CarboSilico Man - Soul Catcher
I used to think that my decreasing ability to remember details of the past, coupled with an increasing recall time were a function of age. However, recent evidence points towards memory overload brought on by a new and increasingly chaotic lifestyle. Many people in their mid-twenties are now suffering from information overload brought on by increased communication and travel. The evolution of our species saw a rapid encephalisation through hunting, throwing projectiles, making tools and language. Living in small groups and meeting a few thousands of people in a lifetime saw us with adequate brain capacity. Today we can exceed our basic specification in the first three decades of life. Only sleep, Hebian decay, books and disc storage mechanisms, with computers becoming our third lobe, allow us to cope with a world of accelerating travel, and electronic communication. But these extensions to the human brain capacity will ultimately become inadequate, and so we might consider the prospect of the implanted third lobe.Commander Data on the Starship Enterprise has an estimated 100Tip/s processing and 100TBytes storage capacity, plus a desire to become human. He falls about an order of magnitude short of our abilities and his forebear already exists as a super computer today of 1Tip/s capability. So, at the present rate of progress we are less than a decade away from creating Data in the form of a mainframe machine. Of course the subtle difference between Data and the supercomputer are those vital sensory and ambulatory abilities, plus the technology to realise intelligence. As far as we can tell, high intelligence involves the ability to absorb information far exceeding the ability to output. In our case we take in over 1Gbit/s through our visual system, and less than 13Mbit/s through our remaining senses combined. Our output in terms of speech or typing is only around 100bit/s when we discount the emotional content that still escapes machines - including Data.
To date, there have been over 1700 successful cochlea implants, thousands of pacemakers and respiratory stimulators, a few partially successful attempts at electronic bridging of the spinal chord, and just one attempt at an artificial retina. An initial engineering view might suggest that the coupling between any electronic prosthetic and our nervous system would take great knowledge and precision to select the correct connections. Fortunately, this appears not to be the case as our neural network has the ability to redirect and sort the signals. So it seems we may soon realise the ability to fundamentally extend and enhance our wetware. The first attempts will most likely be prompted by the desire to repair deficiencies or damage, and probably a direct migration from other electronic prostheses developments. But the advantages of such silico-enhancements of memory and processing abilities will rapidly become evident and probably a prized modification.
Among the desirable features of a silicon extension - PC in your head - would be; high speed data processing and memory, no distortion or decay, but with a delete function. More tantalising is the prospect of silicon, with a degree of analogue processing, and dedicated functions that could be applied on demand. Business, finance, medicine and gambling spring to mind for starters. With such an ability we would forget nothing, process everything, and if we so desired be adapted to a wider range sensory systems extending into the InfraRed, UltraViolet, ultrasonic, electrostatic and electromagnetic. Most importantly we could always be on-line, and ultimately, or even inevitably, be part of a new collective consciousness.
Who could resist this extension of our basic and ultimately limited humanity. Well, no doubt Homo-Ludditus would, but then this sub-species resisted everything from the bow and arrow to the PC - for a while. But at the point of death, even they find it hard to resist the artificial heart, lungs, kidneys or pancreas. Moreover, being a member of the have-not brigade gets serious when you are excommunicated by your inability to communicate, store and process information.
Looking backwards, all our technologies have improved our lot, and it has been the misuse by people that has caused major problems. And so it will be in the future with chip implants. There will be those who will seek to control and exploit the people and the technology. However, when we are all on-line it might just be that the good really do overpower the evil - bit by bit.
by Peter Cochrane
