt influenced by an episode of "House" I had watched last night about a father who had himself actually crucified each year as part of a bargain he had made with God in order that his daughter would remain in remission from a nasty cancer she had - people believe weird things!) segued into some considerations of rejections of those technological advances. I was recalling how offended I was as a healthcare professional and a person when I first encountered long ago the religious objections of, for example, Jehovah's Witnesses to receiving life-saving blood products. I was doubly offended when reading tech articles that would mention the search for blood substitutes that, among other applications, could get around these (to me) idiotic objections. My first inclination would be to just get out of the way and watch the aforementioned idiot go to meet the consequences of stupid decisions. And stupid decisions should have consequences. I've been on the receiving end of those sorts of consequences enough myself to appreciate the value of the lessons they offer. They do tend to stick with you. Pain is indeed a wonderful teacher. The problem with life or death decisions made based on beliefs is that if the belief was a stupid one you are likely to end up very dead and the possibility of learning further lessons is forever ended. I guess the obvious conclusion here is to make sure you don't shackle yourself to stupid beliefs. On the other hand, technology and civilization have insulated many of us from some consequences of bad decisions and stupid beliefs. In fact, it just occurred to me that the right to have stupid beliefs that lead to bad decisions is enshrined in the Constitution. Whether that's a good idea is another argument and one I'm not sure which side I would come down on.
Whew! It takes way too many words and too much time to express the thoughts that race around in your head in a few moments!
Back to the human-machine merging... Just picture, if you will, some of the mind-blowing possibilities. Some might decide the human shape is rather limited and opt for radical redesign. Maybe to something like a Transformers approach. Might be useful to morph into whatever best suited the task at hand. Others have considered these possibilities with infinitely more imagination than I possess. Posthuman or transhuman are words often applied to what we may become. The philosopher Nick Bostrom has some terrific stuff about posthumanism on his website http://www.nickbostrom.com/ . Letter From Utopia has wonderful prose and The Dragon Tyrant is a good tale. I think it was Marvin Minsky (I believe he's an artificial intelligence pioneer) who was asked the question: "Will robots take over the Earth?" His answer was, "Yes, but they will be our children."
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