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Man Or Machine
A new silicon chip created by Kareem Zaghloul at the University of Pennsylvania, US will be an eye implant to let the blind see (no longer will external cameras be needed). It’s said that around 700,000 people are diagnosed with macular degeneration each year and 1.5 million suffer from retinitis pigmentosa. The new chip has light sensors which function in the same type of way as a normal human retina. It’s only 3.5 x 3.3 mm in size and contains 5,760 phototransistors which take the place of neurons in a biological eye. Clinical trials should start as soon as they can reduce the size and power consumption a bit more, but then will be used to reverse blindness from these and other retinal diseases.
In related cyborgish news, a team of researchers at the University of Portsmouth, UK, have created the first bio-nanotech switch that can act as in interface between a living organism and a computer. This ‘nanoactuator’ is much smaller than the width of a human hair, and can be used to control artificial limbs, detect and react to airborne pathogens in a bio-defense role, or any number of other bio/mechanical applications. To me, it just shows one more step toward a human-machine evolutionary joining.
A Chiang Mai University team has developed a motor so small it will power a microscopic robot on an expedition through human blood vessels. The purpose of the new motor will be to drive a blood cell sized medical robot through the bloodstream seeking out small tumors in internal organs. There have been related stories about how these nanobots will then be able to deliver medicine, or eradicate infected the specific infected cells. Once this has been proven effective, then it might not be too long before a specialized “army” of various nanobots could be delivered to patients (or everyone) in a pill form and these tiny medical agents would go to work cleaning out the body of toxins, helping to fight off disease and co-existing within all of us to keep us more healthy and fit as they continued to live out THEIR lives within us in some symbiotic fashion.
Or maybe you’d prefer to just have Oxycyte put in to your bloodstream, or maybe soon the newer versions of synthetic blood that even do more… and better?! Right now, Oxycyte (a synthetic substance made from perfluorocarbons - PFC’s) is being used in clinical tests and some emergency medical procedures for traumatic brain injury, where these PFC’s can carry 50% more oxygen than normal blood cells, and also they can squeeze through smaller places that blood cells can’t fit… such as when blood vessels are squeezed from abnormal pressure. Right now this synthetic blood is already saving lives and is planned for more uses in the near future. I wonder what will happen when we have created a new synthetic blood that is always better than natural blood on many different levels…. combat infections better, carry oxygen and other nutrients more efficiently and just to make people healthier in general.
Another story describes a new brain implant that intercepts brain activity and can reroute it to another part of the brain, to a computer, or to another body part. Right now tests are being done on a monkey, but when the tests are complete their first application will be to use the device to help stroke and spinal injury victims by rewiring the brain activity around damaged parts, or sending brain signals to muscle tissue in other parts of the body to get around spinal injury issues. Of course, this new technology can also be used to control the movement of prosthetics as well, possibly bringing back complete and natural motion to someone who has lost their arms and/or legs… again, all with the power of thought, as easily as they use to move their natural arms and legs. Is there a limit at which point someones body could contain so many non-biological pieces that they would no longer be considered “human” ? What if that person was in an accident so terrible, that only their brain was able to be saved, and it was then placed in an android-type body, controlling all movement, speech, sight…. Now, what if the brain tissue was also dying, but was copied in to a computer powerful enough to store and use the information just as we use our biological brains now?
Chip Walter has written an article on the next “evolution” of homo sapien to cyber sapien. A rather interesting read about how advances up an evolutionary scale do not “require” the next step to be biological. As humans have evolved (advanced) from first making use of fire, and using sharp rocks, to increasing life with medical treatments, roots, plants, and the like… to later synthesized drugs, prosthetics, organ transplants, and now nanotech, computer-brain interfaces, robotic limbs, and more…. the couple dozen years will bring about a closer merging of humans and our technology. Perhaps even to a point we might “evolve” our biological selves out of existence.
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