The Artificial Improvement Of Humans 1

This article is courtesy of www.aboutfacts.net

We have all read those stories where science goes wild and puts computer parts or parts from things like dead bodies, into someone and they go mad, then go out on a gruesome killing spree. There must be hundreds of movies about this subject, usually they are of the more inexpensive kind. We used to call them B movies in my day. I remember a few, where they took a human brain and put in to the body of a robot and of course the brain went crazy.

Usually this had to do with a beautiful women. It would always be that the guy loved the woman and got into some time of terrible accident and some scientist was able to keep his brain alive. It was then put into a robot and the woman was horrified by this sight and didn't want to be near him. Thus the craziness.

We haven't reached that point yet, where we can transfer a human brain into a different body or machine, but this may indeed be possible some day, when we have a better understanding of the brain and how it is connected to different parts of the body. Scientists say that the reason that the human brain is so much more powerful than a computer, any computer, is because of the way it is connected to things.

Even though we can't transplant brains yet, we are at the beginning of doing many other marvelous things. Just look at the organ donation program. Who would have ever thought, say one hundred years ago, that we could use parts from other bodies to replace broken parts in our own bodies? It isn't only body parts that are becoming interchangeable, we are also using computer chips.

The invention of the computer chip has not only revolutionized the way we do things, but it has also revolutionized medicine. The problem with current medicine is the cost. Medical costs are subject to the highest increases in this country. Even with all the medical breakthroughs, people may not be able to take advantage of some of the new procedures, because either they have no medical insurance and not enough money or because they do have medical insurance but the company won't pay for certain procedures.

Maybe it is essential that humans improve and improve in a hurry. Why do I say this? I say it because our machines are becoming advanced very quickly and some scientists believe that somewhere along the line they may become sentient. Can you imagine this, a machine that knows it is alive and doesn't want to die? At that point we will have to try and stay ahead of them in intelligence. Darwin believed in survival of the fittest. If we are not careful, we could become the Neanderthals, who it is believed, became extinct because they couldn't compete with a superior race, the modern humans.

By the way, this machine progress has been predicted to the point where a rough date has been given. It is called Technological singularity or the singularity. The date selected is somewhere around 2045, but some have predicted it will happen before 2030. You will find some disagreement of what this means. Some say that this is when superhuman intelligence will be created, while others say it will be a technological leap so profound that it will rupture the fabric of human history. This can be interpreted as the creation of non human life.

In 2004 the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved a computer chip to be inserted into a human arm. The chip doesn't do much except store a code. This code is revealed when a scanner is passed over it. With the code, the patients medical records, which are in a secure medical database, can be accessed. The chip isn't updated after procedures, only the database is. I have been to many doctors offices and believe me some of them are like crazy houses. Can you see all these employees going into your medical database and maybe entering incorrect info or worse yet, the info for a different patient? I am not very happy with this sort of thing. The chip is known as the VeriChip.

This is the same chip that has been inserted into over 1,000,000 pets. Truthfully, I can not see a necessary use for this chip right now. What the chip makers really want to do, is create a chip that will read all our vital signs and be implanted in our bodies. The idea is that when something goes wrong, we can be located immediately by satellite and help sent. This is the good aspect of the chip, but the bad side is that we will always be under surveillance. Every move we make will be known and to believe that government agencies won't take advantage of this situation is very naive. Any chip that broadcasts a signal is a chip that is begging to be tracked.

Source : www.articlecircle.com/recreation-and-leisure/the-artificial-improvement-of-humans.html

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