Imagining New Colors

Human Expansion: Going Beyond What We Can Only Perceive

I remember when I was little one of my friends asked me to close my eyes. In a dream-like tone she then told me to do something that I will never forget,

“Now try to picture a brand new color…”

I sat there stupidly for a few moments, blue in the face, unable to do so. Then we both giggled, concluding it was impossible to do such a task.

In his Ted Talk Can We Create New Senses For Humans, David Eagleman explains that the way we perceive reality is both defined and constrained by our biology. Our brains can only sample pieces of this huge world we live in. From the few signals we send to it, our brains can only construct a subjective world around us.

“take the colors of our world…lightwaves, electromagnetic radiation that bounces off objects and hits specialized receptors in the back of our eyes…We’re not seeing all the waves out there. In fact what see is less than a ten trillionth of what’s out there.”

He then goes on to explain this from the perspective of a dog (where smell means everything). One day our pet might look up at us and think,

“I wonder what it is like to have the pitiful impverished nose of a human?”

We’ve never experienced the superior nose of a dog so we don’t feel as if we are missing out on anything…but are we?

What if we could define our own world and trajectory? What if we could expand our universe to include heightened and changed sensory reality? What if we could do this through the power of technology?

As we were lying in bed the other night, pillow-talking our way toward sleep, my husband Jonathan Chew turned to me and asked me a question in all seriousness,

“If you needed to replace a kidney one day…would you replace it organically, or, if it was possible, use a 3D printed kidney instead?”

I didn’t even hesitate. I told him that technology usually has less room for failure, whereas the human body fails constantly. So naturally, I would go for the 3D kidney.

But then I had this terrible feeling in my stomach…isn’t this what Sci-Fi stories have warned about? How far would I be willing to go until I was completely a 3D printed robot or something?

One of the best episodes in Star Trek: The Next Generation is called Measure of a Man.

In it, the character Data poses the question,

“Lieutenant La Forge’s eyes are far superior to human biological eyes. True? Then why are not all human officers required to have their eyes replaced with cybernetic implants?”

Data brings up a good point, and while the Borg (who believe in forced evolution through any advancement in technology) would most likely disagree with him, there’s something to letting biology just…be biology.

So maybe I could go back to my younger self and let her know that there really are more colors out there to see…we just can’t comprehend them yet because of our physiology…

But…

Would I even want my younger self to know that? Is she happier in thinking that she doesn’t need any more colors? Are the ones in her perceived reality good enough as is?

(if you have any thoughts on the matter, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!)

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