My friend Paul has been one for years. As has Stephen’s father-in-law. And over the weekend, the Blogfather announced that his wife would be joining the ranks of the early-stage human/machine hybrids.
Glenn comments on the cyborgization of America:
Soon, probably within a decade or two, we’ll see such devices becoming common, and multipurpose, and — most importantly — aimed at people who don’t have anything in particular wrong with them. Perhaps a ‘body computer?’ It could measure heart rate, blood chemistry, diet and exercise levels, etc., and export its data to outside devices so that the owner, or a physician, could monitor the owner’s health. Perhaps it could take preemptive action, releasing clotbusting drugs at the onset of a heart attack or stroke, or steroids in the event of an allergy attack, providing on-the-spot first aid for many serious problems. Still more advanced versions could fine-tune things in a variety of ways, until we gradually reach the stage in which our bodies are pervaded with nanodevices that maintain health and repair damage without our even thinking about them.
I’d like one of those now, especially if it could also treat migraine headaches. They’re working on it! They’re already working on vagus-nerve stimulation for epilepsy and depression, and even neural stimulation implants that promote female orgasms. (What, nothing for us guys?*) Since these devices are based on two things — electronics and biological knowledge — that are improving by leaps and bounds, we’re likely to see a lot more of them, and we’re likely to see them become cheap enough, and capable enough, and reliable enough that they’ll attain widespread use. Which I favor, though not everyone will agree.
As we noted yesterday, developments on the biotech/nanotech front promise to make our integration of machine components as unobtrusive as possible. But yesterday’s development raises an interesting question: what do you call a cybernetic organism whose cybernetic components are organic?
Orgcyborgs comes to mind, but maybe its a little clumsy. Perhaps we should reserve the term “cyborg” just for the organic cyborgs, and use the word borg to refer to the old-school mechanical cyborgs.
I’m just free-forming, here. Just kind of opening it up for discussion.
*Well, right, since guys wouldn’t benefit from that at all. What guys need is something really useful — maybe something to make us, I don’t know, more regular. No, not punctual, I mean — criminy, just forget it.