Human enhancement solution, but then… (computer) virus problem.

So the other day in the post Robosexuality I explained how I was watching a show on robots/robotics that didn’t delve into possibly dangerous, human fatality-related consequences of “the Singularity” (the point when humans transcend biology).

I also mentioned wanting to get Daniel Wilson’s book How To Survive a Robot Uprising (Tips on Defending Yourself During the Upcoming Rebellion .

Then, the other night, I saw another show on robotics (how in the hell do I keep stumbling across these cool, informative shows? Oh, and to those who say TV is useless – I beg to differ).

On this particular show on robotics, they did mention the future of humanity alongside robots, and they claimed that the humans that wanted to keep up/survive would have to be implemented with artificial parts, something the futurists like to call “transhumanism” – the mixture of biology and machinery.

Some of this is already done, with pacemakers and artificial limbs, and other parts of the body, but what the program was suggesting is much more drastic implementations, such as to the brain, involving silicon chips (such as the infamous RFID chips) and so forth.

Ok, I thought. So it boils down to adding robotic aspects to ourselves in order to best the technology – being like them, but also still having humanity. This is the answer! I thought.

But then today I saw an extremely disturbing episode of the sci-fi show Outer Limits.

Mind you, it is science FICTION.

And it was made in 1997.

But the fact is, it was the best damn episode of Outer Limits I had ever seen. Why?

The episode is called “Stream of Consciousness”, and, in a nutshell, humanity is living within a futuristic society where everyone has implements on the side of their heads which interact with their brain in order to acquire all human data instantly, instead of having to read it/learn it.

The main character, however, is a human that had “brain damage” (he doesn’t appear less intelligent) – so he wasn’t able to have the implant, since he was very young.

But the disturbing part came when the “data stream” that all humans subscribed to started to give random humans a “virus” that caused information to be sought after/downloaded too fast for the brain to process – eventually killing the person.

So finally, the guy without the head implant has to go and find a written book that the data stream/computer had neglected to destroy (although it had neglected to destroy this copy) – in order to have his friend, a girl with an implant, read the book and spread the shutdown code to the whole system.

The problem was that, once all entwined together with this data stream, the stream itself was like a mass consciousness to all the people, and none of them would willfully destroy it (themselves!) Wow.

Basically, the question is this – if humans merge with technology as the transhumanists desire, would we doom ourselves to being vulnerable to something like a computer virus killing us?

A disturbing thought.

I’m just going to buy that fucking book, already.