One
of the major themes of this column has been how the boundaries between people
and machines are disappearing. People
are becoming more and more like machines, and machines are beginning to
resemble people more and more. One of
the major aspects of technological change which is contributing to this is the
Internet of Things. The Internet of
Things is the increasingly calibrated interaction of machines with machines,
machines with people and machines with objects as a result of sensors. Sensors pick up on data and determine the
best course of action in conjunction with programmed goals. The sensors can
turn machines on and off and can guide the response of machines as when an
automated self-driving car receives signals of traffic jams involving other
cars ahead and takes an alternate route.
Sensors can be put into objects to send signals to the Internet that the
objects are deteriorating in some way.
An example of this is when sensors are put in bridges to warn of
possible damage and even collapse.
Sensors even guide the response of pacemakers in hearts. All of this is done to make life frictionless
and safe, to prevent surprises, many of which can hurt people. So people get to live life in frictionless
safe comfort. The sensors act like
mini-nervous systems which bring the world of devices, objects, things in
general into the equivalent of an enslaved machine life. Except the devices, objects, things aren’t
really living beings.
Humans
are recipients of the benefits of all this machine connectivity through
sensors. It is like there is a digital
spider web of relationships among a growing percentage of phenomena in the
external world and a growing percentage of phenomena in the screen world. And apparently this digital spider web is
there to serve humans and to serve only humans.
There
are now many new different embeddable implants that directly connect humans to
this spider web. In an article on
CNN.com from April 9, 2014 by Keiron Monks, “Forget wearable tech, embeddable
implants are already here”, there is a discussion of some of the implants that
are available or will soon be available.
An internal compass, a mini-computer to transmit heat as well as sound,
implants to maximize sexual pleasure, implanted RFID tags that would give off
information just like clothing tags, electronic tattoos that can gather
information about vital signs including those applied to the head to measure
brain-waves, brain implants including silicon chips for people as diverse as
Alzheimer patients and soldiers (although brain implants if rejected can kill a
patient).
Up
until now these embedded implants have been used to enhance function and sensation
and to gather information. But it is
really just a short step to creating implants that actively guide people, even
control people.
Let
us suppose that at some point in the future, as people start to live longer and
longer, health care costs are no longer
sustainable because of the increased susceptibility of people to illness as
they grow older, and neither private citizens nor the government have the funds
to pay for the growing amount of care required.
Someone comes up with the idea of planting chips in people’s brains that
would guide them to make healthy life choices, in diet, exercise, and rest. The embedded chip would tell the patient what
to eat and what not to eat, what kinds of exercise to do and for how long, and
how much sleep to get at night. People
would no longer feel an urge to eat sweets, fatty foods, and salty foods. They would no longer feel a desire to live
such a totally sedentary life style. So people could live healthy lives not
only for their own good but for the greater good of society. And then in order to prevent overcrowding on
this planet, the health chip could be turned off after a certain age, and then
a person could rapidly deteriorate and then be quietly put to
sleep…..permanently. And then for the
greater good of society, people could start being controlled in other areas of
their lives to avoid unnecessary social friction. They could become like androids or robots.
Once
the boundary between human and machine is sufficiently torn down, through
embedded implants and prostheses, then our conception of what it means to be a
human is bound to change as well.
Embedded implants do represent a much closer relationship between humans
and machines than do wearable computers.
The
modern technology that is supposed to represent a kind of sophisticated array
of tools that humans can control for what they perceive as their benefits can
nevertheless be turned into an array of tools for controlling and shaping
humans. And, in effect, humans can end
up becoming the tools of their supposed tools.
Perhaps it sounds far-fetched, but who is going to stop it when
technological changes are occurring so incrementally that people are not able
to fully realize the significance of these changes, until the changes have been
around for a while and established themselves.
And by then, it might be too late to undo them. The Internet of Things as an established
force could end up creating a system that is practically indestructible and
that moves along evolving and shaping itself with little or no human
participation. And to the extent that
humans increasingly come under the influence of embedded implants, their will
could be so influenced and ultimately suppressed, that they would put up no
resistance to the growing power of this evolving modern technology. Eventually, it will no longer be the Internet
of Things (IoT). It will have evolved
into the Internet of Humans (IoH). The
boundary between machines and humans will have been torn down, and humans will
become one with the technology that has evolved all the way from the flint
tools of prehistoric humans. And this is
why we have to start becoming more careful now about our uses of modern
technology and start having discussions about how we can draw the line between
humans and machines. If we allow the Internet of Things to penetrate and
control are innermost human essence, we will lose both our self-definition and
our self-coherence. And at that point we
will have lost those aspects of our human nature that make it worthwhile for us
to be human beings.
© 2016 Laurence Mesirow
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