Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids [Hardcover]

The quest for immortality has been a persistent theme in human history. From the mythology of ancient Greece through the ages to the present we have sought limitless life. Stories of vampires, for instance, are in part predicated on the quest for eternal life. So is the story of Frankenstein. But Sidney Perkowitz, professor of physics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, demonstrates in this important new book written for a general audience that the quest has taken the form of androids, robots, and cyborgs for millennia. For example, Talos of Greek myth was a bronze automaton created by Hephaestus. More recently, fiction has given us robots, cyborgs, and replicants that all demonstrated this quest for immortality. For the first time modern science has created the possibility that the bionic human might be possible in the twenty-first century.

After an introduction that suggests that androids are all around us, Perkowitz divides his study into two parts--"Artificial Beings: Meaning and History" and "How Far Along are We?"--and proceeds to discuss the evolution of the quest for eternal life and the possibilities that exist at the present. In the process he argues that humans have always been bionic from the point that they picked up the first stick and used it as a club to the ultimate merging of humans and machines in cyborgian symbiosis. We see this all the time with artificial body parts made for amputees or hip or knee or other replacements. We also see it with pacemakers and diabetic pumps and hearing aids and eyeglasses.

Perkowitz believes that this is just the beginning of the merging of human and machines and finds the possibilities for the future truly exciting. He does envision serious moral and ethical concerns that require concentrated and long-term consideration. He does not, however, envision any way of stopping this inexorable movement toward ever-greater symbiosis between living beings and technology.

The quest for a bionic person is well underway in laboratories around the world and Perkowitz takes us on a tour of some of the most inventive people and places, ranging from Rodney Brooks and Cynthia Breazeal at MIT to the Honda Corporation lab to the ROBODEX 2003 exposition where the latest ideas on robotics found expression. There is, in Perkowitz's thinking, a critical mass driving humanity toward a new and different level of life and consciousness. Science is exploiting fast developing knowledge of materials, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and molecular biology to move toward the creation of ever more complex machines that look and act like people. At the same time scientists are incorporating into humans more and more technology to enhance the quality and longevity of life.

As written on the dust jacket of "Digital People": "In short, we are going beyond what was once the stuff of books and films to create genuine bionic people with fully integrated artificial components--and it will not be long before we reach the ultimate goal of constructing a completely synthetic human-like being." Perkowitz asks, will this step lead to reinterpretations of the meaning of life and debase the human spirit? As text on the dustjacket indicates: "Certainly this God-like ability brings us face-to-face with a host of troubling spiritual, ethical, and legal dilemmas."

This is a stimulating book, one that educates and provokes and questions all at the same time. I highly recommend it.