Until recently, the word "cyborg" (cybernetic organism) was known only to scientists and science fiction lovers. The term itself appeared in 1980 with the light hand of engineer Manfred Clynes and psychiatrist Nathan Klin, who dealt with the problem of human survival outside the Earth.
A new word came to literature and sounded from the screens. The "cyborg" owes its wide popularity to the film "Robot Cop". Machine Man Alex Murphy posed a question to mankind: is there a real possibility of turning people into cybernetic organisms?
The loss of any part of the body is always difficult for a person to perceive. And not only because of the loss of certain functional capabilities, but also because of the hardships of public disability. Even in the ancient world, people created devices that imitate missing organs: artificial teeth and even jaws, glass eyes and leg prostheses. But for a long time it was not possible to construct an artificial hand. And only in 1509 the first prosthesis was made, the owner of which was the German knight Goetz von Berlichingen, nicknamed the Iron Hand.
Ambroise Pare is considered the true father of prosthetics. The apprentice barber, who had no medical education, went to war in 1536, where he revolutionized field surgery. For example, he replaced the filling of a gunshot wound with boiling alder resin with a treatment with a drug of egg yolk, rose oil and turpentine. And when amputating limbs, instead of cauterizing the stump, he began to apply tourniquets. Most importantly, he designed several options for a prosthetic hand. And if the first models performed only the most important function for a particular person (for example, there was a special pen holder in the prosthesis for a scribe), then by the end of his life Pare created an artificial hand, each finger of which was driven by a system of microscopic levers and gears. This prosthesis laid the foundation for the further development of prosthetics, not only imitating the presence of a lost organ, but also functionally corresponding to it.
Thus began the era of the unification of man and technology in one body.
The prostheses of today, the language does not turn to be called prostheses. The false jaw in its modern form has become the envy of even the owners of a full set of natural teeth. For the sake of a “Hollywood smile”, people ruthlessly replace them with implants.
If earlier limb prostheses reacted only to the movement of the surviving part of the arm or leg, then the electronics of modern analogs are directly combined with nerve endings - that is, the prostheses are set in motion by brain signals. Silicone muscles also work like living ones, only they are fed not by blood, but by a built-in pneumoaccumulator.
The function of the organ of vision is fully performed by an artificial silicon retina (RS), consisting of 3.5 thousand microscopic cells that convert the light incident on them into electrical impulses entering the brain.
Many microscopic electrodes replace damaged sensory fibers inside the hearing organ and transmit acoustic signals to the human brain no worse, if not better than their natural counterpart.
And this is not the whole list of human "spare parts": from artificial hair and nails to an artificial heart and lungs ... At the same time, a person equipped with such an arsenal is almost impossible to distinguish from a "natural". And this already gives grounds to talk about the joint evolution of man and technology into a cybernetic organism. That is, modern prosthetics, in fact, is already the beginning of “cyborgization” (this term is used to describe the process of turning a person into a cyborg).
Those who represent the "man-machine" system, that is, cyborgs, are already among us - and every year there will be more of them. Developing technologies make it possible not only to restore lost abilities, but also to acquire new, previously unknown abilities. It seems that by the middle of the 21st century, people, just as freely as they buy household appliances or cars now, will be able to purchase not just spare organs, but also “exotics”; eyes that see radio waves; ears perceiving ultrasound; auxiliary "prefixes" for the brain; limbs that allow you to exceed any athletic records, and the like. And most importantly, from time to time, “spare parts” can be changed, which essentially means eternal life.
But one should not rejoice violently at the coming "immortality". As Mikhail Zhvanetsky said: “We have everything, but not everyone has enough” ... Specialists from the Institute of Cybernetics in Reading (USA) have calculated how much it will cost to implant artificial implants to replace or help worn-out organs. If in the mid-eighties the total price of the main “spare parts for the body” was $ 6,000,000, then today, thanks to cheaper technologies, it has decreased 40 times and ranges from $ 160,000. Namely: an electronic ear - $ 15,000, an eye prosthesis made of glasses - $300, an elbow joint - $2,000, a hip prosthesis with a joint - $15,000, an artificial heart - $50,000, an artificial lung - $35,000, a ceramic jaw - $20,000, and so on.
Today's "cheapness" has expanded the range of possible users of the benefits of technologically new prosthetics. But the circle will still remain a circle, outside of which the named sums are something from the realm of fantasy.
It is impossible not to notice that not all products of cybernetic technologies are marked in the presented price list. Where is, for example, X? Instead, we see only a glass eye. At the same time, the list already goes off scale for $140,000, that is, less than $20,000 remains for everything else in the “prosthetic consumer basket”. And the latest prostheses for missing limbs, kidneys, stomach, intestines, etc. clearly do not fit into this amount. However, who said that $160,000 is the limit? There are no restrictions for those who wish to acquire beyond the possibilities and eternal physical youth. Of course, if you have enough money...
And this means that sooner or later a new caste of cyborgs will appear on the planet, who will physically and materially surpass the rest of the planet's population. Who, if not them, to rule the world?!
Even today, synthetic prostheses and implants help prolong the life of every tenth inhabitant of highly developed countries. Pacemakers, defibrillators, heart valves, knee joints - these are the realities of our time.
The largest analyst of our time, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge Steve Hawking has been chained to a special wheelchair for more than 30 years, and after removing the larynx, he communicates with the world using a computer that synthesizes human speech. An incurable disease, in which motor neurons gradually die, did not reach only the famous physicist, who retained some mobility of the index finger of his right hand - with his help he controls the computer.
At the international conference on robotics in Toronto, Steve Hawking, who delved into the issue of cyborgization deeper and more tragically than other analysts, said that experiments on implanting microchips into the human body and replacing natural organs with artificial ones in 20-30 years will end with the complete victory of the human cyborg over homo sapiens …
But the root of the problem lies not in the innovations offered by technological progress, but in the fact that the moral improvement of people lags behind the pace of technological development. Indeed, in itself, the replacement of diseased or damaged organs with their technical counterparts is a real victory for mankind. But in the absence of clear moral criteria and attitudes, there will certainly be people who want to replace their still healthy organs with more perfect ones. Once started, the process will develop like an avalanche until it divides humanity into two camps - rich cyborgs (those who have enough money to improve their bodies) and poor straight people. And this will change our world not for the better, because it will be more painful than just dividing into rich and poor. The father of prosthetics, Ambroise Pare, liked to say: "God heals - I only bandage wounds." But in reality, he was the first to step onto the road along which science is moving today, having entered into competition with the Creator.
Cyborgization is the process of transforming a living organism into a cyborg - a cybernetic organism containing mechanical and electronic components, in order to restore the damage received or in order to obtain the desired properties. The key feature is the splicing of the body and gadgets and other components (implantation). As long as a person uses, say, binoculars, such a person cannot be a cyborg, but if binoculars are built into a person's eye socket, or connected to his optic nerve, this is already cyborgization. A trivial example of cyborgization is the use of bioelectric prostheses, cardiac implants, implants to restore vision and hearing, etc.
Since the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, one can notice a gradual increase in the degree of cyborgization of people, mainly for medical reasons, and animals - mainly in the course of various experiments.
A counter process can be observed when robots are given a resemblance to living beings (bionics) or even equipped with separate organs taken from living beings or similar to those of living beings (skin grown in laboratories, for example).
The topic of cyborgization raises many moral and ethical dilemmas. For example, is it possible to control the behavior of insects, animals, humans after their cyborgization?
The use of a combination of artificial materials and living cells at the same time makes the resulting cybernetic organism vulnerable and short-lived - at some point, living cells will die. At the same time, cybernetic organisms may have greater capabilities than ordinary biological organisms or only synthetic devices due to the "synergistic effect".
Another direction of cyborgization is the transfer of a person's personality to an artificial carrier. Carriers can be different, for example, today computers or a cloud structure are considered in this capacity. As computing power increases, the corresponding computer may be able to be placed, for example, in a robot.
Cyborgization of insects
Draper and the Howardle Hughes Institute (HHMI), USA
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Conducts experiments related to the cyborgization of insects. Using electrodes and mounting electronic “backpacks” on the backs of insects, the researchers have developed “living machines” that can be controlled from a distance. Insects do not use battery power to stay in the air, and therefore, in a number of applications, they can outperform classic drones in terms of efficiency.
Robots with elements of living beings
News of cyborgization
2017.11.02 - funds will be used to develop a bionic forearm prosthesis that children can use. It should be a multifunctional bionic prosthesis-gadget.
2017.02.01 . Project DragonflEye - control of medium-sized insects using light signals. An onboard autonomous navigation system is used.
When we hear about cyborgs (“cybernetic organisms”), our minds invariably turn to science fiction. But in fact, cyborgs have been around for a long time: look at people with pacemakers and ear implants, for example. Their bodies are a combination of organic, electronic and biomechanical parts. In our selection, you will meet people in whose bodies technology is integrated in much more extreme ways.
1. Jerry Jalava
Jerry Jalava's finger is a hard drive, although the word "flash drive" seems more appropriate here. He lost part of his finger in an accident, and did what any sane person would do (joke): turned his finger into a hard drive. A disk with a USB port is inside the prosthesis, and the prosthesis is attached to what is left of the finger. Whenever Jerry needs to use a hard drive, he simply removes the prosthesis, plugs it in, and when done, removes it. Which for the first time makes it possible to steal important data with a handshake - like in a movie about spies.
2. Blade Runners
Most of us have heard of Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter. He has both legs amputated and before being convicted for the murder of his girlfriend, he took part in the 2012 Summer Paralympics. Pistorius uses carbon fiber J-shaped prostheses that allow him to remain mobile despite his disability. Many Paralympic athletes use this type of carbon fiber in their prostheses because it is light and strong. And although Pistorius is hardly a role model, this type of prosthetics is becoming more common.
3. Rob Spence
Rob Spence calls himself an "eyeborg". He lost his right eye as a result of an unsuccessful shot from a gun. Many people would have been fine with a glass eye after this, but Spence seems to have decided to have some fun and inserted a video camera with a battery into his empty eye socket. The camera records everything he sees for later playback. Spence, as befits a director, is constantly improving his eye-camera to make it even more effective.
4. Tim Cannon
Software engineer Tim Cannon has an electronic chip implanted under his skin by buddies. And by the way, none of the participants in this procedure was a certified surgeon. They used ice to relieve pain, as there were no certified anesthesiologists among them either. Despite the health and legal risks, the idea itself is interesting.
The chip is called Circadia 1.0 and it records Cannon's body temperature and sends that data to a smartphone. Cannon's case points to the possibility of a further fusion of technology and people, where the data collected by the chips can be used to change our environment. In the future, such technologies could be used in "smart homes" that will read data from implanted chips and then change the environment, making it more suitable for our mood and condition. For example, dim the lights or turn on relaxing music.
5. Amal Graafstra
Amal Graafstra is the owner of a company called Dangerous Things that sells self-implanting implant kits. Amal himself has RFID chips implanted in both hands, between his thumbs and forefingers. These implants allow him to unlock the doors of the house, open the car, turn on the computer with a quick hand scan. The chips even provide integration into social networks.
Amal's implants are not visible until he shows them himself. He uses them not to return his functionality or sense organs to a normal level, but to improve existing, normal functionality.
6. Cameron Clapp
Cameron Clapp has a human head, a human torso and a left arm. He lost both legs and his right arm as a teenager in a train derailment. All missing limbs have been replaced with prosthetic limbs, which doesn't stop Clapp from being a runner, golfer, and actor. Prosthetic legs use a special system that stimulates muscle growth. There are also sensors that monitor the distribution of body weight and adjust the hydraulics, allowing Clapp to walk freely. He has several sets of prosthetics for different purposes: a separate set for walking, running and even swimming.
7. Kevin Warwick
The nickname "Captain Cyborg" sounds more like the name of a cyborg pirate from some low-budget movie, but it's actually the name of cybernetics teacher Kevin Warwick. Warwick himself is a cyborg. He, like Amal Graafstra, has RFID chips implanted in his body.
Warwick also uses electrode implants that interact with his nervous system, and he implanted a set of simple electrodes in his wife. The implants record signals from the nervous system, and Warwick's senses of his wife are transmitted, as if there is a sensory telepathy between them. With this, Warwick provoked a lot of controversy, and some argue that all his work is just a publicity stunt and is purely for entertainment.
8. Nigel Ackland
Nigel Acklund worked in a precious metal factory and enjoyed life until an accident at work crushed his arm. As a result, the part had to be amputated, and now Nigel is one of 250 people using Bebionic - one of the most advanced prosthetic arms in existence today. Seeing its stylish design, it's easy to see why it's called the "Terminator Hand".
Eklund controls the prosthesis by contracting the muscles in the remaining arm. Muscle movements are recorded by the sensor of the bionic arm. With this hand, he can not only point, shake hands with people and make phone calls. The technology is so advanced that Eklund manages to play with a deck of cards and even tie his shoelaces.
9. Neil Harbisson
Neil Harbisson hears colors. Yes, you didn't hear it. Harbisson has been colorblind since birth and can only see in black and white. An antenna is implanted in his brain, the end of which sticks out from the top of his head. This antenna gives Neil the ability to sense colors by converting the frequencies of light waves into sound frequencies. It even has Bluetooth!
Harbisson loves to listen to architecture and makes sound portraits of people. A USB device on the back of his head allows the antenna to be recharged, although Neal hopes he will one day be able to wirelessly charge it using power generated by his own body.
This device allows Harbisson not only to perceive the color spectrum as we all perceive it, it actually makes it possible to distinguish between infrared and ultraviolet colors as well. The integration of technology into Harbisson's body expands his senses beyond the range we consider normal and makes him a true cyborg.
10. Hybrid accessory limb
The hybrid assistive limb is a powerful exoskeleton that can help wheelchair users to start walking again. It was created by Japan's University of Tsukuba and Cyberdyne (which apparently hasn't heard of the Terminator movie) to not only support people with physical disabilities, but to help them move beyond the normal range of human physical abilities.
The esoskeleton works by reading weak signals from the skin and moving the joints based on those signals. Using it, a person is able to lift five times his own weight. Imagine a future where such exoskeletons are used by builders, firefighters, miners, soldiers. A future in which the loss of a limb does not mean the loss of mobility. This future is not far off.
Thanks to sci-fi movies and books, humanity seems to have become accustomed to the idea that in the future, cyborgs will live among us. However, it's hard to believe that the future is already here, and real cyborgs have been around for many decades. already live next to us. These are ordinary people - but with pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, biosensors or hearing implants. So what are “cybernetic tissues”, who competes in Cybathlon, and what ethical questions arise in this regard?
Technically modified and improved creatures without emotions and feelings - such associations with the word "cyborg" usually pop up in the head thanks to modern mass culture. In fact, "cybernetic organism" - and this is exactly what the unabbreviated version of the term sounds like - means only the union of a biological organism and some kind of mechanism. Cyborgs living among us do not always look like robots patched in iron: they are people with pacemakers, insulin pumps, biosensors in tumors. Many of them cannot even be detected "by eye" - except perhaps at the signal of a metal detector frame in a public place.
Now the implantation of medical devices is one of the most profitable businesses in the United States. Such devices are used to restore body functions, to improve life, and to conduct invasive tests.
Implanted technology: from traditional devices to the latest developments
It's hard to believe, but the tandem of scientists and doctors has been successfully creating cyborgs for several decades. It all started with the cardiovascular system. Over 50 years ago, the first fully subcutaneous pacemaker- a device that maintains and/or regulates the patient's heart rate. Today, more than 500,000 such devices are implanted annually. New technologies have also emerged: for example, there is an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator for the treatment of life-threatening tachycardia and fibrillation.
But the most striking thing is that in a couple of years it is planned to conduct testing artificial heart BiVACOR in humans (Fig. 1) - experiments on sheep have already been successful. It does not pump blood like a pump, but simply "moves" - therefore, future patients with such a cardioprosthesis will not have a pulse. The device can completely replace the patient's own heart and last up to 10 years, according to the developers. In addition, it is small (to fit both a child and a woman), but powerful (to successfully work in the body of an adult male). In the modern world, where donor organs are constantly sorely lacking, this device would be simply irreplaceable. The device is powered externally by means of transcutaneous transmission. The design using magnetic levitation and rotating discs prevents wear on parts, one of the problems of other designs that mimic the structure of a real heart. "Smart" sensors help adjust the BiVACOR's blood flow to the physical and emotional activity of the user.
In addition to the heart, devices are traditionally integrated into the body for drug delivery in chronic diseases - as, for example, an insulin pump does in diabetes mellitus (Fig. 2). The same devices are now being used to deliver drugs for chemotherapy or chronic pain.
Increasingly popular are implantable neurostimulators- Deivas, stimulating certain nerves in the human body. They are being developed for use in epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain (video 1), urinary incontinence, obesity, arthritis, hypertension and many other disorders.
Video 1. How spinal cord stimulation changes pain signals before they reach the brain
Implantables have reached a whole new level vision and hearing aids , .
Measure Everything: Biosensors
All the mentioned developments are designed to restore the lost or missing function of the body. But another direction of technology development has appeared - miniature implantable biosensors, registering changes in the physiological parameters of the body. The implantation of such a device also makes the patient a cyborg - although in a slightly unusual sense of the word, because the body does not have any superpowers.
A biosensor is a device that consists of sensing element- a bioreceptor that recognizes the desired substance, - signal converter, which translates this information into a signal for transmission, and signal processor. There are a lot of such biosensors: immunobiosensors, enzymatic biosensors, genobiosensors... With the help of new technologies, supersensitive bioreceptors are able to "detect" glucose, cholesterol, E. coli, influenza and human papillomaviruses, cell components, certain DNA sequences, acetylcholine, dopamine, cortisol, glutamic, ascorbic and uric acids, immunoglobulins (IgG and IgE) and many other molecules.
One of the most promising areas is the use of biosensors in oncology. By tracking changes in specific parameters directly in the tumor, it is possible to make a verdict on the effectiveness of the treatment and attack the cancer precisely at the moment when it is most sensitive to one or another effect. Such targeted, planned therapy can, for example, reduce the side effects of radiation or suggest whether to change the main drug. In addition, by measuring the concentrations of various cancer biomarkers, it is sometimes possible to diagnose the neoplasm itself and determine its malignancy, but the main thing is to detect a recurrence in time.
For some, the question arises: how do patients themselves react to the fact that devices have been implanted into their bodies and thereby turned into some kind of cyborgs? Little research has been done on this topic so far. However, it has already been shown that at least men with prostate cancer have a positive attitude towards the implantation of biosensors: the idea of becoming a cyborg scares them much less than the possibility of losing their masculinity due to prostate cancer.
Advances in technology
The widespread use of implantable devices is closely related to technological advances. For example, the first implantable pacemakers were the size of a hockey puck and lasted less than three years. Now such devices have become much more compact and operate from 6 to 10 years. In addition, batteries are being actively developed that could use the user's own body energy - thermal, kinetic, electrical or chemical.
Another direction of engineering thought is the development of a special device coating that would facilitate the integration of the device into the body and not cause an inflammatory response. Similar developments already exist.
It is possible to combine the sensor and living tissue in another way. Researchers at Harvard University have developed what they call cybernetic fabrics, which are not rejected by the body, but at the same time read the necessary characteristics with sensors. Their backbone is a flexible polymer mesh with attached nanoelectrodes or transistors. Due to the large number of pores, it mimics the natural supporting structures of tissue. It can be populated with cells: neurons, cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle cells. In addition, the soft frame reads the physiological parameters of its environment in volume and in real time.
Now a Harvard team of scientists has successfully implanted such a grid into the brain of a rat to study the activity and stimulation of individual neurons (Figure 3). The scaffold integrated into the tissue and did not elicit an immune response within five weeks of observation. Charles Lieber, head of the laboratory and chief author of publications, believes that the "mesh" can even help treat Parkinson's disease.
Figure 3. A folded "mesh" is injected into the brain with a syringe, then straightened out and monitors the activity of individual neurons using built-in sensors.
In the future, the development can be used in regenerative medicine, and in transplantology, and in cell biophysics. It will also be useful in the development of new drugs: the reaction of cells to a substance can be observed in volume.
Scientists have proposed another fascinating way out of the catastrophic situation with the transplantation of deficient organs. So-called heart cybernetic patch is a combination of organics and technology: living cardiomyocytes, polymers and a complex nanoelectronic 3D system. The created tissue with embedded electronics is capable of stretching, recording the state of the microenvironment and heart contractions, and even conducting electrical stimulation. "Patch" can be applied to the damaged area of the heart - for example, to the area of necrosis after a heart attack. In addition, it releases growth factors and drugs such as dexamethasone to engage stem cells in repair processes and reduce inflammation, for example after transplantation (Fig. 4). The device is still in the very early stages of development, but it is planned that the doctor will be able to monitor the patient's condition from his computer in real time. For tissue regeneration in emergency conditions, the “patch” will be able to trigger the release of therapeutic molecules that are enclosed in electroactive polymers, with positively and negatively charged molecules releasing different polymers.
Figure 4. An example of a "cybernetic tissue" - a heart "patch" of living heart cells with embedded nanoelectronics. It transmits information about the environment and heart rate in real time to the attending physician, who, if necessary, can stimulate the heart with a patch or trigger the release of active molecules.
Previously, it was believed that after injury, neurons strongly reorganize and create new connections. However, a new study has shown that the degree of reorganization of nerve cells is not so high.
Ian Burkhart broke his neck at the age of 19 diving into the waves on vacation. He is now paralyzed below the shoulders and therefore decided to volunteer in an experiment by Chad Bouton's research group. Scientists took an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) of the brain of the subject, while he focused on the video with hand movements, and identified the part of the motor cortex responsible for this. A chip was implanted into it, which reads the electrical activity of this area of the brain when the patient imagines the movements of his hand. The chip converts and transmits the signal through a cable to the computer, and then this information goes in the form of an electrical signal to a flexible sleeve around the subject's right arm and stimulates the muscles (Fig. 5; video 2).
Figure 5. The signal from the chip implanted in the motor cortex goes along the cable to the computer, and then, after being converted, it enters the "flexible sleeve" and stimulates the muscles.
Video 2. Ian Burkhart is the first paralyzed person to regain the ability to move his arm thanks to developing technologies
After training, Ian can move his fingers separately and perform six different wrist and hand movements. It would seem that it is not much yet, but it already allows you to raise a glass of water and play a video game depicting the performance of music on an electric guitar. When asked what it is like to live with an implanted device, the first paralyzed person who was given back the ability to move, replies that he is already used to it and does not notice it - moreover, it is like an extension of his body.
cybersociety
Humans with prosthetics are perhaps best suited to the standard human-machine perception. However, it is much more difficult for such cyborgs to live in reality than for similar book and movie characters. The statistics on global disability are astonishing. According to WHO, about 15% of the world's population has physical disabilities of varying degrees, and from 110 to 190 million people experience significant difficulties with the functioning of the body. The vast majority of people with disabilities have to use ordinary bulky wheelchairs or uncomfortable and expensive prostheses. However, now it is possible to quickly, efficiently and cheaply create the desired prosthesis using 3D printing. According to scientists, this is the way to help, first of all, children from developing countries and all those who have limited access to medical services.
Some active cyborgs do not waste time and take part in various open meetings. For example, last year's Geek Picnic festival, which took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg, was dedicated specifically to machine people. There you could see a giant robotic arm, talk to people whose body was improved by technology, and visit virtual reality.
In October 2016, the world's first Olympiad for people with disabilities will be held in Zurich - (Cybathlon). At this competition, you can use those devices that are excluded from the program of the Paralympic Games. Some have already dubbed this event a “Cyborg Olympics”, since technical devices will make a significant contribution to the victory (Fig. 6). Participants will compete in six disciplines using powered wheelchairs, prostheses and exoskeletons, electrical muscle stimulation devices and even a brain-computer interface.
Figure 6. Cybathlon is the first Olympiad in which people with disabilities compete against each other with the help of technical innovations. In case of victory, one medal is awarded to the athlete, the second - to the developer of the mechanism.
Athletes driving cars will be dubbed "pilots". In each discipline, two medals are awarded: one - to the person operating the device, the second - to the company or laboratory that developed the "champion" mechanism. According to the organizers, the main goal of the competition is not only to show new assistive technologies for everyday life, but also to remove the boundaries between people with disabilities and the general public. In addition, as Professor Robert Riener from the University of Switzerland told the BBC, the Olympiad will bring developers and direct users of new devices together, which is simply necessary for improving technology: “Some of today's designs look very cool, but they have a long way to go to be practical and easy to use.”. It remains to be hoped that the human component will not be lost during the competition, and Cybathlon will not turn into an advertising race for equipment from different companies.
Posthumans: cyborgs and bioethics
New implantable technologies are generally perceived positively by society. This is not surprising: after all, they maintain, restore and improve health, facilitate access to medical services, while they are safe and can significantly reduce the cost of healthcare globally in the future. However, it is worth talking about such patients as cyborgs, as science fiction connotations immediately emerge (Fig. 7). The main concerns are related to the fear for the humanity of man: what if machines change a person, and he loses his human essence? Where is the boundary between artificial and natural for a person, and is it worth using such a division to evaluate any phenomenon? Is it possible to divide a cyborg patient with an implanted device into two separate components - a person and a machine - or is it already a whole new organism?
In addition, sometimes even in normal hospital conditions it is not possible to separate patients and devices for their maintenance. The medical staff needs to take care of the equipment as if it were not just an extension of the patient's body, but also himself.
The difference between therapy and improvement of the body is also actively discussed: therapy vs. enhancement , . For example, how would you react to a competition between a drummer who virtuoso uses two of his hands, and a drummer with one of his hands and a prosthetic hand? And if you knew that two drumsticks are built into the prosthesis, one of which is controlled by a sensor that reads an electromyogram from the muscles, and the second is not controlled by a person and “improvises”, adjusting to the first stick? By the way, such a prosthesis is not fiction at all, but reality: drummer Jason Barnes (Jason Barnes) lost his right arm below the elbow several years ago and now uses just such a device (video 3). “I bet a lot of metal drummers would be jealous of what I can do. Speed is good. Always the sooner the better.”, says the cyborg drummer.
Video 3. Cyborg drummer Jason Barnes, after losing part of his arm, did not need to say goodbye to his musical career: with a special prosthesis, he will give odds to most of his colleagues
Interestingly, the debate is not only about technology, but also about new drugs that improve brain function. There was even a special term - neuroethics- to discuss various aspects of the existence of "improved" people with the help of neuroimplants. And if we use the concept of progressive technologies more broadly, then people with biotechnological “improvements” can also be classified as cyborgs: for example, recipients of organs created from induced pluripotent cells.
A kind of response to such discussions was the London exhibition superhuman in Wellcome Collection. It featured exhibits reflecting a person’s ideas about improving their body: images of flying Icarus, the first glasses, Viagra, a photo of the first “test-tube baby”, cochlear implants ... Maybe it’s the craving for improvements and new developments that is the most not a natural thing for a person?
For many reasons, it is not possible to come to a consensus on what makes a person a person and fundamentally distinguishes him, on the one hand, from other living beings, and on the other, from robots.
Finally, there is another issue that has so far been little thought about - the problem of security and controllability. How to make such devices resistant to hacker attacks? After all, the insecurity of such developments can be extremely dangerous not only for the user himself, but also for those around him. Perhaps this is the question that will most concern the next generation of users (Fig. 8).
Figure 8. The rich fantasy of Japanese screenwriters has already brought the theme of hacking to life: what if in the future cyborgs will have to investigate murders committed by hacked robots?..
Perhaps externally controlled cyborg people are the worst. At least for today. However, with simpler nervous systems, this is actively practiced. For example, biobot insects are successfully used for search and rescue purposes - for example, Madagascar cockroaches (Fig. 9). In addition, such modernized simply arranged creatures are also excellent experimental objects for neuroscience.
Figure 9. Biobot - a creature with a simple nervous system that can be controlled by implanted technology. It is unlikely to be possible to repeat this for the human brain due to the complex structure of the organ.
Conclusion
Cyborgs are already living among us - whether some members of the public like it or not. The technical frontiers are being pushed, and it is certain that new developments will improve the quality of life for many people with disabilities and help in medical practice.
“I think the future of chronic disease management is implantable devices., says Sadie Creese of Oxford University's Martin School. - They will measure vital signs and send them to the healthcare provider, whoever it is and wherever it is.”. Thus, according to Sadie, you can imagine consultants and doctors around the world: ideally, any local doctor could receive patient health alerts using a single application. Indeed, it is possible that the entire system of patient management will change in the very near future. It is worth taking a look at the rapidly developing field of implantable devices - and such an algorithm no longer seems unrealizable. And mobile applications and their use in healthcare will be discussed in
With transputers, everything is more or less clear. A certain architecture is being created into which you can stick a bunch of separate transputer blocks, each of which has a processor and something else. Further, using these blocks, you can organize parallel computing, somehow distributing computing resources between one or more tasks.
With neurocomputers it is somewhat more complicated. Unlike transputers, a neurocomputer is now mostly not a hardware, but rather a software concept. It radically changes the entire programming process, and makes it similar to the process of our thinking (although, to be honest, there are also disputes around how we think). The impetus for the development of neurocomputing was biological research. A typical neurocomputer consists of a large number of simple computing elements (neurons) operating in parallel. The elements are interconnected, forming a neural network. They perform uniform computational actions and do not require external control. And a large number of parallel computing elements provide high performance.
Actually, this is the step that the creators of the Terminator were so afraid of. Neurocomputers are fundamentally different from traditional computers. A neurocomputer programmer does not write programs, he teaches the computer in the same way that parents teach their child. The process is somewhat reminiscent, for example, of linear programming known to mathematicians, when an algorithm is not set, but the weights of connections, the “rules of behavior” of a neurocomputer, are adjusted. After such training, the neural network can apply the acquired skills to input conditions (or, as they say, “signals”), just as we apply our knowledge to life in the world around us.
There is one more "but" - self-learning ability. But this Rubicon has been crossed for a very long time, and for a single programmer, a self-learning program is not a matter of surprise. Every database is now built on this principle.
Some scientists suggest, for example, that if the main line of development of computer technology moves from the traditional von Neumann to neuroarchitecture, then COMPUTER SHOULD BE EXPECTED MUCH EARLIER 2020. And then what scientists call "artificial intelligence" will be created. But regardless of whether or not this line of development of computers is mainline, such computers exist and develop.
Then nanotechnologies come into play, transferring the process of creating neurocomputers to the area of nanoscale, and significantly reducing the size of neurocomputer elements, which entails a significant increase in their productivity and INTELLIGENCE. These technologies are already being successfully applied.
Communities, robotic communities and symbiotes
Having schematically outlined in the last issue the main varieties of artificial beings, I deliberately did not consider such an essential part of their organization as the ability to group them into communities. In the meantime, this is a very important issue. Nobody is afraid of one locust. But if there is a swarm of locusts, then this is no longer a harmless insect, but a natural disaster.
Many creatures known to us live in communities, large or small. Ants live in an anthill, wolves live in a pack, cows live in herds, horses live in herds, and so on. Man lives in society.
As for artificial beings, we don't have to go far. Right now you are in one of these communities - on the Internet, the community of robots. Basically, there are software robots here (for example, web servers, search robots, IRC bots, game robots, etc. electronic people), but there are of course also ordinary robots for which the Internet is a good means of communication.
Robots, of course, are constantly interacting with each other (for example, an IRC bot communicates with an IRC server, and a crawler communicates with web servers) and use the Internet as a means of transportation. For example, if you installed Internet Explorer version 4 and higher not from a CD-ROM, but directly from the network, you probably remember the installer robot that took this program in parts to your computer, resumed when it was interrupted, and after the transfer was completed, the component launched the program installations. Use the Internet as a vehicle and viruses. However, the latter, for the most part, do not even know about it, but simply cling to files and travel in this way with them across all media and storage locations.
It would be reasonable to assume that robot communities may have several degrees of organization, from a simple crowd to a single composite organism.
In a crowd-like community, robots use the Internet primarily as a means of communication and vehicle (i.e., to convey information). They could well do without such a community, but it is simply more convenient and faster to exchange information with it. Of course, basically all networks (including the Internet) have gone through such a degree of organization - at the initial stage of their development.
Then the time comes when the robots begin to use the community more actively, begin to interact more and more closely with each other, and now there are more and more intelligent robots that are created for life in this community, and the meaning of existence of which is lost without a community (on the Internet, for example, search robots , databases, many expert systems, in Fidonet - FAQ servers, tossers, in local networks - DBMS). The Internet now seems to have passed this stage of development. Then, apparently, there comes a moment when the community begins to be perceived as a single entity (as many now perceive WorldWideWeb as one huge database). It seems that the Internet is at the beginning of this stage of its development.
And, finally, the community ceases to be considered by everyone as a group of organisms, becomes a single whole, and cannot exist in the form of separate robots. Transputers are an example.
And here comes the turn to move on to two other concepts - to the concept of symbiosis of robots and to the concept of a robot community.
Symbiosis- this is the cohabitation of two organisms of different species, usually bringing them mutual benefit. The concept, of course, comes from biology. A typical example of symbiosis is, for example, the symbiosis of an ant and an aphid. The ants herd the aphids and take care of them to the best of their ability and milk them. This existence benefits both of them. Intelligent beings enter into symbiosis extremely easily. Actually, this is one of the main properties of intelligent beings. The experience of mankind in this regard is indicative. Even at the dawn of his development, man tamed many animals, which he gave care and shelter, and from which he received milk, meat, eggs, down, feathers, skins, the ability to move quickly, and much, much more.
Now, at the dawn of the new millennium, man has created something new - artificial beings. And then he found himself in symbiosis with them. Now our cooperation is beneficial to us and to them. It gives us everything that we get from robots: automation of production, access to databases, convenient and cheap means of communication, new design tools, new technologies in the press and the like - in fact, everything that we get from computers. It gives them development, improvement, service. Such interaction ensures both them and us survival in the modern world.
Stanislav Lem, as well as some other science fiction writers, in their works have repeatedly considered such interesting organisms as community robots. Such a robot will be obtained if the community of robots is integrated into a single organism to such an extent that it can be considered a single being. Such is (as I have already noted a couple of times above) transputer technology. In view of this peculiarity, such community robots have undoubted advantages over ordinary ones: they have a greater ability to survive, all mental operations are usually done faster, their architecture is more adapted to parallel data processing, and if the components of such a robot are equipped with the ability to move independently, then such a composite creature could change its configuration depending on needs.
It can be assumed that the internal organization of the robot community could be very similar to the organization of the state. So, for its existence, something would certainly be needed that would take on a coordinating role (government?), some of the organs - to organize means of protection from the external environment (army?), etc.
| -- |
Are they creatures?
Do you remember the dispute in the story of the Strugatsky brothers "Monday begins on Saturday"? Edik Amperian and Vitka Korneev argue about whether non-protein life is possible. Edik denies non-protein life, to which Vitka Korneev, without embarrassment, creates with a snap of his fingers "a creature that looks like a hedgehog and a spider at the same time." Edik refutes his argument, calling this creature undead, that is, a product of the vital activity of magicians, which exists only insofar as magicians exist. Then Korneev creates a small copy of himself with a snap of his fingers, this copy also snaps his fingers and creates an even smaller copy, which also snaps his fingers, and so on.
A bad example, - Edik said with regret. - Firstly, they do not fundamentally differ from a machine with program control, and secondly, they are not a product of development, but a product of your protein mastery. It is hardly worth arguing whether evolution is capable of producing self-propagating machine tools with program control.
You know a lot about evolution, - said the rude Korneev. - Darwin for me too! What difference does it make, a chemical process or a conscious activity. At you too not all ancestors proteinaceous. Your great-great-great-mother was, I am ready to admit, quite complex, but not at all a protein molecule. And maybe our so-called conscious activity is also some kind of evolution. How do we know that the purpose of nature is to create Comrade Amperian? Maybe the purpose of nature is the creation of undead by the hands of comrade Amperian. May be...
Understandable, understandable. First a protovirus, then a squirrel, then Comrade Amperian, and then the whole planet is populated by the undead.
Exactly, - said Vitka. - And we all died out of uselessness.
Why not? Vitka said.
I have one friend, - Edik said. - He claims that man is only an intermediate link that nature needs to create the crown of creation: a glass of cognac with a slice of lemon.
And why not in the end?
But because I don’t feel like it,” said Edik. “Nature has its purposes, and I have mine.
Strange as it may seem, but these are, in general terms, all modern disputes on the topic of whether human creations are organisms and living beings. Why not call it life? After all, the basis of any organism is the same atoms that make up inanimate matter. The cells that make up living things come in a variety of shapes and sizes. It is also known that they contain a gene program that controls the process of life, development and cell division. It is cellular activity that serves for many as a necessary measure of whether it is possible to recognize an organism as alive. Meanwhile, we can be considered as biorobots. We, in our gene program, contain our development, our biological traits, hair color, height, facial contours, a tendency to be overweight or thin. Even our biological death is programmed there.
But the definition of living matter as consisting of functioning cells is a postulate. Why not allow the possibility of building a living organism from other "bricks"? Those who do not allow the existence of life other than based on a cellular structure follow the postulate that living matter can consist exclusively of cells (on a protein basis). But the postulate is the postulate that it does not require proof. Euclid postulated that parallel lines do not intersect. Lobachevsky removed this postulate, and received a new geometry, which is also consistent and also found application. This new science has expanded our knowledge of the world around us.
In the same way, the recognition of the possibility of inorganic life will greatly expand our knowledge. To those who do not allow such a possibility, we can safely say: from your point of view, this is not life. But this is unprovable. Moreover, turning to the history of paganism, we will find that once, a long time ago, people considered all manifestations of nature to be animated, including those that are now considered inanimate nature. For our ancestors, the stones, the river, and the wind were alive. Our ancestors lived in harmony with nature, but we consider half of it to be inanimate, dead, and perhaps that is why we have now come to the many losses that we now have.
Technocivilization
So what I'm trying to convince you is that it's entirely possible for computers to become self-aware one day, and perhaps draw some conclusions from it. What will be the new order of the Earth after the realization of this "I" by machines? Will it be a tragedy for them or for us, or will we be able to find a common language? Will this lead to the robots from the Terminator movie, or will these robots be like Johnny 7 from Short Circuit?
300 years ago, a technogenic civilization began to form on the planet. We are now observing the fruits of its development (both good and bad), and we will not talk about them here. Actually, the very fact that, after millions of years of smooth and very slow development, technology has risen to the heights at which it is now, in some unfortunate 300 years, seems much more amusing and interesting.
Let's try to at least find a few reasons that served as the "catalysts" of techno-civilization. During these 300 years, these catalysts have been:
awareness of the need to break the process of manufacturing a product into its component parts;
awareness of the need for the development of science;
development and emergence of new means of communication and mass media;
the emergence of a continuous, conveyor method of production and others, and the like ...
Eventually, computers entered the arena in the second half of the 20th century. At first hulking, huge and underpowered, they then shrunk in size and increased their intelligence.
Just by this time, technogenic civilization faced another problem: it stopped taking care of itself. New technologies began to appear so often that people no longer had time to comprehend and put them into practice - as soon as they had time to do it, literally two or three years later the technology became obsolete, and it was time to switch to a new one, unless of course the manufacturer wanted to withstand tough competition .
These shortcomings were especially clearly revealed in the countries of the "socialist camp," as the press wrote at the time. Many Muscovites still remember very well the queues for imported goods in Moscow stores - food processors, chandeliers, furniture ... After all, their own production worked in the old fashioned way.
Under such conditions, the manufacturer was forced to abandon the immobile and difficult to reorganize production of the past. Willy-nilly, production became mobile (in terms of reorganization) and more versatile. First, CNC machines appeared on them, then robots, then entire conveyors based on robots. Managing the production process has also moved to "artificial brains" - robots and computers.
Productivity, quality, output increased, and enterprises were able to survive in the face of rapidly developing technologies.
But in the 1990s, the conditions for the development of techno-civilization changed again. This time, these changes have reached research technologies. Scientists (after the first experiments of the 80s) began to use computers at home with might and main, and the World Wide Web, the World Wide Web, came to the world. Fantasts once again turned out to be right - a worldwide database was created. In it, at any time, you can find anything - from recipes for making cakes, to describing the principles of operation of the same ultra-modern processors and sophisticated computer technologies.
Man entrusted his knowledge and research tools to computers and robots. And therefore, since the beginning of the 90s, a new era has begun in the development of the Earth's techno-civilization - cybercivilization , a symbiosis of robot and human civilizations. Actually the current stage of civilization is well described by the phrase: "artificial beings have already appeared, artificial intelligence - not yet."
Like any civilization, cybercivilization has its own culture. Its first noticeable surge was perhaps associated with the appearance in the United States of phreakers - hackers of telephone networks. And this, in turn, probably began with the usual children's entertainment - telephone pranks. Many would-be phreakers started out with this. Admit it, probably at least once in your life you had a chance to dial a phone number at random and talk to the one who picked up the phone on the other end of the wire?
In the early 70s in the United States, in the process of modernizing telephone networks, the first electronic exchanges began to appear. And then these automatic telephone exchanges began to use phreakers. Their main weapon in the early 70s was the so-called "blue boxes". The "box" emitted a high-pitched whistle at 2600 hertz, which put the AT&T equipment into long-distance operation mode. Further, using sequences of various signals from the "box", the caller could contact any of the corners of the globe.
Conference calls became an essential attribute of the cyber culture of the 70s. By calling a specially assigned telephone company number, rented by the conference organizer, one could speak simultaneously with several other callers.
Many phreakers hacked into telephone networks not at all in order to simply talk with their long-distance acquaintances. They were attracted by the hacking procedure itself, the surroundings associated with it, the halo of mystery, as well as the feeling of power felt by a person who can freely and when he wants to communicate with people from all over the world. The hacking procedure became a cult for them, and their society became the first informal wave of cyberculture, just as the first wave of "formal" cyberculture was conference calls. Culture has always been divided into formal and informal; This has not bypassed cyber culture either.
So, there were legends about a certain John Draper, allegedly the first to discover that the tone signal of a toy whistle from the Captain Crunch gift set for children causes AT&T equipment to switch to long-distance communication mode. Another phreaker, a blind man named Joe, had been whistled by his own lips since the age of eight.
Naturally, the phone companies fought the phreakers. They invented all sorts of clever devices to track phreaker calls, and by the end of the 70s the procedure for tracking their calls became generally accepted, and special programs were developed to track their calls, which allowed AT&T to catch several hundred "blue boxes".
Russians were hardly affected by the first wave of cyberculture in the form in which the Americans saw it, although there were rumors in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the 80s about some telephone numbers by which conference calls were possible. Naturally, the Russians were also not alien to anything human, and they also knew how to call pay phones for free, but there was no such level that would allow calling it “culture”.
But in Russia at that time the movement of radio amateurs was greatly developed. This can be considered the beginning of our cyber culture. All and sundry were fond of radio amateurs. It all started with attempts to assemble a radio at home from available radio components, and in the 70s radio amateurs were already making hundreds of different electronic curiosities. Among them were both electronics specialists and beginners. In the mouths of professionals, the term "amateur radio" sounded more like a reproach. So they talked about any craft, assembled "on the knees", which could stop working at any moment. At the moment, amateur radio in Russia is gradually disappearing, although the people who took part in this, of course, remained.
The next wave of underground cyber culture came to America (and to Russia) in the 80s, along with the advent of computerized telephone exchanges, computer networks and personal computers. Hackers appeared on the scene - crackers of computer networks. The traditionally incomprehensible pattern depicts hackers as people who sit at computers and hack electronic security systems with cunning machinations. Meanwhile, head-on hacking is just one of many tricks in their arsenal. So such a pattern is in the hands of the hackers themselves in the first place. Much more often the subject of their hacking is, for example, the human factor. After all, if an inexperienced administrator stands behind a complex security system who does not change passwords or types them on the keyboard so that an experienced eye can easily read the letters “blindly”, then it is much easier to gain access to the security system through him.
Along with personal computers, many people came to cyberculture. People used to play computer games before, but it was the appearance of personal computers that appeared in the homes of the townsfolk that caused their rapid development. Many began to use the computer at home, often as a toy, less often for something serious. Thus, the famous American writer Isaac Asimov enthusiastically described his acquaintance with the computer in the early 80s, noting that using a computer at home allowed him to write many more books than if he did it with a typewriter.
Computer networks also became widespread during this period. In America, they have existed for a long time, but it was in the 80s, after the merger of several networks into the Internet and the appearance of Fidonet in 1984, that they became available to many. A new class of "networkers" has emerged. Fidonet is now slowly dying, but the Internet is experiencing its heyday.
networkers- this is a special caste in cyber culture, they have their own special slang and they are usually poorly understood even by programmers because of this slang and an abundance of specific terms.
Recently, in relation to cyberculture, the term “cyberpunk” has been increasingly applied to the place and out of place. Punks have always been a symbol of a kind of indifferent attitude to life "easily". Cyberpunks just as indifferently and easily live in a cyber culture environment. Some, by the way, get used to the computer so much that they make it an idol for themselves or the dwelling place of God.
So, for the time being, everything is moving towards the fact that humanity is getting along with cybercivilization, has got used to it and feels at home in it. So, all the chances are on our side. But do not forget that we have a crucial stage ahead of us, which is predicted by science fiction writers and scientists - the moment when artificial intelligence reaches the human level and surpasses it. And we must be ready for this.
