Future Chips
Source: Arizona Daily Star
September 21, 2000
"I'm nobody! Who are you?" asked the poet Emily
Dickinson.
Emily died in 1886 but only recently has the technology
developed that could adequately address her concerns. Better late than
never, we say.
For the last few years, computer scientists have been
experimenting with chip implants that would render it impossible for
you to be a nobody. Researchers now say it is possible to implant a
dime-sized computer chip under your collarbone, which would abort any
possibility of an identity
crisis.
The chip could record volumes of information - your name
and address, your nearest relatives and their telephone numbers, your
bank and credit card numbers, your blood pressure, heart rate,
temperature and any medications you may be taking.
There even are rumors that chips can be used to control
the behavior of violent inmates in the prison system. Forget about
Valium. Forget Ritalin. Forget Thorazine. Instead, sedate an inmate
long enough to implant a chip somewhere on his body, then send signals
to the chip to control different parts of the brain. A particularly
dangerous inmate could be kept
drowsy all day long.
Some of this, we grant you, remains pure speculation,
but much of it is already here. In England, an adventurous cybernetics
professor - yes, we know the word is strange to a poet born in 1830 -
had a silicon chip implanted above his left elbow. Using radio waves,
the chip communicated
with computers. The computers, in turn, sent messages to other
machines that turned on lights, opened doors and even hailed him with
a sprightly "Hello!" as he moved from room to room at the University
of Reading.
Kevin Warwick, the professor, said he felt "bereaved"
when the chip was removed after nine days. He also said his experiment
was just the beginning. Next he will get a new chip implant "and this
one will send signals back and
forth between my nervous system and a computer."
These experiments seem whimsical on one level, and yet
they carry profound implications, especially for individuals suffering
from severe spinal injuries. Is it possible that a computer chip can
be implanted in a quardraplegic and that communication between the
chip and the brain can reverse a crippling injury? There is a
temptation to think of such
possibilities as farfetched, and yet 25 years ago - when the advanced
chip technology we know today was not available - scientists at the
University of Utah had already shown that similar brain and nerve
stimulation could allow blind individuals to see tiny specks of light.
Next month, one company plans to unveil a new product
called a "Digital Angel," which will enable parents to keep track of
their toddlers and allow adults to keep track of elderly parents who
may be suffering from Alzheimers Disease.
The new chips function a little like a Global
Positioning System but communicate with computers rather than an
orbiting satellite. Some of these chips reportedly are already being
used in Italy by wealthy families who are worried about being
kidnapped.
Clearly, the chip implants offer extraordinary
possiblities in the world of biomedical engineering, but there are
other implications -privacy issues, behavior control questions, and
others - that will have to be addressed eventually. One of those
questions may go well beyond Emily's, "Who are you?"
Warwick, thinking about the astonishing possibilities of
chip implants, sums it up this way: "I was born human. But this was an
accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe
it's something we have the power to change."
Think about that one. Someday you could be an
eggplant.
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/000921editimplant.html