The journey toward making "normal" obsolete.
When you're sick, it's obvious that you and your doctor should work, if possible, to help you get better. Nobody would argue against a treatment that restores normal function to a sick or disabled individual. But the consequences of going further than that--going beyond "normal"--are not commonly studied, nor endorsed by many in medicine. Indeed, in any medical procedure, there is risk. If you are already normal, then conventional wisdom dictates that that's enough. "Do no harm," the old aphorism says--we should focus on altering the body and mind only when the risk of the alteration is justified, preferably by the hope of solving a deficit of vastly greater magnitude.
Science has endorsed something of a parallel attitude in its pursuit of biological and biomedical research. Namely, in biology, many key insights have emerged via study of the absence of the phenomenon of interest. For example, throughout the 20th century, many insights about the brain arose from the knocking out of specific genes, or the ablation of specific neurons in animals, or the examination of human patients who have suffered the loss of brain regions from conditions such as war or medically mandated surgery. In this way, we learned that patients without their hippocampi become unable to form new memories; humans and experimental animals with prefrontal-cortex damage make bad decisions and lack impulse control; subjects without dopamine-producing neurons exhibit symptoms of Parkinson's disease. These studies are good at demonstrating the necessity of a specific neural circuit, or brain region, to the normal state. The idea that biomedical science is supposed to bring us up to normal is embedded, to a degree, in the very structure of the experiments we commonly do in the laboratory.
There is nothing wrong with this line of thought. This angle of research is fully consistent with our medical goal. It has brought us many of the triumphs of the last century, and it continues to yield insights into the vast range of diseases that plague us throughout life. When researchers leave this line of thought, though, they point toward the possibility that going beyond normal may change us in new and unprecedented ways, improving our lives in ways that are hard to even imagine. One fascinating line of research over the past few decades has revealed that life span, which long appeared to be solidly set in stone, can be lengthened through pharmacological and genetic manipulations--at least in worms, yeast, and, most recently, mice. This work may someday (quite possibly soon) lead to drugs that can extend human life span. Or note that this past summer, double amputee Oscar Pistorius won second place in a race against able-bodied runners, racing with his prosthetic carbon-fiber legs. Now he is hoping to take on the Olympics, which has led international athletic bodies to worry that augmented humans may be better at running than normal ones are. As a final example, cognitive-augmentation drugs such as modafinil, which enhances alertness even after long hours of wakefulness, are becoming widespread. (Broadly interpreted, good ole coffee might be considered the original neurotechnology, having augmented attention, alertness, and memory in tired humans for millennia.)
It's arguably time for a discipline to emerge around the idea of human augmentation. At the MIT Media Lab, we are beginning to search for principles that govern the use of technology to augment human abilities--that make the idea of normal obsolete. As a codirector of the Center for Human Augmentation, I lead a lab, the Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, that is developing devices that will hopefully eventually allow us to enhance memory, creativity, and happiness in humans. One interesting observation that has emerged is that it's much easier to know when something is gone than it is to characterize it in its intact state. For example, it's far easier to demonstrate that an animal can form no new memories than it is to characterize the trajectory that memories take as they are learned, consolidated, and forgotten throughout the lifetime of that animal. And whereas many measures of depression and sadness have been defined, a coherent description of happiness remains elusive. How can you augment something if you can't define it? One of the first things we are doing is developing better, measurable definitions of such phenomena. Another issue is that radically new tools are needed to augment the mind. We are developing new kinds of neural stimulators, for example, that enable highly targeted manipulations of the brain. Some of our inventions, like the ability to turn specific sets of neurons on and off with brief pulses of blue and yellow light, may be used chiefly in animals for the next few years, but I think they will find many compelling uses in humans in the years to come, as their power becomes manifest through the efforts of a great many neuroscientists and engineers.
| Cognitive augmentation will require new technologies. |
One argument in favor of going for optimality, and forgetting about normal, is that it's becoming harder and harder to know what is normal. For example, it's been demonstrated that two-thirds of all people have at least one copy of a DNA sequence that makes them more likely to become depressed after a stressful life event. The rest of all people, a minority of one-third, are more resilient to stress than the other two-thirds are. Thus, it could be argued that becoming depressed in response to stress is the normal state. As a neuroengineer, I think it's easier just to develop neurotechnologies that will enable us to make people as happy and intelligent as possible, and perhaps to even go farther: taking on the questions that philosophy struggles with, such as how to find meaning in one's life. (More on that last point in a future post.)
What is a problem, and what is a feature of the human condition? They are not necessarily distinct. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to find better ways to make life better. In that way, we'll hopefully move, in the century to come, from "Do no harm" to "Do good."
Cite as: Boyden, E. S. "In Pursuit of Human Augmentation." Ed Boyden's Blog. Technology Review. 9/17/07. (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/boyden/21839/).
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
Then they started giving certain special forces "super vision". Normal guys with 20/20 vision, undergoing surgery to obtain 20/40 vision.
gabrielg01
09/17/2007
Posts:418
Alex Allison Oct 20, 2009
308-1209 Ridgeway Ave. Coq.
Vancouver. B.C.
Canada.
604-939-0357
When Man steps into Gods sandbox, will he sell his soul for it? Yes.
Mind-Quantum-computer-Mind Interface.
Augmented Cognitive Interfacing Technology
My name is Alex Allison, I live in Vancouver. B.C. Canada . For your consideration " What if."
I wish that is really how it was, but unfortunately this did happen. I'm the subject of a single blind experiment, called Human Brain Reverse Engineering Project. I'm pretty sure the two agencies are National Security Agency(operational) and D.A.R.P.A.(experimental). I have only the tiniest amount of evidence, they are the best in the world, and did not leave anything for me to use. How do you gather evidence against an invisible entity? Against some-one who can see everything around you, know your thoughts are, and know what your going to do. I have been experimented on with the most advanced technology in the world. It is generally agreed amongst researchers in this field that this technology will bring about a paradigm shift and will bring us closer to the singularity of interaction, of man and machine. This technology will be incredibly invasive, into our privacy and our body.
The ability to receive, impose, augment or diminish the operators neural patterns on you, whether you like it or not. The ability to read cognitive functions, emotions, sensory perceptions or control, affect your body, using augmented neural patterns via the motor cortex or other regions. To feel or see what you do, to shape or alter, to affect your physiological or psychological being.
I know what it is like, when someone can access, affect and control your body, and you can't do anything about it. I have been designed to have the ( right experiences) and mind-tailored, ( thoughts, personality, attitude, knowledge), to fit the criteria of the experiment, to get maximum data, configuration pattern return, and longevity of the experiment. The premise to take a person from zero activity to a deep addiction, record the areas affected, stabilize thoughts and emotions, and remove any physiologically or psychological affects, then diminish and remove memory of the event, all while using abuse to get at the deep neural patterns and thoughts, and hold the person "prisoner" using this technology.
How do camouflage, isolate, control, remove a persons credibility? When the experiment could take around 30 years. About 25 years for the set-up, then transition and ongoing, since January 2006. To fit the criteria of the question, they used a drug addiction, so when I did realize what was happening, it was too late. I know that admitting, drugs were involved, opens me up to the comments of being delusional, but so did the expert psychologists who chose it.
The use of drugs to camouflage , isolate and remove credilibility and for the reversal, was integral to the context of the experiment.
When I found out what the experiment was, recognized the futuristic technology, realized I had been mind-tailored, and that this was linked to another paranormal event, when I was nine, no-one believes me. Two paranormal events are better at luring a person in, than one. Just prior to coming to Canada from England I had three angels kneeling, head down, hands clasped beside my bed, whether they were real or not, if they were, wow, but I now realize I was being set-up to fit the criteria of this evolutionary experiment, to reverse engineer brain regions, affected by the drug addiction and reverse the addiction of interactive augmented reality, and to have my body taken over using augmented neural interfacing technology via the motor cortex.
When the transition point (January 2006) came to take me in deeper, I was very isolated, in their control, my credibility removed, and losing my ability to cope, psychologically disabled. I initially thought they were there to help and stayed off drugs for 6 months, until the abuse became too much. I had realized early on that I was in the hands of some very driven people and was trying to get out. I was becoming more depressed and went back into drugs to" hide".I could not find any-one that would listen, people wanted to see evidence and every one I turned to, could not grasp that it is possible,to access some-ones body externally, and internally with remote neural technology.While I was there. While I was doing drugs I met people who knew of the matrix before me, and I met people were using it.
Another facet of control was to push the body around with a electro-magnetic fields . Overlay a full-size avatar on body, align body and avatar's field, then create a field close by, then use to repel or attract. In February 2006, for a month I had electricity arcing out of my body into my bed and bike. I ended up going to the doctor, who confirmed the electrical burns on my body. The operators are also able to make objects "heavy" by using the same pattern overlay. Take a set of keys, shake and see if their movement is stilted, and stops quickly. Another aspect of this interface is they have tailored my mind for quietness, only deliberate thoughts, they have suppressed extraneous noise , no unconscious thoughts coming to the surface.
To make this possible your standing in a global light imaging system, that records every event, every creature on the planet, images everything, and is first step intervenor of all computers , emerging technology, and everything that takes place on the planet. I have seen incredible life like holograms and 3-d images, looking at photographs.
"We" as people are so focused on the closed individual, that to affect, cause, or read another person via linked to and thru a computer to another person is science fiction, delusional, not possible.,and your mentally unbalanced.
I had my life stolen, destroyed, been badly abused, had my memory of the events diminished greatly and now, a realization that I may never be able to hold any-one accountable, along with a questioning of what are really my thoughts. I am scared, I am still in the hands of human beings, intelligence agents, with evolutionary technology, that no matter where I go,they can read my thoughts and punish me, if I try to get the authorities involved, although this pretty well beyond them. I have sent memo's to the United States Senate Intelligence Committee. I have lost my job and my apartment, because of these agency's abuse.
A Brave New World.
Your are standing in light-imaging system, that is everywhere, and can't be found because the singularity knows when your going to scan for it. The Singularity knows and can alter , affect everything that takes place on the planet if it is in there interest and they so choose. The matrix already knows the message before you encrypt it. Who monitors the kinder-garden gods, when they come out to play? How, and who holds them accountable?
I am very sad and depressed, they are still holding me and helping themselves to my body and mind with their neural interfacing technology. They are taking the details, the memory of what they have done, they have destroyed my life, they turned me into a addict using augmented neural interfacing patterns, and now finally have done the reversal, removed any physiologically and psychological affects.
They have used there technology to torture, harass me 24 hrs a day and take over the body via the motor cortex. I have tried the police and RCMP, but no-one wants to take time to listen, or even begin to understand the technology, they think I am delusional. I am interacting with some of the most intelligent people in the world who have augmented cognitive functions. They are experts in the intelligence world and have used the perfect camouflage for their experiment. They have driven me into the ground, so that no money to get a lawyer or investigator or travel around trying to talk to people face to face, but stuck using the phone, which removes a lot of communication clues in trying to convey a story.
Man is about to experience a paradigm shift, when a full interactive neural chip, that can augment reality and cognitive functions comes out into public domain. If this is a forerunner of the people who lead the world, thinking it is okay to use this technology to destroy people over 25 year period, our world is in very deep trouble. All privacy and civil liberties gone.
Sincerely Alex Allison
cc: Howard Greely Emory University, Dept. of Psych.
Stanford Law Soceity Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D.
Center for Cognitive Liberty. Leo Kass
Nicholas Bostrom
Institite for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Center for Cognitive Liberty
Human Rights Watch
mouse
10/20/2009
Posts:1
jgoldberg
09/18/2007
Posts:1
At the same time, the ability to integrate non-biological enhancements within humans will proceed in parallel with the result being communities of cyborgs.
These trends should produce a powerful social reaction that will make the current cloning debate mere small potatoes.
jacklewisr
09/18/2007
Posts:4
Time for some techno-ethics?
blunney
09/18/2007
Posts:17
It needs to become the moral imperative of every member of our species to do what ever is necessary to both improve the species, and provide a higher standard of living for every member of the species.
akocher
12/18/2007
Posts:1
A thoughtful post to kick off a long-overdue blog. Looking forward to reading more.
johnsonmx
09/21/2007
Posts:3
walt
09/21/2007
Posts:35
jcraig949
09/25/2007
Posts:2
"developing devices that will hopefully eventually allow us to enhance memory, creativity, and happiness in humans."
probably developing devices and drugs are sexier than all-natural cognitive training, but it will take a while before there are good interventions with known and controlled side effects. why not focus on well-directed cognitive training that can augment mental capacity?
AlvaroF
09/25/2007
Posts:2
but while we're doing that, we may as well do some long-term research also.
bshanks
09/25/2007
Posts:3
All involve neuroimaging, so can you still do cool studies. Maybe not as sexy as introducing a device in one's brain, of course.
AlvaroF
09/26/2007
Posts:2
merlia
12/28/2007
Posts:1
I would like to say that this is what I do everytime, since I was seven years old. Today I am twenty seven years old and in a part of this time I have much problems with this way of thinking, but by now I am getting to live with this.
I just wanted you to know about this case.
GFSilva
03/05/2008
Posts:1
stress
04/17/2008
Posts:1
It's also worth remembering that McLuhan, himself generally an advocate of human augmentation (or in his terms "extension") as the very thing that defines humanity, wrote a caveat: for every augmentation comes a corresponding amputation. Not to discourage us from exploring augmentation, but to remind us to do it with full awareness of what we are leaving behind, and to consider what we might wish to retain.
viveka
12/07/2009
Posts:1