Digital
People: From Bionic Humans to Androids
by Sidney Perkowitz
Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, 2004
238 pp. Trade, $24.95
ISBN: 0-309-08987-5.
Reviewed by John F. Barber, Ph. D.
School of Arts and Humanities, The University
of Texas at Dallas
jfbarber@eaze.net
The 2002 World Robotic Survey, issued
by the United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe, placed the worldwide population
of industrial robots a 760,000, projected
to soon reach a million. The same report
predicted a hundredfold increase in robot
units sold for use in medicine, security,
household, and entertainment between 1999
and 2005. Simply put, robots, androids,
cyborgs, bionic humans, artificial beingswhatever
we call themare 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 computersall
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 result 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 story is compelling, thought provoking,
and informative. Perkowitz provides a
wealth of interesting information, all
supported by accurate and sound scientific
research and reporting. He expresses his
subject clearly, and at the end, presents
the inevitable result: "that any person
who works to artificially match or surpass
what humanity is, can only feel the hubris
fall away, to be replaced with awe at
the complexity of what nature has wrought,
humility at the difficulty of emulating
it, and wonderment that we humans can
yet hope to complete this astonishing
journey" (219).