Two years ago, IFTF’s Technology Horizons program explored the
implications of what we called “the extended self”. The core hypothesis
was that the body is becoming a platform for a whole range of
technological augmentations. These deliberate enhancements run the
gamut from mobile phones and social network software, to cochlear
implants to restore lost hearing.
One of the really interesting implications of that research was the
insight that we are increasingly seeing people leveraging therapeutic
technologies to create super-human abilities. This is clearly the case
in athletics, but you can also this at work with college students
abusing drugs like Ritalin and Adderall to maintain focus during long
study sessions. Michael Chorost, who wrote so eloquently about his
relationship with his cochlear implant, forecasts that people will
almost certainly exploit the potential of that technology to provide
super-human hearing for healthy people. Even though only six people
have had therapeutic retinal implants to date, it probably won’t be
long before someone develops a retinal implant that gives its symbiant
the ability to see X-rays or infrared.... if they haven't already.
It was with this in mind that I set out this Wednesday on the 7am
shuttle to Boston to attend the Humans 2.0 symposium at the MIT Media
Lab. Bearing in mind that Media Lab events are often a big,
over-produced show designed to impress sponsors into coughing up
another year's worth of funding, I had low expectations. As you can see
form the archived video of
the day, it was actually a pretty good event all things said.
John Hockenberry, the former NPR/NBC correspondent who is now in
residence at the lab, emcee-ed the day and kept everyone awake with
wise-cracks, innuendo and jokes. Since Hockenberry has been paralyzed
from the waist down since a car accident in 1977 at age 19, it provided
a great context for thinking about upgrades to the body.
Most of the presentations by Media Lab researchers were incremental
updates on ongoing research, some of which has questionable relevance
to the idea of human augmentation. (And nary a Q&A session was
offered). If there was an over-riding or under-lying theme to the days
presentations, I didn’t get it. But then, that’s what happens at a
place like MIT - so many bright people with money inevitably pursue
their own desires. The Media Lab especially is notorious for having as
many “Centers” as it does professors.
Here are some thoughts about the various presentations.
The Highlight: Progress Towards Neural Interfaces
The highlight of the day, in terms of scientific interest, were two
excellent presentations by non-MIT people. These presentations
described current research on and the future potential of neural
interfaces - technical devices that would allow the human nervous
system to connect to electronic devices. Essentially, a network bridge
between the human nervous system and digital electronic networks.
Douglas Smith of the University of Pennsylvania shared some results
of his work, which focuses on quickly growing long strands of nerve
cells in culture using a mechanical stretching device that mimics the
tension that stimulates nerve growth in large, rapidly growing animals
like whales. In his lab, researchers have been able to grow nerve
strands as long as 10 cm at a rate of 1 cm per day. The cells in the
strands self-organize into cohesive linear structures, and they have
had success taking these strands, wrapping them in collagen and
inserting them into rats that have had existing nerve segments removed.
While they are not yet sure if the grafted segments will allow normal
nervous system functioning to be restored (i.e. to undo the surgically
created paralysis), they have proven that electrical current is passing
along the nerve-graft boundary, indicating that new connections are
being formed.
John Donoghue, who teaches at Brown but is also foudner of a company
called Cyberkinetics, contined the discussion on neural interfaces. He
began by likening the current state of research to where electronic
Pacemakers were in the 1950s, and showed a slide of the first Pacemaker
- a device about the size of a large dishwasher. He went on to describe
the small, pill-sized sensor that his company has developed for
implantation in the cerebral cortex in a region that controls movement
of the arm - the BrainGate neural interface system. It has 100 tiny
micro electrodes that sense action potential in motor nerves. It is
being implanted in people paralyzed through various injuries and
disorders. It allows people to "think" about moving their missing or
paralyzed arm, and use that output to control a cursor on the screen.
The next step will be to couple BrainGate with functional electrical
stimulation systems that are already widely used (though with external
siwtches) to bridge damage in nerves and the spinal cord (5 years or
so).
The Show-Stopper: Biomechatronic Prosthetics
From a showmanship point of view, first prize goes to Hugh Herr,
director of the newly formed MIT Biomechatronics Group, who
demonstrated an active ankle prosthesis that is essentially a robot
itself, actively powering his walk like a real human ankle does. In a
dramatic unveiling, Prof. Herr lifted his own pants leg to reveal that
he himself (a double amputee) was wearing his own invention, as well as
conventional leg prosthesis. While the device does not use a neural
interface - it achieves its great functionality largely by sensing
orientation and acceleration and driving actuators to stabilize itself
and deliver thrust - seeing this device makes you realize just how
close we are to robotic prosthetic devices as an everyday medical
technology.
Off-topic: Recording an Entire Life
Another highlight was a presentation by Deb Roy, the soft-spoken
director of the Media Lab’s Cognitive Machines Group, who described the
“ultra-dense observational analysis” he is performing to record every
waking moment of his infant son’s development through a network of
video cameras installed in their home. This work was recently the
subject of a feature-length
article in Wired but Prof. Roy showed several fascinating
extracts of the massive data set (250 terabytes or 200,000 hours of
video by the end of the 3-year collection phase). The best was a
time-lapse audio clip of about 150 instances of his son saying the word
ball, from first identifiable use to final mastery. And so while Roy is
primarily interested in using the data to develop computers that are
better at learning by modelling how children develop language skills,
this technology has many applications - the most obvious being for
memory augmentation. But while fascinating, it was hard to link Roy’s
work directly to the human augmentation theme of the symposium. He
explicitly is clear that while this technology could be used for memory
augmentation, that’s not his goal - he’s trying to mine the data to
build software that learns more like children do.
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