Our Cognitive Science class decided to attend this talk on October 20th, 2010; titled "Natural-born Cyborgs? Reflections on Bodies, Minds and Human Enhancement". This talk fit right into the research realm of the course and hence it was relevant that we attended. The session as expected was very insightful and intellectually stimulating all the way. The presenter was Dr. Andy Clark, a very charismatic personality and quite an emphatic speaker. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. I even tried googling him and found this wikipedia link --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Clark, which apparently means,"He is a big deal!"
I intend on reviewing the talk through this blog-post. Yeh, that's right! I was that impressed. :)
Disclaimer: The sentences that follow, hence, will be a bunch of random ideas, conclusions, inferences, quotations; with little or no coherency. I apologize for any confusion this may cause, but somehow I like the mystery element associated with this form of expression.
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Cyborg: part human, part machine.
The idea behind a Cyborg: The biological platform of humans are limited and hence upgrade the platform through technology (eg:- pacemakers, cochlear implants, birthcontrol drugs, PC's, iPhone's, GPS's etc).
The factor that causes the research progress is that the idea of "normal" changes with time. What's normal is very open-ended and relative to time and being. Biology and technology, both keep getting complex over time.
Not far is the day when us Homosapiens will be called Robosapiens and that will mark the next phase in evolution.
We as human beings continually engineer and re-engineer our own behavioral and mental capacities. The paper "Cyborgs and Space" discusses this idea of human-machine hybrids, wherein it is possible to retro-fit humans to space. So basically instead of trying to tailor the universe to suit the human, it is a great deal easier to tailor the human to suit the universe.
Whenever we think of cyborgs, we imagine a being that has been wired first hand like the terminator. Now, this is a common misconception that I shared in having before the talk. As far as the technological incorporation is concerned, it is the synergy that counts between the artificial addition and the being, as opposed to the direct connection/wiring, whatever we may choose to call it.
There are many brilliant minds who have been and are involved in this active field of research such as: Dr. Daniel Clement Dennett, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, Varla, Thompson, Rosch, Bruner, Norman, Heidegger, Gibson, Bateson to name a few.
The entire concept of the "Natural-Born Cyborgs" can be traversed through 4 connected parts:
1. Augmenting the body
"I am the sum-total of the parts I control directly." - Daniel Dennett.
This idea being so novel back in the day, Heidegger needed to introduce several neologisms to capture the depth of concept such as 'present-at-hand' and 'ready-to-hand', which are now used to describe attitudes towards various things in the world.
Stelarc (Stelios Arkadiou), a Greek-Australian performance artist whose work focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body, has a third mechanical arm attached to his body. He controls the extra limb through surface electromyography.
Metaphorically expressed, "We do not will our hand to move, we will for the task to be done." This is the general attitude towards the unification of the eternal technological element and our biological selves. Its use should be subliminal and not conscious.
For eg:- Car drivers in their vehicle, Mechanics with their tools, Musicians with their instruments etc.
"Phantoms in the Brain" was one of the books recommended by Andy Clark, that deals with probing the mysteries of the human mind.
Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius, also known as the "blade runner" or the "fastest man on no legs", is a double amputee and runs with the aid of Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon fibre transtibial artificial limbs by Ossur. He has been able to set several world records running on his prosthetics. A similar case, is that of American athlete, actress, and fashion model Aimee Mullins. She also uses prosthetic limbs owing to the amputation of both her biological legs.
2. Extending the Senses
"Our mind and senses are just as negotiable as body parts."
Really?
Sensory Substitution means to transform the characteristics of one sensory modality into stimuli of another sensory modality. Tactile Visual Sensory Substitute is an example of the implementation of this concept. Several new systems have been developed that interface the tactile image to tactile receptors on different areas of the body such as the on the chest, brow, fingertip, abdomen, and forehead.
"Sensory Substitution and the Human-Machine Interface" is an excellent paper which explores the idea of developing systems that compensate for sensory loss.
Consider the example of the "feelSpace Project", a belt with vibrators attached, which are governed by heading information from an electronic compass: the one vibrator pointing north is active. Thereby, the belt user is constantly provided with tactile heading information relative to the earth's magnetic field. If, for instance, the user is directed to west, the vibrator on his right hip vibrates. Studies show that after 6 weeks of constant wear, subjects displayed improved spatial awareness.
"Beyond sensory substitution - learning the sixth sense", "Why red doesn't sound like a bell" are among several other works that delve into the topic of sensory substitution.
So basically, the bottomline is:
Maybe our senses too are just a set of garments, just like the parts of the body. We are re-configurable!
3. Enhancing the Mind
Brains: masters of 'productive laziness'
Anecdote:
"Do you the time?"
"Yes!"
and THEN we look at the watch.
"Curing Cognitive Hiccups", "Genius", "The Extended Mind", "The Memory Glasses: Wearable Computing for Just-in-Time Memory Support", "Recognizer" are among several publications, books and softwares that contribute to research in the area of enhancing the mind.
4. Our Worlds, Ourselves
...a kind of a personal dissolution into the bio-technological matrix.
As far as progress is concerned :"BLOAT" shouldn't bother us as much as "SHRINKAGE".
Carolyn Baum discovered a certain place where patients with Alzheimer's lived in a regular domestic home environment instead of care homes. How did they survive? Well, they went about their daily activities with the help of cognitive props, tools and aids.
Consider the case of Patrick Jones, a working catholic deacon in Colorado Springs, whose suffered traumatic brain injury. What enables him to go about his daily activites? He uses a combination of Evernote, a Mac program for visualization called Curio and an iPhone. So basically his biological limitations have been overcome by harnessing the use of technology. Technology has become such an indispensable part of deacon Patrick's life that if we deleted his Evernote data, it would be like inflicting brain damage on someone while he slept.
"What if HM had a Blackberry?" a very interesting article published in the magazine Psychology Today by Dr. Gary Marcus. It speaks of coping with amnesia using modern technology.
Conclusion
Dr. Andy Clark then concluded the session with a line from Yeat's poem, 'He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven':- "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Observations from the question answer session that followed;
1. Because of economic divide, we could speciate into a different race based on the technology we can afford, which serves as the agency.
2. Dependence on technology or Interdependence between the biological being and the technological enhancement shouldn't be mistaken as cognitive shrinkage, but right identified as cognitive re-distribution.
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I wish to conclude with a dialogue from the movie "I, Robot".
Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith's character): Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
Sonny (Robot): Can *you*?
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