Last word: Self created

As technology becomes more sophisticated, we will all become the designers of our future selves

By David Barringer

Years ago, physicist Stephen Hawking recommended that we modify our genome to accelerate human evolution and stop sentient computers from taking over the world. Unfortunately, he said this out loud, so the computers overheard him and accelerated their bid to dominate the planet. But we can’t, technically, evolve ourselves. Evolution depends on accident; modifying ourselves depends on intention. Evolution takes time and we have no patience. Instead, we want to design ourselves.

We will do so for a variety of reasons: to attract lovers, to prevent disease, to live longer. Designing ourselves to this extreme brings up issues of evolution, identity, culture and power. Through biomodification, pharmaceuticals and medical techniques, we can change our brains, our bodies, ourselves. We will make sport out of the human condition itself. If we are not afraid of war, we should not be afraid of this enterprise; it is as human as any other.

We already use drugs to modify our immune systems, our behaviours and our moods, to calm or arouse ourselves, to decrease our sensations of pain and depression while increasing our abilities to stay awake, to concentrate and to run faster. Medical science now allows us to replace organs, add limbs, boost our breasts and surgically correct our vision. We can embed little bits of technology that monitor our vital signs and the whereabouts of our children. Increasingly, computer technology encroaches upon our very bodies, with nanotechnology destined to get under our skin. Extrapolating future modifications is less the province of science-fiction novelists and more the job of entrepreneurs and corporate strategists.

Back in 2006, a paralysed man used the BrainGate implant to operate a computer, play a video game, open and close a prosthetic hand, and pick up candy with a robotic arm. Currently in development at Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc., the implant detects the person’s intention as distinct neural activity, and computer algorithms translate these impulses into signals to the robotic arm. Researchers receive funding to explore many other uses of implantable technology, such as boosting soldier performance, operating remote robots with the mind and reconnecting the brain with paralysed limbs.

With computers come hackers. Neurosecurity is already an issue. Once implants are in the brain, hackers could breach security and jeopardise an individual’s health, motor skills and ability to think. In the near future, we will be upgrading our antivirus software on an hourly basis and, perhaps, need only blink twice to pay our bills.

People can get used to almost anything, and do so very quickly: a clone here, a face transplant there, a dash of stem-cell research, a daily prescription for mood enhancement. Individually, each advancement is no big deal. People today, for example, cannot wait to get out their smartphones, turn away from their neighbours and talk to Siri, Apple’s new voice assistance program. Why talk directly to a human at all? Besides, it makes as much sense to put GPS chips into our children as it does to prescribe them Ritalin or pay for their nose jobs. Surveyed collectively, these advancements seem like a menu for making your own player in a video game, except that this time, you are the player.

People will come to regard their identities as conditional. Minor self-modification drives the health and beauty industries; it takes only a small leap to imagine major modifications fashioning superathletes, superentertainers and superworkers. We won’t use the prefix ‘super’; it has too many negative Nietzschean connotations. But we will confront the prospect of quasi-Darwinian competition in the workplace. We will modify ourselves to work in a way that is smarter, better and faster. History is the story of human liberation, and design will take us to a new frontier whereby we can liberate ourselves from our very identities. If we can destroy ourselves in war, we can create ourselves in peace (or in pieces). To self-design will be to self-create. New jobs will arise, and modifications will become conditions of employment.

Self-modification will start as tragedy. There will be sad grotesques. But with the tools and the intent, we can design our own personalities. The definition of ‘human’ will expand. Our children’s children will look nothing like us. And that will be by design.

David Barringer is a designer, writer and lecturer. Photography: Larry Dunstan / Science Photo Library