Futurists foresee human enhancement

Technologies could help healthy as well as disabled
Nikki Cobb, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Newspaper Group
Aug. 28, 2006

By making some hesitant moves with a cursor on a computer screen, Matthew Nagle gave hope to others who, like himself, have lost the use of their limbs.

But by creating movement using only his thoughts, Nagle also inspired researchers, writers and futurists. They project a future where the disabled have their faculties restored and healthy bodies are augmented for heightened performance.

"It's always difficult to predict the future," said science writer Michael Chorost, author of "Rebuilt." "But some people have come up with some very imaginative technology."

Developments like the Braingate sensor, which has helped a paralyzed man move objects using thought, will become much more sophisticated, Chorost said.

Rather than coarse, rudimentary movements, technology might someday allow much more precision and control in movement.

But the science that produced Braingate may also help the blind see, make damaged brains whole and give healthy people a competitive edge by augmenting their faculties.

Chorost said retinal implants for the blind are being studied, patterned on the cochlear implants that already help deaf people hear.

A retinal implant would gather light and convey it to the optic nerve, which would process the information and transmit it to the brain, producing an image.

But retinal implants, like cochlear implants, likely will produce poor reproductions of natural senses. Just 16 electrodes are attached to the optic nerve, whereas a normal human eye has thousands of sensory cells. Images would be shadowy, distinguishing barely more than light from dark.

If technology is developed that allows more than 16 electrodes to be implanted, some semblance of normal vision may be possible, Chorost said.

"With the technologies that fix something broken, a person has to be willing to accept something nowhere near normal function," he said. "But in the future there will be technologies that will be better at reproducing what the original organ used to do."

Glen Hiemstra, author of "Turning the Future into Revenue" and founder of futurist.com, said researchers are trying to devise brain implants for people with debilitating brain diseases.

Such a device would be implanted into the brain to take over certain brain functions. For example, the hippocampus the part of the brain necessary for memory and spatial navigation, and the first part disabled by Alzheimer's disease could be replaced with an implanted computer chip.

"These are the dreams on the border of science fiction and real science," Hiemstra said.

But it's not just broken bodies that may someday be ameliorated by technology.

Hiemstra said, projecting 20 years or more from now, that scientists might be able to reverse-engineer the brain. Using sophisticated measuring devices, every neuron and chemical in a brain could be mapped.

"You would be able to download your brain," Hiemstra said. "The possibility could exist of backing up our brain. It would be retrievable."

He also suggested it is foreseeable that implantable memory chips could give healthy people an extra edge.

"A kid comes home in 2025 and says, `Mom, Dad, I just can't compete at school because everyone else has this memory chip. Please take me to the doctor for one,' " Hiemstra said.

"Do we stay natural, or do we enhance our ability to think? These are the social questions that have to be asked."

Hiemstra said nanotechnology working with individual molecules might someday lead to creating tiny devices no bigger than a blood cell. The device could be injected, travel to the brain and repair or augment something in the brain.

He also said the Department of Defense has been conducting experiments of its own. The goal, Hiemstra said, is to develop robotic equipment in combat that can be controlled by the thoughts of someone located safely miles away.

Still, Chorost said, these technologies are years from being realized if ever.

"Lots of things people are talking about, I find very few plausible," he said. "That's the problem with trying to predict the future."