In the perfected technology of a different distant galaxy a long time ago, a robot replaced the lost hand of Luke Skywalker with an artificial one. Let’s assume that that his new hand felt like a hand, that is, let’s assume Luke’s brain had the same kind of connection to his new hand that he had with his original, that the brain had mapped all the artificial hand’s “nerves” through their input.
We’re not there yet in our galaxy, but we might be headed there. We are demonstrably farther along than the technology that gives Captain Hook an unmovable prosthesis in Peter Pan. We might advance the link between brain and artificial limb even further through Targeted Motor and Sensory Re-innervation. TMSR, which links machine to brain through undamaged, residual nerves, is one way of achieving nearly “natural” prosthetic devices.* Getting an amputee back to “normal” would be a momentous accomplishment, probably one on a par with organ transplants. The reason to consider the accomplishment momentous? Enabling a brain to map an artificial hand the way it mapped its original hand requires understanding how the outside world gets inside our heads, runs around neurons in fragments, and reassembles as meaning on demand. But we’re not there yet.
We can assume that Luke “feels” his new hand and knows its position in contrast to Hook. Although we are farther along the path to Luke’s hand, we are still just using more sophisticated “hooks.” Only when the somatosensory cortex can map the new device and connect that information to the rest of the brain will we achieve the Jedi’s touch. Our ability to make such maps is an essential part of defining our identities.
Knowing where we are is intricately bound to knowing who we are. Understanding the relationship to place is a fundamental component of identity. Does full consciousness exist without proprioception? We are proprioceptive because we can reassemble all the fragmented inputs of our senses and make maps that show our relationship to the rest of the world. Your limbs are surveyors that play major roles in feedback loops that enable you to know the outside world’s heat, texture, and arrangement. The nerves in the limbs help to establish the relationship with the “Not Me.” Feeling complements the other senses, and in odorless darkness and silence, it dominates.
Artificially, if only partially, determining and usurping personal identity threatens uniqueness, and we might approaching that usurpation by more than TMSR. In a study by Haiguang Wen, Zhongming Li, and Junxing Shi, the researchers coupled fMRI with an algorithm called a “convolutional neural network” in an attempt to move beyond AI recognition of static images and toward real-time readings of what a brain sees in a dynamic environment and how it sees it. Their goal? “Neuroscience is trying to map which parts of the brain are responsible for specific functionality.” That is, in the researcher’s words, “Using our technique, you may visualize the specific information represented by any brain location, and screen through all the locations in the brain’s visual cortex…you can see how the brain divides a visual scene into pieces, and re-assembles the pieces into full understanding of the visual scene.”**
Now imagine that the work of Wen and fellow researchers gets eventually tied to the work of Andrea Serino and colleagues in their attempt to use TMSR to tie prostheses to the brain’s somatosensory center and that researchers eventually link subjects to remote sensing or WiFi. This galaxy’s future “Luke” might walk into a store to buy one product and come out with another through the manipulations of AI or some hidden clerk sitting behind a console that sends messages to his brain. Maybe Luke once liked the taste of generic food over a brand name. Now, he is a loyal customer of whatever the manipulators want. With a tie to artificial implements that the brain maps as it now naturally maps a human hand, the “bionic” individual will be open to outside identity control.
Unlike Captain Hook with an inert and unfeeling prosthesis, the Luke in our future might become hooked on products through connections to the brain’s processes, hooked on a place of someone else’s choosing, or hooked on an idea or behavior. In addition, Luke’s desires might no longer be secret as his way of seeing the world becomes not only knowable but also predictable. To borrow from the quantum physics guys, imagine that all those choices and snippets of experience associated with personal identity mysteriously collapse under a watchful eye connected by WiFi. Will we have eliminated uncertainty in human thought and behavior? Will we know not only the position of the human particle but also its destination and rate of movement?
The good that will come out of work on TMSR and on neural encoding will manifest itself in better self-reliance for those who have suffered through nerve damage or loss. The bad will manifest itself in control by others or, worse, by machines. In their respective stories, both Hook and Luke maintain their personal identities. In contrast, those whose brains are eventually linked to any system can have their personal identities hacked and manipulated.
External control of an individual isn’t new. Look at whole populations under such control, such as the Germans who bought into the Nazi propaganda to their own eventual detriment. You can probably think of multiple historical examples of human manipulation. Maybe humans have some conflicting desire for uniqueness on the one hand and for security derived from outside control on the other hand.
You might favor the identity of Luke, a hero, over the person of Captain Hook, a villain. That’s a matter of cultural manipulation, of course. People with hooks might be a little less dexterous than people with fully functional artificial limbs, but they are, nevertheless, capable of mapping their world and their place in it. Shaped by the loss of his hand, Hook’s evil identity appears to be different from Luke’s heroic identity that was similarly shaped. That two individuals can see their relationship to the world so differently under so similar a set of circumstances is evidence of highly personal perspectives derived from unique identities. I certainly don’t want people to behave like Hook, but I also acknowledge that he represents uncontrolled individualism and unique identity.
You might not be linked to hardware, but you are linked to the visual and verbal influences by the technology of our time. Who or what might influence the maps you make of your world and your relationship to it? Or, having been manipulated, can you even be aware that you have mapped your relationship to the world and shaped your identity under an outside influence?
* Andrea Serino, Michel Akselrod, Roy Salomon, Roberto Martuzzi, Maria Laura Blefari, Elisa Canzoneri, Giulio Rognini, Wietske van der Zwaag, Maria Iakova, François Luthi, Amedeo Amoresano, Todd Kuiken, Olaf Blanke. Upper limb cortical maps in amputees with targeted muscle and sensory reinnervation. Brain, 2017; 140 (11): 2993 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awx242 (see Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. "Advanced artificial limbs mapped in the brain: The brain re-maps motor and sensory pathways following targeted motor and sensory reinnervation (TMSR)." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 October 2017. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171027094417.htm)
** Haiguang Wen, Junxing Shi, Yizhen Zhang, Kun-Han Lu, Jiayue Cao, Zhongming Liu. Neural Encoding and Decoding with Deep Learning for Dynamic Natural Vision. Cerebral Cortex, 2017; 1 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhx268 (see Purdue University. "'Mind-reading' brain-decoding tech." ScienceDaily, 23 October 2017. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171023132019.htm )
We’re not there yet in our galaxy, but we might be headed there. We are demonstrably farther along than the technology that gives Captain Hook an unmovable prosthesis in Peter Pan. We might advance the link between brain and artificial limb even further through Targeted Motor and Sensory Re-innervation. TMSR, which links machine to brain through undamaged, residual nerves, is one way of achieving nearly “natural” prosthetic devices.* Getting an amputee back to “normal” would be a momentous accomplishment, probably one on a par with organ transplants. The reason to consider the accomplishment momentous? Enabling a brain to map an artificial hand the way it mapped its original hand requires understanding how the outside world gets inside our heads, runs around neurons in fragments, and reassembles as meaning on demand. But we’re not there yet.
We can assume that Luke “feels” his new hand and knows its position in contrast to Hook. Although we are farther along the path to Luke’s hand, we are still just using more sophisticated “hooks.” Only when the somatosensory cortex can map the new device and connect that information to the rest of the brain will we achieve the Jedi’s touch. Our ability to make such maps is an essential part of defining our identities.
Knowing where we are is intricately bound to knowing who we are. Understanding the relationship to place is a fundamental component of identity. Does full consciousness exist without proprioception? We are proprioceptive because we can reassemble all the fragmented inputs of our senses and make maps that show our relationship to the rest of the world. Your limbs are surveyors that play major roles in feedback loops that enable you to know the outside world’s heat, texture, and arrangement. The nerves in the limbs help to establish the relationship with the “Not Me.” Feeling complements the other senses, and in odorless darkness and silence, it dominates.
Artificially, if only partially, determining and usurping personal identity threatens uniqueness, and we might approaching that usurpation by more than TMSR. In a study by Haiguang Wen, Zhongming Li, and Junxing Shi, the researchers coupled fMRI with an algorithm called a “convolutional neural network” in an attempt to move beyond AI recognition of static images and toward real-time readings of what a brain sees in a dynamic environment and how it sees it. Their goal? “Neuroscience is trying to map which parts of the brain are responsible for specific functionality.” That is, in the researcher’s words, “Using our technique, you may visualize the specific information represented by any brain location, and screen through all the locations in the brain’s visual cortex…you can see how the brain divides a visual scene into pieces, and re-assembles the pieces into full understanding of the visual scene.”**
Now imagine that the work of Wen and fellow researchers gets eventually tied to the work of Andrea Serino and colleagues in their attempt to use TMSR to tie prostheses to the brain’s somatosensory center and that researchers eventually link subjects to remote sensing or WiFi. This galaxy’s future “Luke” might walk into a store to buy one product and come out with another through the manipulations of AI or some hidden clerk sitting behind a console that sends messages to his brain. Maybe Luke once liked the taste of generic food over a brand name. Now, he is a loyal customer of whatever the manipulators want. With a tie to artificial implements that the brain maps as it now naturally maps a human hand, the “bionic” individual will be open to outside identity control.
Unlike Captain Hook with an inert and unfeeling prosthesis, the Luke in our future might become hooked on products through connections to the brain’s processes, hooked on a place of someone else’s choosing, or hooked on an idea or behavior. In addition, Luke’s desires might no longer be secret as his way of seeing the world becomes not only knowable but also predictable. To borrow from the quantum physics guys, imagine that all those choices and snippets of experience associated with personal identity mysteriously collapse under a watchful eye connected by WiFi. Will we have eliminated uncertainty in human thought and behavior? Will we know not only the position of the human particle but also its destination and rate of movement?
The good that will come out of work on TMSR and on neural encoding will manifest itself in better self-reliance for those who have suffered through nerve damage or loss. The bad will manifest itself in control by others or, worse, by machines. In their respective stories, both Hook and Luke maintain their personal identities. In contrast, those whose brains are eventually linked to any system can have their personal identities hacked and manipulated.
External control of an individual isn’t new. Look at whole populations under such control, such as the Germans who bought into the Nazi propaganda to their own eventual detriment. You can probably think of multiple historical examples of human manipulation. Maybe humans have some conflicting desire for uniqueness on the one hand and for security derived from outside control on the other hand.
You might favor the identity of Luke, a hero, over the person of Captain Hook, a villain. That’s a matter of cultural manipulation, of course. People with hooks might be a little less dexterous than people with fully functional artificial limbs, but they are, nevertheless, capable of mapping their world and their place in it. Shaped by the loss of his hand, Hook’s evil identity appears to be different from Luke’s heroic identity that was similarly shaped. That two individuals can see their relationship to the world so differently under so similar a set of circumstances is evidence of highly personal perspectives derived from unique identities. I certainly don’t want people to behave like Hook, but I also acknowledge that he represents uncontrolled individualism and unique identity.
You might not be linked to hardware, but you are linked to the visual and verbal influences by the technology of our time. Who or what might influence the maps you make of your world and your relationship to it? Or, having been manipulated, can you even be aware that you have mapped your relationship to the world and shaped your identity under an outside influence?
* Andrea Serino, Michel Akselrod, Roy Salomon, Roberto Martuzzi, Maria Laura Blefari, Elisa Canzoneri, Giulio Rognini, Wietske van der Zwaag, Maria Iakova, François Luthi, Amedeo Amoresano, Todd Kuiken, Olaf Blanke. Upper limb cortical maps in amputees with targeted muscle and sensory reinnervation. Brain, 2017; 140 (11): 2993 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awx242 (see Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. "Advanced artificial limbs mapped in the brain: The brain re-maps motor and sensory pathways following targeted motor and sensory reinnervation (TMSR)." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 October 2017. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171027094417.htm)
** Haiguang Wen, Junxing Shi, Yizhen Zhang, Kun-Han Lu, Jiayue Cao, Zhongming Liu. Neural Encoding and Decoding with Deep Learning for Dynamic Natural Vision. Cerebral Cortex, 2017; 1 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhx268 (see Purdue University. "'Mind-reading' brain-decoding tech." ScienceDaily, 23 October 2017. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171023132019.htm )
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