“I’m not a Robot, I’m a Human!”
Our technologies grow with an incredible speed every day. The things that we could only dream about couple of decades ago, are now becoming reality. I am talking about cyborg, transhuman, and post human technologies.
According to Dictionary.com, a cyborg is “a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device.” We already can see those people with robotic arms, hands, legs and internal organs that help them to live. Luckily, I have a friend who is a cyborg. Even though he hates when people call him that or Robot.
Jason Barnes is a drummer who lost his right arm in an accident in 2010. He was electrocuted and after multiple surgeries the doctors told him that his arm could not function anymore. So he made a decision to amputate it. However, he didn’t give up on playing drums. He came up with the idea of prosthesis that could hold a drum stick. Later on Jason and the professor from GA Tech came up with an absolutely new idea- the robotic arm that could hold 2 sticks, and one of the would have a mind of its own. The idea is that the one with its own mind would pick up on the rhythm and tune and play by itself. This came true and Jason became famous. He is well known in a robotic society, music industry and film.
As I said before, Jason hates when someone calls him a cyborg or a robot (which happens quite often, even I was a witness of that). He says that he is still a human and just because he has a mechanical part in his body it doesn’t change who he really is.
The age of robotics has already come. Bill Joy in his article “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” states: the 21st-century technologies — genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) — are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses.” As in the example with my friend, the robotic parts can have their own “mind” and act on their own. That’s a bit scary, isn’t it? But it is the future. Sooner or later we might have a future where the robots will walk around and do the everyday things. Another animation example comes to my mind, this anime came out in the 90s and has had several remakes and now they are even thinking about making a fully digital made movie. I am talking about Ghost In The Shell. In the future, the line between digital and physical worlds noticeably erased, cybernetics changed human life beyond recognition, creating a new level of a synthetic existence and bringing all the people into a single network. However, the convergence of living organisms and machines has appeared fraught with dangerous consequences, giving hackers unseen possibilities of manipulating human consciousness. The main protagonist is a cyborg who investigates those attacks. This anime depicts the world that could become true in the nearest future. But with the great possibilities and opportunities also comes a great danger.
With the advancement of our existent technologies, we soon may have transhumans and post humans walking or should I say browsing around? We might even be able to transfer our identities to different bodies. Like in the movie called Self/less where the old real estate mogul transfers his consciousness to the younger body. But later on realizes that it didn’t go as well as he planned and that there is still the consciousness of the young man existent. This is a perfect example of how technologies could fail. I mean, this looks like something possible in the Digital Era, but there is always a possibility of a fatal error.
Pretty much the same happens in another movie about the same issue is Transcendence. The main character is a computer scientist and he is dying. So he decides to transfer his brain impulses into digital and make himself immortal. Everything looks fine before he realizes how much power he has once he’s no longer a human. His digital self learns way to fast and finds the way how to transfer his identity to a different body, which gives endless opportunities and a great danger. So in the end his girlfriend decided to turn off all the systems because he is way too dangerous for the society. Imagine that really happens. I would be terrified. Even scientists still believe that it is going to be possible to become post humans, I think you stop being human when it happens. A machine is a machine and it can’t feel. But if it only could, that would be a sad world like it is depicted in Artificial Intelligence.
To conclude all of the above I would like to say that the Digital Era might be one of the coolest eras in a human history. Our generation witnessed the technological advancements and about to become a witness of an absolutely new age of robotics, cybernetics and new media that will bring amazing things to our lives, as well as the most dangerous and terrifying things.
