Just mention "neural interfacing" (being wired directly to a machine) on a computer bulletin board and you will quickly receive comments like the following:
I am interested in becoming a guinea pig (if you will) for any cyberpunkish experiment from a true medicine/military/cyber/neuro place. New limbs, sight/hearing improvements, bio-monitors, etc. Or even things as simple as under the skin time pieces.
Online conversants will pour forth such cybernetic dreams as computers driven by thoughts, implanted memory chips, bionic limbs and, of course, the full-blown desire to have one's brain patched directly into "cyberspace," the globally-connected computer networks. The romantic allure of the "cyborg" seems to captivate the fringes of digital culture, especially on the nets.
Neural interfacing fantasies have mainly grown out of science fiction, where "add-on" technologies turn people into powerful hybrids of flesh and steel. Since so much of our contemporary mythology comes from SF, an inherent confusion between fantasy and reality is to be expected. This already has happened in the field of virtual reality. Today's crude systems in no way reflect the media hype and "Cyberspace NOW " mentality of the impatient computerized masses. Neuroscientists and engineers in the area of implant technologies offer a similar tale of woe. Science fiction has fed us so many images of technologically souped-up humans that the current work in neural prosthesis (devices that supplement or replace neurological function) and mind-driven computers seems almost retro by comparison.
Images of human-machine courtship are omnipresent in pop culture. Recent albums by digital artists Brian Eno, Clock DVA, and Frontline Assembly sport names like Nerve Net, Man Amplified and Tactical Neural Implant. A recent Time magazine article on the cyberpunk movement made a number of dubious references to the near-future tech of brain implants, offering "instant fluency in a foreign language or arcane subject." Roleplaying games based on bionic, post-apocalyptic SF are gobbling up market share once reserved for Dungeons & Dragons.
Computer network and hacker slang is filled with references to "being wired" or "jacking in" (to a computer network), "wetware" (the brain), and "meat" (the body). Science fiction films, from Robocop to the recent Japanese cult film Tetsuo: The Iron Man, imprint our imaginations with images of the new, increasingly adaptable human-cum-cyborg who can exfoliate one body and instantly construct another. One might even speculate a link between the surprising popularity of modern primitivism (piercing, tattooing, body modification) and the emerging techno-mythology of "morphing" the human body to the demands and opportunities of a post-human age. The human body is becoming a hack site, the mythology goes, a nexus where humanity and technology are forging a new and powerful relationship.
Academic discourse also is rife with talk of cyborg bodies and the need to re-think the postmodern relationship between humans and machines. "There's a rapt, mindless fascination with these disembodying or ability-augmenting technologies," says Allucquere Rosanne Stone, director of the Advanced Communications Technology Lab at the University of Texas. "I think of it as a kind of cyborg envy.... The desire to be wired is part of the larger fantasy of disembodiment, the deep childlike desire to go beyond one's body. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly for the handicapped, it can be very liberating. For others, who have the desire without the need, there can be problems. Political power still exists inside the body and being out of one's body or extending one's body through technology doesn't change that."
"People want the power without paying the attendant costs," says Don Ihde, professor of the Philosophy of Technology at SUNY, Stonybrook. "It's a Faustian bargain."
Is the desire to be wired a fantasy born of our relationship with increasingly personalized and miniaturized technology? Will neural interfacing be commonplace in a future we will live to see? If so, what biomedical and bioengineering feats will be necessary? Most important, what function-restoring neural prostheses are being researched that show promise for the disabled, and may eventually lead to function-amplifying implants?
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