Brain implants & mind reading

is that you cannot simply infer from his case that we are becoming posthuman. I am very suspicious of those who will point to the use of radical technology and pose the question 'what next?', imagining all sorts of superhuman as the next step. Matt Nagle is paralysed from the neck down and made headlines this week for being "the first person to have controlled an artificial limb using a device chornically implanted into hi brain" (Meet the Mind Readers, The Guardian). I am personally excited about the prospects of this technology and certainly wonder 'what next?', but we cannot talk about this case as a transhuman or posthuman innovation. The biggest obstacle to that this kind of technology remains intimately connected to therapeutic medicine. Until the applications are genuinely non-therapeutic, we cannot claim to have become posthuman.

Andy Miah

Chair in Science Communication & Future Media, University of Salford, Manchester.

http://www.andymiah.net
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