Downloads and upgrades: The Cyborg Future

This article by Philippa Taylor, Associate Director of the Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy, was first published in the CBBP Newsletter (Issue 7, Winter 2005/6). CultureWacth is grateful for permission to republish it here.

Imagine being able to walk towards a door and have it automatically open up for you as the lights switch on and a voice welcomes you into the room or building. Imagine being able to operate a robot arm from the other side of the Atlantic via the Internet, using neural signals, or operate a wheelchair solely through neural signals. Imagine communicating your feelings with your spouse, who is in a different place, via your two nervous systems.

Professor Kevin Warwick from Reading University calls himself the first 'cyborg' because he has pioneered these things since 1998, when he first had a tiny electronic implant in his arm. He experiments on himself in order to see how the human brain can affect and alter basic behaviour by purely electronic stimulation. Now he wants to help patients who have lost a limb to operate an artificial limb through neural signals; he wants to give patients brain implants to help them regain control over movement, or regain memory; he aims to connect those who cannot speak to computers in order to communicate through thinking. He works closely with the National Spinal Injuries Centre to help those with spinal injuries and claims that thousands of Parkinson's patients are already benefiting from implants in the UK.

Warwick's extraordinary research - presented at the Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy's conference 'Brave New Britain: New Technologies and the Future of Human Nature' (15 November 2005) - is on the interface between the human brain and nervous system, using implant technology. His aim is twofold: to advance technologies for treatment, or therapeutic, purposes (for those with disabilities, such as spinal injuries) and to advance technology for enhancing, or 'upgrading', humans.

Pushing the boundaries is what really motivates Warwick. As he stated at the conference:

'. . . Humans, as we are now, are pretty limited animals, particularly from a mental point of view...so when we compare how the human brain works with machine intelligence, we can see that computers outperform the human brain in many ways . . . If my brain is partly electronic and the computer is electronic why not link the two together and see if I can upgrade my own abilities? . . . Why not link your brain to a computer and have the memory capabilities of the computer directly in your brain? This is looking at doing the research that makes this a reality and that overcomes some of the problems.'

To Warwick, the real beauty of the computer is the network it links into. But is it possible to link brain and computer? If it is, what does it mean if my brain is linked to your brain? Warwick claims that we do indeed have the technology to do this now, to link all our brains together. But, he asks, when the 'I' becomes the 'we', does that mean 'I' am still a human? Are my values the same as when I was fully human? Do I have machine values, whatever they might be?

If, as Warwick advocates, the wonders of technology will upgrade us into superior beings who will live longer and think smarter than any of us can even dream of doing today, should he be stopped from doing this research, particularly when it is bringing obvious therapeutic benefits to some (albeit to a few and for a price)? Warwick's message is that the technology is here and in eight to ten years' time we will be seeing brain implants and direct communication by thought. It will happen, he says.

So the boundaries that define us as human beings are up for grabs. Boundaries between a human being and a super, upgraded human being. However, just as we are faced with all these possibilities, it is becoming increasingly difficult to speak simply in terms of 'therapy' versus 'enhancement'. The line is too blurred, as one person's therapy can be another's enhancement (whether growth hormone, or neuro-prosthesis).

Nevertheless, the line must be drawn, because we need to know the point at which the human condition, or human nature, begins to come under threat. By 'human nature' we mean the given-ness that we inherit as biological, psychosocial beings who are members of the species Homo sapiens. In the same way that we can identify the essential 'dogness' in dogs, and 'catness' in cats (so that, if their properties were radically changed, we might confuse them either with each other, or with the vacuum cleaner) we have substantial intuitions as to what it is to be fully human. Although we can enjoy the benefits of biotechnology, we do need to hold fast to this humanness, our human 'nature', seen not only in material or mechanistic or medical terms, as Warwick does, but in psychic and moral and spiritual ones.

So although the therapy/enhancement distinction is difficult to make, and Warwick could not (or would not?) make the distinction himself at our conference, the issue to which it draws attention - between the medical model and the manufacturing model - is central to distinguishing humane technological interventions from the ultimately inhumane.

C.S. Lewis predicted these challenges of transformational technologies. His particular concern was that technology, which is always said to extend the power of the human race (just as Warwick aims to do), is in fact a means of extending the power of 'some men over other men'. Lewis is very aware of the capacity of technology to be used to subject some to the power of others, which is why he states, in The Abolition of Man:

'There can be no actual net 'increase' in power on man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides the general who triumphs, he is a prisoner who follows the triumphal car . . . Human nature will be the last part of nature to surrender to man. The battle will then be won. We shall have 'taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho' and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?' (p. 36-37)

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