In a recent article; "Brain Chips and Other Dreams of the Cyber-Evangelists", John Horgan dispatches a scathing critique of recent books that take up the topic of enhancement of human capabilities via technology. The article was published in the June 3, 2005 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly publication that can be found lying around campus offices, or read on-line with a subscription.
He takes authors and texts to task, among them Digital People From Bionic Humans to Androids by Sidney Perkowitz, and Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us", by Rodney A. Brooks. He finds the whole genre entertaining but irrelevant - fiction, he argues. He cites evidence from the book Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, by Michael Chorost that describes the limitations prosthetic research.
Horgan also comments on "brain chips", the technology and ethics discussed in Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future", by James Hughes. Hughes suggests that the brain chips (that would store actionable information for the brain) could be provided to all and monitored for moral decency by a benign global government. Says Horgan:
"[Hughes] proposes equipping dolphins and monkeys with brain chips so that we can communicate with them. You would think someone who entertains such notions would be a fun guy...But Citizen Cyborg has the deadly earnestness of an Al Gore white paper on toxic waste. Hughes wants us to take this cyborg stuff very, very seriously."
Of I, Cyborg, by Kevin Warwick, he says: "a masterpiece of naive, unwittingly comic narration", by a "flamboyant" and relentlessly self-aggrandizing- authorial persona"...who has "transformed himself into a kind of neurobionic performance artist".
"Warwick recounts how in 2002 he persuaded a surgeon to implant a chip in his forearm and another chip in the forearm of his hapless wife, Irena...who 'remained brave', 'shrieking on a couple of occasions when it was particularly painful.'"
"After the implantations, when Warwick made a fist, his chip picked up the minute electrical surge in his arm and sent a signal to his wife's chip, which buzzed her. She then flexed her hand, and he felt 'a beautiful, sweet, deliciously sexy charge..'"
"Warwick...calls his stunt, 'the most incredible scientific project imaginable, one that is sure to change, incalculably, humankind and the future'"
Horgan scoffs; "[T]he Warwicks could have achieved an equivalent intimacy with vibrating cellphones: the fact that the chips were embedded in their bodies made no functional difference.." He concludes that Warwick is either, in the words of another scientist, "a buffoon" or a "charlatan". He illustrates a point. "Warwick does seem to have a knack for mixing tales of draconian torture with banal Harlequin romance dialogue with the egomanical rambles of a principle investigator, a delivery style that does little to inspire confidence in his vision for science."
Horgan also doubts the concepts of "singularity", discussed by Ray Kurzweil (and many others) in a couple of books. Moreover he pans the solution offered in Kurzweil's most recent book; Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever". Not without reason. Could one really eat organic veggies and drink alkaline water long enough to extend ones life to experience "the singularity"- where ones neuronal code could be uploaded into a computer to allow one to live forever? Quite probably a preposterous proposition.
Horgan charges that such futuristic predictions fail to take into account the actual progress and limitations of scientific research. The authors take irrational leaps of faith about technology [not to mention politics and government] in order to construct their bionic worlds. Horgan correctly points out that in the past couple of decades research has made relatively small steps towards neural prostheses and artificial intelligence. Cochlear implants have made great advances, but as Chorost points out in Rebuilt, they still offer a rudimentary solution to hearing loss. Retinal implants allow patients to sense no more than random flashes of light.
Horgan is a science writer, a former editor of Scientific American and author of several books. In one of his previous books; "The End of Science" (1996) (some of the concepts are updated and reiterated here), he suggests that the major questions of science have been answered. Accordingly, there won't be any more major revolutions in scientific theory, he says, like discoveries in the realm of DNA comprising the coding blocks of life, Darwin's natural selection, or quantum mechanics.
His book drew hearty, biting criticism from various scientists as well as his fellow science authors/philosophers. Apparently at ease inciting controversy, he glibly reciprocated the heated points of his would be detractors. Interestingly, almost ten years later, in the light of notable scientific achievement, it appears that "Brain Chips and Other Dreams of the Cyber-Evangelists", reflects the same sentiments about the limited future of scientific research. Do Horgan's criticisms of these authors may be bounded by his insistence on limited scientific progress. His prognosis then, is predictable:
"[N]ow and for the foreseeable future, cyber-evangelism is best understood as an escapist, quasi-religious fantasy, which reflects an oddly dated, Jetxons-esque faith in scientific progress and it potential to cure all that ails us.""Not only is each person's code [sic] probably idiosyncratic, the product of his or her unique biology, but our individual codes may also constantly evolve in response to new experiences. For all those reasons, some neuroscientists suspect that uploading, downloading, telepathic conversations, and other scenarios that involve precise reading and manipulation of thoughts may never be possible - no matter how far brain-chip technology advances."
His points are valid, but seem to draw from rigid thinking employed to assess an obviously changing physical world. This is ironic because he strongly reasons that it is the changing world of neurobiology that nimbly morphs, forever defying a scientific understanding that could lead to the actualization of some of the more edgy ideas posed by the authors. Horgan's blind spot may be that he refuses to imagine a world where the framework is vastly different from the current one, so in the end, the "end of science" suits only his "lack of imagination".
Man's history is miniscule relative to that of the universe and to many other organisms. So the idea that humans are capable of evolving indefinitely as suggested by cyborg theories is clearly debatable. But his is an imperfect lens. Many imaginative ideas are not scientifically tenable, but all discovery is fueled by a sense of possibility and imagination by those who dare to challenge current paradigms.
