Are we heading in the direction of a bionic human body?

Question

The human brain contains our soul our memories and all that we are could it be transplanted to a bionic body?

Answer 1

I don't think so...........at least not now. I'm sure "somebody"..."somewhere" is working on it!

Answer 2

Are we going bionic; no and later yes.

What the book Bionic Man discussed and the TV show did not is that Steve Austin had a titanium reinforced spine so that he could use that arm to be able to lift a car without breaking his back.  He had a lot of other surgery and carried a small fission power plant to power himself; something which the TV series glossed over.  As for the Bionic Woman the 2007 series, she was run by nanomachines and had a 2-3 year life span before the nanomachines would fail; probably using up all her body to repair, power and run themselves.

One day bionics will be possible, that’s yesterday.  A landmark ruling made by the Olympic Council let a man with no legs compete in the Olympic Games as a runner.  They ruled the spring action in his feet did not give him significant advantage over a person with two normal feet.

The problem with bionics is powering them; it costs too much, the batteries aren’t powerful enough and the power sources we have are not strong enough or powerful enough; unless you want to limit him to a long extension cord.  The second problem with bionics is you can’t feel; you lose your sense of touch, temperature, pressure and roughness; you lose all those fine senses that we take for granted all over our body.

A gecko has a disposable tail, if a predator grabs it, that tail can snap off and the gecko can grow a new one.  But the gecko can’t grow a new arm like a starfish can, and a simple mouse can’t grow a new tail.  We have a hard time replacing body parts; but with the secret of stem cells we can.  Not only that we can make the organs to order.

Which part would you want; a mechanical heart that has to have its batteries changed each day, is noisy and wears out so you have to replace it or a natural heart that is self repairing and self maintaining or a true replacement for your original heart?  The first option is barely possible, the second option is routine, and the third option is becoming possible.

With stem cells it will be possible to design an ink jet printer that can print out an organ to order.  Since we can culture skin cells from your own body we don’t have to use a fetus and so cross that ethical boundary and we can make a heart that is designed by and for your body.

Soon we will be able to cut off the stump where your arm used to be and grow a new one.  It would be a long and painful process; but once it was grown that arm would be fully integrated into your body, it would work just like the original and look just like the original you would once again be a whole person.

Why would you put up with a mechanical interface that you need to learn how to use secondary muscles to move, that has no nervous connection and can barely work.  The best bionic hand can open and close the thumb and forefingers and rotate the entire hand; that’s it and that is no where as flexible as the real hand and wrist joint is and it takes two 9 volt batteries per arm per day to run it.

In the TV show 2050 show on the Discovery Channel last year the idea of printing out organs made to order for your own body was discussed in detail.  We are learning how to spur growth and force the body to repair damage that it once could not.  These advances may not come out until the end of the century, but they are there.

Meanwhile Congress has ordered DARPA to invest more technology and money into medical research; expressly because of all the wounded Iraq war veterans.  So the current bionic technology will increase by leaps and bounds, but in parallel to the technology to create natural body parts.

A machine will never be as efficient or as strong or as easily powered as the human element will be.  The mechanical part will never have the sensation of the real arm.

By the time we get the mechanical technology to match the human one will we have found a way to replace the human version with a newly grown version of the original.  So we are going through a bionic stage, but in 50-100 years it will be replaced.

Now one thing we WILL investigate and use bionics for is enhancement.  Typing and using a mouse is cumbersome and it can be difficult for some to master; how much easier it would be to just think at the machine and operate it.  It is already possible to create a computer control that a paralyzed individual can learn to operate and so use a computer.  So even if Steven Hawking losses the ability to use his only hand a brain operation could implant and experimental mouse controller and he can learn how to use it.

We are beginning to learn how to decode the nervous system and the next step will be to create a DIN a Direct Neural Interface.  Imagine a piece of metal on your forehead that you plug in a simple USB like cable in and operate a computer at the speed of thought.  Imagine how much more productive we can be.

Then imagine the power we put into a blackberry integrated right into your head.  We could build a digital assistant and implant it into the person; by that time we should be able to grow it inside of them with nanotechnology.  They would have a permanent wireless phone and Internet connection, and memory aid, a calculator and scheduling program and a small computer all integrated into a chip the size and thickness of your fingernail.  This can be done in the next 100-200 years.  By then we will have augmented humans and they will be bionic.

Now we need better soldiers so we hardwire their reflexes, we give them voluntary control over their adrenal glands; we install a filter inside the liver to remove all poison.  We include a wide range pain killer and antibiotic that can be automatically added to the soldier and we integrate mechanical assistance muscle fibers inside of them.  It will take thousands of dollars to operate on and train such a soldier; but he would make a Special Forces Soldier look like an untrained teenager.

By the time we can combine the mechanical and electrical to be able to just about match the natural we will all ready have a way to replace the natural so bionics won’t be worth it.  Then when we get the technology to a better design we will go back to bionics and create augmented humans.  At first it will be direct brain connections and then later body improvements.

Today we think that having someone wear a hook for a hand is barbaric; yet after WW2 that was still the latest technology.  Now we think of someone having a flesh colored hand that can make a simple grab and rotate.  50 years from now we will look back on that as barbaric technology.  Imagine actually cutting off a person’s limb and dooming them to a life without it, how horrible, how barbaric, how backward.

In the Revolutionary War if you got shot in the leg and the bone was shattered then the best thing to do would be to cut it off; and you would have no anesthesia.  In the Civil War, almost 100 years later the only improvement would be a possibility of having ether or getting the patient drunk before you conduct the same operation for the same reason.  Now days we can save all but the most savaged limb.  We can even re-attach a cut off limb; of course it won’t be as good as the original you will be lucky to get 40% of the usage and feeling back. But in 50-100 years you will totally replace the limb with a new version just like the original.  It might have been grown in place, or it might have been grown in a vat and then transplanted and the nerves forced to grow into a connection.

Once we have mastered this we won’t need bionics and we will dump them.  Then we will go to augmentation bionics and open the world of the super soldier and the implanted computer equipped human.  How smart would you be if all of Wikipedia was implanted in your head and you could access it with just a thought?  You would only have to frame the question and your internal digital assistant would give you the answer.  We would know all the facts and our database would update itself automatically several times per day.

If you wanted to replace a light socket you would have Ohm’s Law pop up telling you how much voltage and amperage you can put on the line; your computer would calculate the values, and a U-Tube video would be superimposed over your vision to show you exactly how to install the light socket and the wiring.  That stuff is on the horizon and that is the true future of bionics.

Right now a man with blades instead of legs that let him run as fast as a normal human is cutting edge; but in 30 years we will be comparing that technology to the hook and peg leg that the pirates wore.

As to the soul; as soon as you can measure it, locate the organ that stores it quantify it then we can transplant it.  Otherwise even with a total brain transplant you can’t know for sure if you have captured the whole soul.  When Dr. McCoy took the transporter on Star Trek his body was scanned down to the quantum level the data was stored in memory and his body was blasted into atomic pieces.  Some of those pieces and a lot of electricity were sent to the destination where they were reassembled.  Did this totally identical copy still have the original soul?  Was it the same person, the new golem thought it was the same person, but was it really?  Answer those questions and we can start talking about how to handle the soul.

I have a question for you: if your body was cloned and grown and then your brain was transplanted into the new clone would it be the same you?  What if all your knowledge and personality were convereted to computer data and stored on a machine.  If you ran the program that was "you" would that program be you?  Would it have a soul?  And what would you do with the original?

Once you navigate yourself past all those thorny issues and questions then I will be willing to discuss the soul.