Kevin Warwick bears the scars of a cyborg.
There's a spot on his upper left arm, barely visible now, where doctors in 1998 implanted a computer chip. As Warwick would walk through an experimental "intelligent" building, doors would open and close and lights come on in response to identification signals transmitted by his implant.
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Cyberneticist Kevin Warwick at the Carnegie Science Center yesterday. (Bill Wade, Post-Gazette) |
Then there's a red patch near his left wrist and a smaller scar in the middle of his left forearm. That's where doctors last year attached electrodes to his median nerve, enabling him to generate signals by moving his thumb and fingers that in turn allowed him to control a robot hand, drive an electric wheelchair and, when the electrodes were attached to ultrasonic sensors in his hat, briefly gave him a sixth sense.
"At the moment, I'm just a regular human," the 49-year-old Warwick said yesterday during an interview at the Carnegie Science Center. The first implant was in place just nine days, the second was gone after three months.
But Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading in England, already is planning his next more ambitious -- and dangerous -- cyborg adventure: a brain implant.
"I want to link my brain to a computer," Warwick said. "It could go horribly wrong," he admitted, but noted that he expects it will be at least another 10 years before he's ready to attempt the experiment. By that point, he'll be around 60 years old and if something bad happens -- well, he'd accept that.
This sort of implant might someday benefit people with paralysis or other disabilities, but could also help link people telepathically, or give them extra senses, such as radar or infrared vision. Warwick speculates about the possibility of the brain linked directly to a computer database, or even the possibility of injecting new memories into the brain.
It is Warwick's face that has looked down from area billboards for weeks now promoting the annual Pittsburgh SciTech Festival. He is being featured in a variety of presentations, panel discussions and chats during the festival, which is based at the science center and continues through Sunday.
Using himself as a guinea pig for experiments melding human nervous systems with electronics engenders quite a bit of public interest, he said, and has left him open to charges of self-promotion and hype. He admits he doesn't mind the publicity -- it helps get his message out and has helped him find publicity-conscious sponsors for his experiments, which he reckons have cost a total of $500,000 thus far.
But he also wonders what is wrong about pursuing science that is fun and exciting. "We enjoy what we're doing," he said. And he enjoys communicating it to general audiences and to children in particular, rather than just technical audiences. "We're using simple words, so it annoys some people."
The experiments themselves, he emphasized, are not frivolous.
"For me, the human experiment is important." Scientists need to know not only what works, but how an implant feels, or how it makes a person feel. Animal experiments can tell you only so much.
"You can't find out easily what the monkey feels like," he added.
A robotics researcher for much of his career, Warwick first thought about electronic implants when he was a teen-ager reading Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man." In the novel, a psychopathic killer is given implants that are supposed to send "happy" signals when he feels the urge to kill; rather than stopping the killing, the signals end up spurring him to kill more.
"I read it thinking, 'Surely, we must be able to do this,'" Warwick recalled, unshaken by Crichton's tale of technology gone awry. By 1998, the time finally seemed right, both for the technology and for public acceptance.
But even last year's experiment gave some people the willies. In one project, his wife had an external electrode attached to her arm, so that when she wiggled her fingers, Warwick would feel an impulse in his hand -- a bit of telepathic communication. And at one point, he attached ultrasonic sensors, which gave him a sixth sense for detecting nearby objects even when blindfolded.
"It's a bit too 'out there' for some," he admitted. "You can see some people going, 'What the hell is he talking about?" And when he talks about a brain implant, even his wife makes it clear "she's not going to go there."
But he said 99.5 percent of the letters and e-mails he receives are positive and appreciative, particularly from people with spinal cord injuries and other disabilities who believe implants might make their lives better.
"These people are realistic; they know they're not going to suddenly walk again tomorrow," Warwick said. But the prospect that an implant might at least make their lives easier by giving them greater control or an additional sense engenders great enthusiasm and appreciation, he maintained.
"They say, 'We're so thankful somebody is doing this.' "
Byron Spice can be reached at bspice@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578.
