Bionic limbs are becoming a reality.
Project: The great enhancement debate

...I created thee as a being neither celestial nor earthly... so that thou shouldst be thy own free moulder and overcomer... Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 1486

No doubt, this video shows an amazing feat of technology and engineering made possible by this amazing guy Dean Kamen and his co workers. No doubt it is going to help hundreds perhaps thousands of seriously disabled people to lead a normal life. It is a real victory of human ingenuity. But this is not the only reason why what you have seen here is important.

Let me speculate just a bit: It is entirely plausible that perfecting this impressive artificial limb prototype into to a fully functional limb, which can perform as good as or better than a normal biological limb, will take about 10 to 15 years. It is not anymore a question of if, but rather a question of how soon. There is a real and immediate need for such limbs, and there are, as we see, the technological means. I guess that within the time frame just mentioned, this technology will be perfected to produce limbs virtually indistinguishable from normal biological ones.

Within an additional 5 to 10 years, a bionic limb's performance will exceed biological limbs by any imaginable criteria and the procedure of attaching them to a living body will become well understood, safe, and relatively cheap. At that time or a bit later (30 years from now to be on the safe side, and this is a very conservative scenario) normal people with normal limbs will contemplate replacing their healthy yet fallible limbs with these superior technological creations. Not everybody will do it of course, but then again not everybody nowadays goes for plastic surgery either. Why will they do it? Mostly because they will be able to, and bionic hands will be cooler, stronger, more sensitive, more dexterous,not prone to irreparable damage, etc. On top of that they will be upgradeable and adjustable to any task. They will never get tired...

There is a future rushing upon us where many choices such as replacing a limb will become available. What kind of future is it going to be? Even today technology brings into our lives many options. Some, that just a few years ago seemed to be anything between magical and speculative science fiction, are becoming part of today's conventional way of life. Sooner or later choices such as replacing a limb, or an eye, or any other organ, perhaps even parts of our brains, will seem to be conventional options available within our conventional circumstances of life.

But who or what sets the direction of what conventional is in the first place? And how exactly is such a direction being set?

The way we see ourselves today, a human body without a limb is not a complete human body. This seems to us as a given fact. Functionally and psychologically one may adapt to live without a limb, overcome the circumstances of disability, and live a good fulfilling life. And yet, in our collective image one would be better off with both limbs. There is no argument about that.

In the days coming after tomorrow, the very same technologies helping the disabled to regain their physical completeness, will provide the means to artificially augment human bodies beyond their so called natural abilities. What exactly does 'artificial' mean? Artificial as in agriculture, domesticating thousands of species to serve our needs? Artificial as in living in cities instead of hunting and gathering? Artificial as in practicing birth control? As in wearing contact lenses? As in speaking to a friend over the cellular? Most of us find these practices perfectly natural. This was not the case less than a century ago. And now what about the disabled man with the bionic arm? Does it seem natural to him to be able to feed himself again after so many years? Does it seem natural to us watching him doing so? It seems that the distinction between artificial and natural is pretty blurred, context sensitive, and most importantly depends on what is considered to be normative in our collective image.

The choices that will become available to us, and are already available today, are choices that are defining our very concept of what it is to be a human being. They define the norm of being a member of this species. These critical choices are often disguised, whether by obviously biasing circumstances such as in the case of the disabled, or by trivializing the meaning of choices in everyday life situations just because the options are available and taken for granted, like in the case of cosmetic plastic surgery.

In fact, those seemingly localized choices do have far reaching consequences beyond their immediate locality. They do, so I believe, have universal consequences for our entire species. They irreversibly change our perception of ourselves, of others, and the universe around us. We make these choices individually but it always seems to us that they are made collectively and beyond the influence of the individual. Does it occur to any of us that the very act of purchasing a cellular phone has consequences on a scale much wider than the individual context? I find it hardly believable because the choice has already been made: Not having a cellular phone is like not being functionally/socially complete. And if the case of having a cellular phone is not convincing think about owning a credit card? Is it not that in certain places a person without a credit card is a lesser person? How and when and by whom have such choices been made?

These are just some thoughts I wish to share about the future of being a human. Bionic limbs are indeed becoming a reality. What reality itself is becoming, and do we care to care about it, is an entirely different question.

Mon, Jun 2, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: The great enhancement debate