Hi Sam,
Most people work with their computers via rather clumsy, slow,
awkward interfaces, and that's the way most people like it. We use
keyboards, mice, screens, speakers, joysticks, headphones, projectors,
and "virtual-reality goggles (which are really not much more than tiny
screens put close to your eyes) in order to communicate with our
machines. People use computers to store and retrieve large amounts of
information already. As a high-energy experimentalist, I use computers
all the time to record data from apparatus and then I devise programs
that sort through it to measure things. In fact, there is so much more
data that my experiment collects than I am personally able to process
with my nervous system, I am very much happier that the data didn't go
through me in some way, and I am perfectly happy looking at the
distilled versions I can devise by making graphs of the data in
different ways, looking at them on a screen.
Some machines do in fact interact even more intimiately with us,
but always in some limited way. Hearing aids is a common application,
as are pacemakers. Research effort is intensifying as I write this to
develop an artificial retina; a system which includes a video camera, a
radio transmitter, a receiver inside the eye, and electrodes which can
stimulate the optic nerve. This device is meant to help restore some
kind of vision to people who suffer from macular degeneration or
retinitis, but won't help others whose eyesight problems are not
related to the retina.
Another kind of new machine interface which is being researched but
I don't know if there are any successful examples yet is a prosthetic
limb which can pick up small muscle twitches in the stump left over and
move accordingly, or one that can pick up electrical impulses on a
nerve ending and move accordingly.
I'd imagine that limb prosthetics and sensory replacement devices
will become the most desired direct machine-human interface
applications for the time being. People will probably revolt against
more invasive kinds of technology (particularly anything involving
genetics, as you mention -- do we want machines to change our
reproduction?). The bioethecists will certainly complain.
Tom
(published on 10/22/2007)
