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Recently in Salon Technology

Attack on the Net
In the midst of dot-com mania, one radio ad campaign takes the offensive against online commerce.
By Andrew Leonard
[10/19/99]

Technology: View from the top
Stoking the Net's growth
Industry veteran Ellen Hancock talks about Windows NT, glass ceilings -- and how her company, Exodus, keeps its vast server farms humming.
By Julie Polito
[10/18/99]

The Hollywoodization of venture capital
The business of funding tech companies has gone gaga for brand names and boffo deals. "Visionaries," though, may be out of luck.
By Mark Gimein
[10/15/99]

Books
The Red Hat diaries
Are Linux coders and Linux companies on different paths? A slapdash new book and a recent flurry of corporate maneuvers suggest just that.
By Andrew Leonard
[10/14/99]

Reading, writing, quarterly results
In Silicon Valley, venture capital has become a required subject -- even for fourth graders.
By Mark Gimein
[10/13/99]

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What a bummer. But hey, that's just Hollywood science fiction, right? Wrong, says Kevin Warwick, a professor at the department of cybernetics at the University of Reading in England -- the British equivalent of the M.I.T. Media Lab -- who has spent his career working on robotics, creating machine intelligence and, most controversially, building human-computer implants for use in his own body. Author of the recent computers-can-think book "March of the Machines: Why the New Race of Robots Will Rule the World," Warwick is the futurist most likely to be quoted throughout British newspapers direly predicting that computers may conquer the world within our lifetime. As he himself describes his work, "It's like creating science fiction."

Last year, Warwick made headlines when he implanted an electronics-filled glass capsule under the skin of his arm in order to remotely control his computer. The experiment, more hypothetical in nature than practical in application, was simultaneously praised and derided in his native Great Britain: The Guardian called it "a stunt in cybernetics"; the Glasgow Herald described him as a "publicity-hungry scientist, out there on the funding stump, ready with his party tricks"; even his daughter called him crazy. He enjoys a nutty-professor reputation at his own University of Reading; other observers point out that his work is frivolous compared with cutting-edge medical experiments with body-control implants.

Warwick is now developing an even more complex implant project -- he is planning to hard-wire his brain directly to his computer. Call him "Professor Cyborg," if you will (it's just one of his media nicknames); but our ability to be cyborgs, he warns, may save the human race if the worst possible scenario -- the "Matrix" future -- comes true.

"Some computer scientists have their head in the sand in their thinking -- believing that things are programmed, and that we [humans] can always determine what they are doing to do. It's a complete load of rubbish, that is!" Warwick exclaims. "Sure, we've got implants for people with disabilities, like pacemakers, but we're not looking ahead as to how we might possibly increase human brainpower. So really that's the direction I've been going -- with a view to maybe save the world."

Next page | How will humans stay ahead of the machines?