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I consider this a dichotomy: equally exciting and terrifying. We are already becoming more "connected" through our mobile devices such that millennials have no memory of life before thousands of cable channels; million player online domains and ever-available search engines. It's up to philosophers and science fiction writers to ponder and model exactly "what are we becoming" and who (or what corporate entity) ultimately owns the enhanced, integrated biological-cybernetic intellectual property? Along with the aforementioned Internet of Things, a new dimension to hacking may be opening up. These issues, along with privacy matters and civil liberties concerns could make things dicey.
Dr Woodrow (Woody) Barfield has published over 350 articles and publications in the areas of computer science, engineering and law. He was head of the Sensory Engineering Laboratory as an Industrial and Systems Engineering Professor at the University of Washington, and he holds both JD and LLM degrees in intellectual property law and policy. His research revolves around the design and use of wearable computers and augmented reality systems.
Dr. Barfield latest book is Cyber-Humans: Our Future With Machines, published by Copernicus. I interviewed him via email on the topics of that his book addressed.
What time-line do you see cyborgs happening in the future? At what point will humans be more “cyber” than “human”?
There are several ways to think about the question. A few people have predicted that by the end of the century the majority (all?) of our biological parts could be artificial and perform better than the original. But actually, many of us are cyborgs now which I think raises many ethical, legal, and social issues. Generally, the definition of a cyborg is a person whose physiological and mental functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device. So if you have a heart pacer or cochlear implant, you are a cyborg. I would like to add to the above definition in the following way: given that prosthetics and other cyborg technologies are becoming part of the human body and can be modeled with control theory, I extend the definition of a cyborg to include the concept of: (1) closed-loop feedback, and (2) that the technology being integrated into the human body has computational ability.
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies:
“Cyber-Humans: Our Future with Machines” – Interview with Prof. Woodrow Barfield
Hank Pellissier
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