Previously, scientists surgically connected electrodes to the nervous system, but they seemed to harm the body’s tissues, making the implant fail within months. In 2005, scientists discovered that they could stimulate a neuron to send a message by shining infrared light on it. Last September, DARPA, the Pentagon’s R&D branch, awarded $4 million to a project led by Southern Methodist University engineers to attempt to connect nerves to artificial limbs using fiber optics.
The team suspects that flexible glass or polymer fiber optics will be more flesh-friendly than rigid electrodes. In addition, optical fibers transmit several signals at once, carrying 10 times as much data as their electrical counterparts. “Our goal is to do for neural interfaces what fiber optics did for the telecom industry,” says electrical engineer Marc Christensen, who is leading the SMU group. Transmitting more information faster should give bionic limbs more lifelike movements.
This month, the team will implant optical fibers to stimulate a rat’s rear leg. If it works, Christensen says, in about a decade, robotic arms could be as graceful as Steve Austin’s six-million-dollar one.Popular Science loves these gee-whiz announcements. The claim that this technology will be available "in about a decade" may be made, straight-faced, twenty years from now. Someday, though, they will get it right. It will be great for paralytics and amputees. But the real payoff will be finally "curing" human nature.
Our predicament is simple: we experience reality as an isolated island of self-referential consciousness trapped in a meat bag. We are selfish because we're wired that way. But this technology, coupled with ubiquitous networking, can make each of us feel what everybody feels. If one of us suffers, we will all suffer. If one of us laughs, we all laugh. We will be pan-humans. None of us will be happy unless all of us are happy.
Utopian? Yes. Feasible? Eventually. And there will be unintended consequences, no doubt about it.
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