Cyborgs in Sofia

TheSofiaEcho
Feb. 14, 2006

IT’S a cold Sunday evening in Sofia. The kind of evening when most people are putting another log on the fire and settling in for a cosy night. But for a handful of people scattered across the world, other plans are afoot.

In the yard of the National Polytechnical Museum, Sofia, a group stands in the snow, gathered around the dying embers of a fire. Protruding from the ashes is a wheel; look closer and you can make out the charred remains of a metal carcass that looks strangely like that of a robot. And indeed it is, for today is International Robot Day, the brainchild of “Bulgaria’s most radical group”: the Ultrafuturo group.

“It’s not easy being a member of the UIltrafuturo group,” says Anton Terziev, as he extends a hand bound in a blood-soaked bandage. This is a result of the group’s performance to mark Robot Day, in which a robot wearing a sign reading: “I wanted to be a human” was ceremoniously burnt, after Anton and his fellow Ultrafuturist Katya had signed the declaration - in blood.

“Why?”, one might ask.

“The purpose of the group is to focus public attention on points of marginality,” explains Anton, “to discuss unpleasant subjects like acceptance of the big other”. The ‘big other’ being “the foreigner, the marginal, the gypsy, the homosexual”- or, indeed, the robot.

One of the biggest projects on which they are currently working is The Big Jump project, which involves artists from around the world signing up to be cryonically ‘frozen’ in order that they can be reanimated when the necessary technology has been developed and reborn into a new customised body in a future trans-humanistic world some 200 or 300 years in the future, or perhaps earlier - depending on the development of nanotechnologies.

So, does Anton really believe that it will be possible to ‘bring people back to life’ in this way? “Yes, of course,” he says.

A member of the group has spoken to Robert Ettinger, grandfather of the cryonics movement and author of The Prospect of Immortality (1962), and they are hoping to co-operate with one of the cryonics labs in the US on this project.

The whole notion of cryonics - that people can be effectively put into ‘deep freeze’ until a time in the future when technology has been developed to revive them - has received much criticism from mainstream scientists who have deemed it merely a money-making scam (the prospect of immortality doesn’t come cheap) and it has remained more or less embedded in the world of science fiction, where it was conceived. Not surprisingly, it has also drawn criticism from religious quarters, for what is seen as a blasphemous attempt to play God or replace God with science. Indeed, Ettinger’s prophecy that “the freezer programme represents for us now living a bridge to an anticipated Golden Age, when we shall be reanimated to become supermen with indefinite life spans,” could step on the toes of a few religious mythologies, what with promises of reincarnation, immortality and a better life, all for the price of pure faith in science.

But Anton doesn’t see any religious barriers.

“It depends on individual intelligence and decisions,” he says.

As for how the soul fits in with the idea, Anton says, “the soul is like software, the body is like hardware”. While the hardware is in cryonic preservation, the non-material software remains in energy form.

“Generally, the public react negatively to our actions because of our kind of rhetoric,” he says. “The Bulgarian audience isn’t so tolerant as it seems to be, so we have a lot of trouble in the way we choose to realise ourselves here. But it doesn’t make us despair at all,” Anton smiles. “We are always open to new members, but unfortunately there aren’t so many who are ready to take a risk with us.”

One fellow risk-taker is Professor Warwick. He visited Sofia in January to take part in a Cafe Scientifique event with the Ultrafuturo group, organised by the British Council.

“It’s a shame that I’m here only as human today,” Warwick introduced himself.

In 1998, Warwick became the world’s first ‘cyborg’ when he had a silicon chip implanted into his body. The chip identified him to a computer in his building that allowed him to remotely operate doors, lights and computers. In 2002, he had 100 electrodes implanted in his left arm for three months, which linked his nervous system to a computer and the internet. In one experiment, Warwick, in a lab in New York, was able to send neural signals via the internet to control a robotic hand in the UK. “When the hand gripped an object, signals were sent back to the fingertips across the internet to New York and my brain received the signals. So, I was feeling how much force the robot had to apply on a different continent.”

In another experiment, Warwick’s wife, Irena, wore colour-changing jewellery that was connected to his nervous system. When he was calm, the jewellery was blue, but when he became excited the jewellery flashed red.

There is a serious side to the professor’s research. He hopes that the same technology that enabled him to activate doors and lights could be used for people who are paralysed to control devices “just by thinking”. Other research includes the development of technology to help blind people sense the position of objects.

However, Warwick sees far more wide-reaching implications in the future of the development of technology and cybernetics.

“Technology is moving so quickly and intelligence in machines clearly is going to surpass human intelligence. I see this as a fantastic opportunity to evolve as humans and become part machine ourselves,” says the professor.

He says it is difficult to imagine with our limited human brains just how far this could go.

“At the moment, my brain can think only in 3D, but if it is linked to a simple PC, it has the potential to think in hundreds of dimensions.”

Similarly, speech - our “outmoded”, slow and inaccurate” means of communication - could be replaced by signals sent directly between two brains. Warwick has already experimented with linking his and his wife’s nervous systems together.

“When she moved her hand my brain received her neuro-pulses - it was really exciting!”

His big goal now is to have a chip implanted directly into his brain within the next 10 years. This, he says, raises all sorts of exciting questions, not least concerning language.

“Do we think in language or not?”, he asks. “It’s exciting to do science that will stir up Wittgenstein.”

In the future, Professor Warwick sees the exciting possibility of being a cyborg with extra abilities.

“If the rest of you are happy with humans, that’s up to you if you want to be part of a subspecies,” he says.

Could it be that decades from now, cyborgs will be gathering to celebrate International Human Day?