Greetings!
When it comes to technology and the human brain, there’s a fraction of people that recoil and a fraction that exult. When some people picture the future of technology it isn’t actually that hard to conceive a world in which technology is actually a part of the human body. But is it a good thing? Some people would revere this incredible leap in technology, but others might view it as an invasion of privacy.
There is a book series called Uglies by Scott Westerfield that is set in the post-apocalyptic future, after civilisation has been rebuilt. In the series the world has developed far beyond anything mankind had managed in the past (our present). In the series, the protagonist receives a sort of plastic surgery in which she has computers embedded in her mind. She can use it to contact other people like a communicator, to research information like today’s search engines, and various other inhuman enhances.
Sue Halpern quotes a man in her article for the New York Review of Books, Mind Control & The Internet. Michael Chorost had received surgery that implanted a computer-esque piece of machinery in his inner ear that allowed him to hear after spending the majority of his life deaf. He is quoted saying “My two implants make me irreversibly computational, a living example of the integration of humans and computers. So for me the thought of implanting something like a BlackBerry in my head is not so strange. It would not be so strange for a lot of people, I think.”
It is quite possible this is the direction the world is headed, with the advances in technology. Would it be available to the general public? Would it be mandatory? It’s interesting to ponder, whether the technology will exist or not, what would be the circumstances of a life integrated with computers?
Westerfield, S 2005, Uglies, Simon Pulse, New York.
Halpern, S 2011, Mind Control & The Internet, New York Review of Books, vol 58, no 11, viewed 26 August.
No comments:
Post a Comment