The Problem With Society

In researching technological "implants" online (and subsequently reading the other posts on this topic), I was shocked by the results that popped up: the human microchip or ID chip, money that can be digitally tracked, even teeth implants that can receive digital signals from radios. Most chilling of all, however, might have been the article I stumbled upon that demonstrated how technology allowed Matt Nagle, a man paralyzed from the neck down as the result of brutal knife injuries, to move objects by the power of thought through a brain implant.

It's not telepathy, but it's certainly close. Nagle has electrodes implanted in his brain that measure the neural signals sent when he attempts to move a part of his paralyzed body. It then reflects the message to software that has been programmed with Nagle's neural responses during attempted movement, which then reacts to the kind of movement Nagle is thinking about and thusly creates some sort of reaction. If Nagle thinks that he would like to raise his right arm, the software will send a message to the robotic arm he uses to rise. If Nagle is thinking that he would like to give someone the thumbs up, the software might, instead of using the limited movement of the robotic arm, translate the image or idea to an on-screen cursor. With this technology, Nagle could play an entire video game through the power of thought.

As Hayles points out, "the point is not merely to leave the body but to reconstitute it as a technical object under human control." Although Nagle's use for this technology is practical, and it is generally only used to simulate normal human movement, it would certainly be possible for Nagle to control his body, as a machine, in a way most humans cannot (again, controlling a video game through thought alone). Although damaged, Nagle's body is now no longer simply an organ susceptible to great weakness, but a powerful machine whose control center is thought. Nagle's implant, then, signifies both man's attachment to his corporeal form and his ability to control it from an almost other worldly or disconnected place. I would imagine that one feels rather disconnected from his body if it doesn't recognize the brain signals for movement, and thus Nagle's implant is both a way to connect to the body and a way to further mind from body, disconnecting neurons and the biological process of neural signals sent throughout the body to message from mind to software to artifical body or bodily machine.

While Nagle's implant obviously has great medical use to allow a more fluid, "normal" life for the paralyzed, it certainly rasies some interesting questions about man's connection to his physical self (as Hayles notes, the body is no longer natural, and "it is impossible to locate an originary source for experience and sensation" between the sensory feedback loop and the technologically enhanced body) and whether that physical self is a true representation or expression of the intangible self.

Read the article about Nagle here: http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn9540-brainimplant-enables-mind-over-matter.html

To be honest, when it came to finding a web portrayl of some kind of VR gear, I felt a little dumb. I'm the kind of kid who still thinks N64 is cool, and proved it last year by beating out 9 boys on my residence hall floor at a dorm-wide MarioKart competition. When it comes to game technology much more sophisticated than that, where the controller turns into a vibrating creature with more buttons than my TV remote, I get a little scared.

But tuning into YouTube proved worthwhile when I found a video showing the new technology Vitusphere, where a video game user straps on a headset and steps inside a large hollow sphere, which sits atop computer monitored wheels, and walks straight into the game.

Check out the demo at http://youtube.com/watch?v=qTnnJR-hS7k

This kind of technology, where the user is situated INSIDE the game and controls character movement through the movement of self, obviously blurs the line between virtual and reality, and perhaps complicates the matter of self even more. As Hayles puts it, "stimuli go in both diretions; what happens to the puppet has an impact on your sensory field, just as what you do affects the puppet. The puppet is a version of and a container for the self." This suddenly duplicitous self, then, is both a self and a signifier of the self, a kind of doppelganger in an alternate reality, be it virtual or actual or a mix of the two. The problem, though, is that while this puppet may take us out of our physical body and put us into another, the puppet is still a container for the self. It may be more highly customizable, with an appearance that can be altered by the click of a mouse instead of a plastic surgery, and it may have some supernatural ability we could only dream of, but it is still a physical encapsulation of the self. Perhaps its customizable nature makes it an encapsulation that society is willing and even eager to explore; however, I don't know that I would be more excited with my body after undergoing an "Extreme Makeover" than I am now. In fact, I would probably feel alien to myself, which, as it seems from our readings, is what people now are both seeking and running from.

So where does that put society? Ultimately, all of this leads us to question WHY our society is seeking out-of-body experiences. Again, it could have to do with the "information overload" Hayles looks at, or it might concern the desensitization of humanity with the perception of the speeding up of time and action, but ultimately, isn't a good bike ride still freeing? Is a virtual sexual experience or simulated sexual activity really a better alternative to the bodily expression of sex, which in itself is permanently attached to the root ideas of animalistic behavior, basic instinct, and hormones? While it may be possible to turn all of these human experiences into a sort of hyper-experiential alterna-reality, why should we be so soon to accept those new experiences as better or more thrilling than the human experience itself?