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The experiment was simple, especially when compared with some of the more complex medical implants that neurosurgeons are now working on, but it was evocative nonetheless. Warwick admits that he has been contacted by government officials interested in potential use of implants in prisons or for tracking pedophiles -- but Warwick himself breezily glosses over the Orwellian implications of widespread computer-implant use.

"I didn't feel like Big Brother was watching, probably because I benefited from the implant: The doors opened and lights came on, rather than doors closing and lights turning off," he says. "It does make me feel that Orwell was probably right about the Big Brother issue -- we'll just go headlong into it; it won't be something we'll see as a being negative because there will be lots of positives in it for us."

Warwick only wore the implant for nine days -- he says he was worried about the possibility that the glass capsule might explode or migrate around his body. But Warwick believes that was long enough to get a sense of what effect a mind-machine interface might have on our relationships with computers. "After a few days I started to feel quite a closeness to the computer, which was very strange," he muses. "When you are linking your brain up like that, you change who you are. You do become a 'borg. You are not just a human linked with technology; you are something different and your values and judgment will change."

His next implant experiment will engineer an even closer link between humans and computers. In 18 months, Warwick will again undergo surgery, this time receiving not just a transponder implant in his arm but a connection to his nervous core -- a tiny collar that encircles the bundle of nerve fibers at the top of his arm, reading the signals from his nervous system and transmitting those to his computer. Of course, just how his nervous signals will translate into computer commands remains to be seen -- much of the experiment will involve testing to see if he can turn on lights on his computer by waving his arm in certain ways.

Again, it's a simple experiment that has vast implications for the future of mind-machine interfaces. "This is where you can start to speculate straight away; in the very near future we should be able to operate computers without the need for a keyboard or a computer mouse," he explains. "It should be simply possible to type on your computer just by writing with your finger in the air."

This implant will not merely send signals to his computer, however; it will also receive them. The computer should be able to record and store sets of Warwick's nervous signals and transmit them back at a later time; if all goes well, he'll be able to "play back" the motion of flexing his elbow or wiggling his fingers. He could even "re-experience" the nervous signals related to his emotions, "playing back" the signals his nervous core sent when he was feeling happy or stressed. "Will I feel the emotion I felt before, will I feel a different one, will it be better or will it be worse? We have no idea," he speculates. "The big worry is that while we'll be able to see what those transmissions will do to my fingers, they will also go back to the brain. What will my brain will of those signals? That's a smidgen dangerous. But it's extremely exciting."

In the most bizarre touch of all, Warwick's wife has agreed to receive an identical implant. The two human lab rats, he hopes, should be capable of transmitting signals from nervous system to nervous system. Conceivably, Warwick's feelings of anger or amorousness could be transmitted to her, and vice versa -- an experiment that has the British tabloids raucously describing the implant as a "love chip." As he more benignly puts it, "We should be able to transmit a semaphore type of communication -- which is where the notion of telepathy comes in."

Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of Warwick's experimentation with robots and implants is his own cheerful acceptance of the dark side of his own research. "I think humans would be crazy and stupid to give machines the power to affect how the world operates," he explains, before launching into an explanation of his experiments enabling machine intelligence in the seven dwarves.

Warwick's implant systems -- which could be used to "enhance" humans with sensory information -- could also conceivably be employed to create races of superhumans or computer-controlled human slaves. While Warwick seems to have an eye on saving the world, it's a world that will partially be of his own making. He may even help change what it means to be a human.

That is, of course, if his predictions even come true. But even if they don't, he says it's best to be prepared anyway.

"Yes, I believe in the doom and gloom, unfortunately -- but that's evolution. Something is going to come along and surpass us at some time, and my feeling is that more than likely at some point it's going to be machines, intelligent machines," he matter-of-factly postulates. "Can anything be done about it? This type of implant should take us a long way down the road; but realistically we've got to have machine intelligence connected in some way to the human brain. It's a race against time."
salon.com | Oct. 20, 1999

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