When the Terminators arrive they will not descend as an alien force upon an unsuspecting public.
The first cyborgs will arrive with a whimper, not a bang.
We will welcome them, not fear them. We will accept them into our lives.
We will do this because we will be them. And they will be us.
The change will come by degrees. In fact, it has already begun.
Our doctors routinely replace bones and joints with with metal and plastic and carbon fibre. Our paralympic athletes achieve extraordinary physical feats with biomechanical prosthetics. Our soldiers wear movement-enhancing armour and have instant communications projected directly into their vision.
This week we’ve had two notable examples hitting the papers: a filmmaker replacing one eye with a camera, and a programmer replacing his finger with a USB drive.
Interesting, but these are hardly quantum leaps towards our cybernetic future. They’re just the next steps down the road.
Gentlemen, we already have the technology.
2 comments:
Watching the video of Aimee Mullin speaking at TED made me think of the Ousters in Dan Simmons' 'Hyperion' and 'Enymion' sagas.
Indeed. Just found this link.
I don't think she's evil, though.
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