Wednesday Wonder: Meet Cyborg Kevin Warwick

Human enhancement is going to change life completely....

~ Kevin Warwick

Twelve years ago, Kevin Warwick, renowned Reading University professor of cybernetics, had a radio frequency identification device implanted in his arm. More recently, in a highly dangerous experiment, he's had 100 electrodes implanted in a nerve, enabling him to connect his nervous system to his computer. (Yes, it's true.) Warwick's wife also is "cybernetic", and the two of them have linked their nervous systems together electrically, allowing them to communicate telegraphically, nervous system to nervous system. Warwick believes that similarly linking the brain is a logical, "tremendously exciting" next step.

This is not the stuff of science fiction.

At Reading University, in England, the perfectly serious, highly educated, and esteemed Warwick conducts ground-breaking research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics, and biomedical engineering. He is one of only seven scientists to have been selected by the Institute of Physics for detailed case studies demonstrating the ethical issues the scientists have addressed in their work, the others being Galileo Galilei, Alfred Nobel, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and Joseph Rotblat. Warwick's series of five lectures, "The Rise of the Robots", given in 2000 at the invitation of the Royal Institution, are famous. Currently, he is collaborating on a project with an Oxford neurosurgeon to research the use of intelligent computer methods to predict the onset of tremors associated with Parkinson's disease and stop them via a deep-brain implant. He also leads a project seeking to "train" a cultured neural network using biological neurons to control a mobile robot platform. (See "Robot With a Rat Brain" and "The Thinking Man's Robot".)

Warwick is the author of I, Cyborg (University of Illinois Press, 2004), QI: The Quest for Intelligence (Piatkus Books, 2001), and March of the Machines: The Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence (University of Illinois Press, 2004).

In this brief overview, Warwick talks about his studies and their implications:

Here, Warwick speaks more specifically about his experiments on himself and how he "became one with" his cyber technology. Brilliant scientist? Unquestionably. Fascinating work? Absolutely. Chilling? No doubt, especially given Warwick's belief in the possibility that our human-created technology could render us a "sub-species" in the future, dominated by machines.

Warwick works closely with a colleague, Daniela Cerqui, a social and cultural anthropologist, to investigate the social, ethical, and philosophical implications of his work. Cerqui's principal interests are the future of humankind as it relates to cybernetic technology, issues of computer-based "therapy" versus "enhancement", converging technologies, and other disciplines.

Resources

Kevin Warwick YouTube Videos

Kevin Warick on Vimeo: "The Cyborg Experiments" and "Becoming Cyborgs"(Interview)

I Robot? Case Study at Physics & Ethics Education Project (PEEP)

"I, Robot" at Flyp Magazine (Text)

Robotics 

BioEthics Education Project (BEEP)

"Building Gods" (Documentary)

BioCentre

Cybernetics

Instinctive Computing Lab (Warwick is a member of ICL's advisory board.)

Singularity Weblog (Warwick is named one of the "Top 10 Singularitarians of All Time".)