The Cyborg Times

Mumbai: Which of the following is science fiction?
(a) A rat’s brain flying a plane
(b) An android removing his biological eye
(c) A monkey controlling a robot using its thoughts

Though it is the least weird of the three, the answer is (b)-from the movie Terminator. Yes, it’s finally come to pass-science fact is truly stranger than science fiction. We have all watched blockbusters such as Terminator, and are all familiar with the terms cyborg, cybernetics, android, etc. However, what is a cyborg? Dictionary.com’s definition: “Cyborg: A human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices.” So, in theory, a person with an artificial limb, or heart, or lung, or even a hearing aid, could be considered a cyborg.

However, this is not about nit-picking over definitions, it’s about us, humans, and how technology is changing us; making us evolve into part-tech, part-tissue beings.

So how many people that you know are already on their way to becoming a cyborg? There are several out there already!

Scientists at the University of Tokyo are experimenting with how cockroaches can be put to use. This cockroach has, attached to its head, electrodes that can be remote-controlled

“I Want To Be A Cyborg”
“My being born a human was an accident,” confesses  Professor Kevin Warwick

Reading, UK: Kevin Warwick, Professor in the Department of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, has proclaimed that his being born human was “an accident of fate,” which he says, can be changed. In his “Project Cyborg,” Warwick experimented with what measure of control could be achieved using implants-electronic chips married to his body, specifically, his arm.

His first implant, back in 1998, allowed him to control doors by hand gestures or walking in a certain direction. In 2002, an implant comprising an array of 100 electrodes, with a neural interface allowed him to go further.

The new implant sends signals back and forth between Warwick’s nervous system and a computer. The idea is to “tap into his nerve fibres” and try a series of experiments. His first goal was to record and identify signals associated with motion.

When he twiddled his left index finger, a signal was sent, via the implant, to a computer where it was then recorded and stored. The next step was to transmit this signal back to the implant, in an attempt to generate an action in Warwick-trying to get his left index finger to twiddle.

Soon, say several experts, sci-fi will need to catch up with reality.

In 1997, researchers at the University of Tokyo attached some of the motor neurons of a cockroach to a microprocessor. Signals were sent to the neurons, through electrodes, and the cockroach was propelled involuntarily. The next step is to eliminate controls-wire up a human brain to the cockroach, and let the human control it by thought! So how long before humans can be wired up and controlled? More importantly, who will do the controlling?

Warwick once spoke of an experiment in which a team at Emory University in Atlanta implanted a transmitting device into the brain of a stroke patient.

After the motor neurons were linked to the silicon, the patient was able to move a cursor on a computer monitor just by thinking about it. If thought control of a cursor is possible, why not thought control of an implant in someone else’s brain-effectively, the direct transmission of thought via implants? What about mind-reading?

In December 2004, four people were able to control a computer using their thoughts and an electrode-studded “thinking cap,” US researchers reported. The experiment, reported in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, required no surgery and no implants. During the experiments, the four volunteers faced a video screen wearing a cap that held 64 electrodes against the scalp to record their brain activity. The key, of course, was the algorithm that translated brain signals into an interpretation of what the users wanted the computer to do.

A normal by-product of such advances is paranoia, and understandably so. So your brain is directly connected to your PC, but what stops the commands from being sent from PC to brain? No system is perfect, and all of us computer users will testify to that. What if someone developed a virus that could seize control of your brain the next time you “interfaced” with your computer? Paranoia is the leveller of the over-enthusiastic, and some believe that mass mind control already exists-visit http://snipurl.com/ bjvi and http://snipurl.com/bjvj, which are indicative.

Thomas DeMarse, a University of Florida (UF) scientist, grew a living “brain” that could fly a simulated plane. The “brain” was a collection of 25,000 living neurons taken from a rat’s brain and cultured in a glass dish. DeMarse’s experimental “brain” interacts with a flight simulator of an F-22 fighter jet through a desktop computer, and a specially designed plate called a multi-electrode array. DeMarse says, “Over the electrode grid in the dish, we put living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to re-connect themselves, forming a living neural network-a brain.” The brain and the simulator establish a two-way connection, similar to how neurons receive and interpret signals from each other to control our bodies.

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions-for example, whether the plane is flying level or if it is tilted. The neurons then analyse the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system. The “brain” slowly learns to fly the plane, through trial and error.

So is this just another neural network displaying learning behaviour? In a sense, yes. But the fact that it is living makes it a milestone. If a rat’s brain cells can pilot a simulated plane, what might a human brain in a dish be capable of?

Electronic Eel
Israel: Dr Amir Karniel, an expert in electrical engineering from the Technion, and a researcher in the area of motor control, has participated in several fascinating experiments. In one of them, he and other researchers separated the brain stem of a lamprey-an eel-like fish-from its body, and kept it alive in a container filled with oxygenated salt water, with electrodes attached to its side.

They connected a standard robot with wheels and light sensors to this floating brain. The robot was surrounded by a ring of light bulbs, controlled by the researchers. When a light bulb was flashed, the robot would send a signal to the floating brain, informing it of a flashing light.
The brain was able to understand this data, and send back a signal, commanding the robot to move, correctly, towards the light.

Now we know that disembodied brains can indeed command robotic appliances to act on their behalf. Perhaps the people who have spent millions on cryogenics (freezing human brains, with the hope of living again someday) will have the last laugh after all.

But living forever, as utopian as it may sound, is not the be-all and end-all of such research.

With implants recording our experiences, and with the ability to play them back, will all experiences boil down to the right kind of implant?

Will we have any use for a “regular” life at all? Will we, as cyborgs, lie asleep, Matrix-style, experiencing the world via our implants? If thought control becomes possible, who will control whose thoughts? Who will be the ultimate controller, preventing us from bringing back slavery? If we can read each other’s thoughts, we will not be able to lie-is that good or bad? Will the exorbitant prices of such implants mean that the rich will live forever and the poor will continue to die, relatively, young? Will there be exorbitantly-priced implants that offer control over other, lesser-priced variants?

These are profound questions, and they will become more and more important. A simple example: the Total Artificial Heart costs $100,000 (Rs 44,61,000). Who gets to be in the queue?

The facts are simple: the technology exists; it needs to be improved; it will be improved. Immortality is just a few years or decades and a few thousand successful experiments away-providing you can afford it!