Imagine yourself a virtual living being, free of physical pain, able to repair any damage to your mechanical body and with a downloadable mind that never dies — a post-biological human. Several 21st Century technologies — prosthetics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and robotics — may define a new era in human progress, the Post-Human Era. With outposts all over the Internet, scientific idealists promote a positive — almost religious — vision of these emerging technologies’ potential impact on human evolution.
Their outlook is in marked contrast to the often grim warnings about advancing technology. Science-fiction films, for example, from “Metropolis” to “The Matrix,” remain firmly rooted in these fears. (A more comprehensive look at this technophobia will run next week.) Last year, computer scientist Bill Joy warned, in Wired magazine, about the dangers of uncontrolled technology: “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” (www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html)
But as evidenced by the following Web sites and books, the miraculous promise, no matter how theoretical, of these human-improving technologies draws a rapt audience.
Prosthetic technology regenerates a damaged body with artificial replacement parts — synthetic skin, mechanical heart valves, cochlear implants, titanium jaws, hips, arms, legs, hands, feet. The Global Resource for Orthotics and Prosthetics (www.oandp.com) provides links to numerous corporate and informational Web sites related to these currently available prostheses.
Cutting-edge prosthetic research promises even more miraculous possibilities. Scanning these research Web sites reveals developments in working artificial devices for many organs — kidneys, hearts, blood vessels and livers. Retinal Implant (www.uak.medizin.unituebingen.de/depii/g roups/subret/index-en.html) has developed technology that may provide sight to the blind in a few years; Bizspace Pharma (www.bizspacepharma.com/
Technology20%Articles/hand.htm) details research on artificial limbs controlled by nerve impulses.
Prosthetic research, with links to many research Web sites, is summarized at BusinessWeek online (www.businessweek.com/2000/00-12/b3673025.htm).
These prosthetic innovations of techno-science encourage a dream of immortality through gradual replacement of all body parts.
Biotechnology goes even further. Rather than provide a new artificial body, biotechnologists want to prevent or cure disease by managing the body’s biological processes in ever-greater detail, leading to perfect health. Web sites such as Bio OnLine (www.bio.com/os/start/home.html) and the government site Biotechnology (www.nal.usda.gov/bic/) offer information about the methods of biotech — nanotechnology, genetic manipulation and cloning — as well as present and future applications.
The many wonders of nanotechnology — designing or evolving tiny machines or biochips that can be programmed to operate within the human body — have been elaborately imagined by Eric Drexler in his 1987 book “Engines of Creation,” available for free on The Foresight Institute Web site (www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html).
Among other things, he envisions a nanotech diagnostic tool of the future: DNA-based computer chips, implanted into the body, will continuously analyze a person’s entire genome, determine when something goes wrong and provide the information needed to apply treatments and cures.
Other mind-boggling projections can be found at Nanotechnology magazine (http://nanozine.com/). A future nanotechnological cure for cancer might involve injecting cell-size nano-robot machines, or nanobots, into the afflicted person’s body. Using genetic sensors, these nanobots may be able to hunt down and destroy every cancer cell. Other diseases may also be subject to nanobot attacks. For example, differently programmed nanobots might be sent into the body to loosen tiny bits of artery plaque and clear out clogged blood vessels. These and other intriguing nanontechnological developments remain at an early stage.
Another biotechnological method, cloning, involves the regeneration of proteins, plants, animals and even humans from single cells. Brought to public attention by the movie “Jurassic Park” and the actual cloning of the sheep Dolly, current cloning practices produce antibodies used in medicine as well as drug manufacturing and disease diagnosis. Research, future predictions and lots of Internet links can be explored at the New Scientist Special Cloning Report (www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/clone/clonelinks.html).
Besides the possibility of growing entire replacement arms, feet, hearts or livers, cloning may lead to human immortality through endless bodily replication – as long as one remembers to extract and store his or her own DNA. Gene banks for pets already exist on the Internet. Genetic Savings & Clone (www.savingsandclone.com) offers to extract DNA from your pet and cryogenically store it. Human Cloning (www.globalchange.com/clonlink.htm) provides visual explanations of the cloning process, future predictions, links, news and ethical debate; Slouching Towards Creation: Peer Into the Face of Cloning (www.pathfinder.com/TIME/cloning/dolly.html) provides visuals plus essays on questions such as “Human cloning: should it be done? If it’s done, what would it mean?”
Artificial intelligence and robotics experts envision an even more bizarre method of attaining immortality. Their post-biological utopia assumes the extinction of humans or, at least, their conversion into an almost supernatural post-human species. On his Web site (www.penguinputnam.com/kurzweil/links.htm), author and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil — the inventor of the first reading machine for the blind — describes a future utopia in which humans live forever by becoming one with robotic technology. Rather than preserving our bodies, this method discards our death-susceptible physical form and aims to preserve our identity (our minds) by downloading consciousness into a computer within a robot body. A fascinating visual history and future projections of robot technology can be seen at Android World (www.androidworld.com/index.htm)
No one follows this post-biological line of speculation with the mechanist abandon of Carnegie-Mellon robotics pioneer Hans Morevec (www.frc.cmu.ri.edu/(tilde)hpm/). Moravec first seriously proposed transferring our minds into machines in his 1988 book “Mind Children” and developed the idea in his 1999 book “Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind.” On his Web site, Morevec says, “By mid-century no human task, physical or intellectual, should be beyond effective automation.” Moravec and Kurzweil both argue that humans should happily adapt to artificially intelligent robotic technology and gain immortality or face extinction.
Perhaps the most zealous proselytizers for this new brand of Homo Cyber are the post-humanists known as the Extropians (www.extropy.com). The Extropians spend a lot of time plotting out neo-Darwinian future scenarios dominated by futuristic technologies. Navigating their Web site, you will find optimistic predictions of off-world space colonies, advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and life extension through mental downloads. Like religious mystics, the Extropians meticulously plan for the day when technology will free us forever from the clutches of the earth, the body and death itself.
