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  • Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids
  • John F. Barber
Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids by Sidney Perkowitz. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, U.S.A., 2004. 238 pp. Trade. ISBN: 0-309-08987-5.

The 2002 World Robotic Survey, issued by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, placed the worldwide population of industrial robots at 760,000, projected to soon reach a million. The same report predicted a hundredfold increase in robot units sold for use in medicine, security, households and entertainment between 1999 and 2005. Simply put, robots, androids, cyborgs, bionic humans, artificial beings—whatever we call them—are coming. And, as Sidney Perkowitz, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University, argues, it is best to know something about them.

With this premise, Perkowitz's latest work, Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids, draws on achievements in artificial intelligence, smell, speech, taste, vision and touch; nanotechnology; molecular biology; implant science; biotechnology; biometrics; mechatronic engineering; neurorobotics; and materials science to detail how scientists and researchers are designing fully functional manufactured body parts, implanting computer chips and other devices into our bodies, and linking human brains with computers—all to make future humans healthier, smarter and stronger, to satisfy scientific curiosity and the technological imperative, and to develop industry, aerospace and warfare applications. The book is an insightful, careful contemplation of the ways in which contemporary science and technology are moving toward the next level of human evolution and what these developments mean for our visions of ourselves as human beings.

Perkowitz divides his book into two parts. Part One explores the virtual and real histories of artificial beings and concludes with current accounts of efforts to form direct connections between living organic systems and nonliving ones at the neural and brain levels.

The virtual history extends from oral folk tales of the golem to complicated literature about robots, androids and cyborgs to current-day films showing each in action. Perkowitz contends that these imaginings, functioning as cultural repositories for human dreams and self-images, often form the basis for scientific and technological research and practical application. It is from these wells that scientists and researchers often draw inspiration in their efforts to create artificial human beings. Perkowitz chronicles early automata, efforts to harness electricity as a suitable, portable power supply, and efforts to replicate human looks and motions in his real history of artificial beings.

In the third section of this first part of his book Perkowitz concludes that we have long been bionic because of our history of prostheses, implantation (whether for beauty enhancement or medical purposes), and the scientific introduction of electrical-powered devices like pacemakers into the body.

Part Two explores advancements and applications in the key components of human life: our mobility; our ability to grasp and manipulate objects or use them as tools; our ability to draw information from our environment through touch, hearing, sight and taste; our ability to communicate through body language, facial expressions and speech; and our ability to differentiate a sense of self-awareness and unique identity through thinking and emotion. In each instance, Perkowitz details scientific and technological research and implementation as efforts are made to establish direct connections between the human body and machine components. Both imagination and integration, he argues, are based on the deep-seated human interest to merge with machines in order to better assure human survival, even if such survival means changing the basic nature of humanity.

The crucial hurdle will be self-awareness, self-knowledge and higher consciousness in artificial beings, Perkowitz argues. What separates human beings from humanoids is an adaptable intelligence centered in a brain that is aware of its sensory relationship to the body that houses it as well as its haptic relationship to a larger, surrounding environment through which the body moves. The first tiny steps toward artificial self-knowledge Perkowitz documents and describes may be the beginnings of an evolution toward full digital thought and consciousness.

In the end, these efforts create a rich and powerful cross-disciplinary medical-technical environment that might lead to autonomous artificial beings and to enhanced human bodies and minds. Rather than frightful, the...

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