Whenever I hear of a technological advancement that can make human beings more sedentary while using technology, I think of the Disney Pixar movie WALL-E.
In the film, human beings have made Earth uninhabitable and have retreated to space, where everyone is obese and stares at screens built into their motorized recliners that serve them food on command. They’re so absorbed by their screens that they do not even know what their surroundings are like.
Elon Musk’s latest business venture is not a motorized full-service recliner for overweight people, but it has a similar dehumanizing potential.
Musk recently announced that his startup, Neuralink, had successfully implanted a chip into the brain of a human subject for the first time and that “initial results show promising neuron spike detection.”
The purpose of this brain chip is to assist people with limited mobility in communicating and functioning. In theory, a person with an implanted chip would be capable of using their cellphone or computer by just thinking. This could enable someone who did not have the ability to speak to communicate with relative ease, or a stroke victim who lost use of their limbs to use a computer or smartphone.
For many people, this technological advancement is a ticket to a more normal lifestyle that is less dependent on others. But such a monumental advancement in technology also comes with some serious risks.
To begin with, there is no telling what kind of long-term health effects or damage could come with implanting an active computer inside of a human brain. But putting that concern aside, there is also the prospect of such a device being implanted in people who do not have mobility problems.
Advances in technology have largely been motivated by a desire to make the day-to-day lives of people easier and less strenuous. And placing a chip into the brain of a person so they can use cellphones and computers is a means of expanding technological accessibility in a way that far exceeds anything that the iPhone assistant Siri can do.
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Office jobs could be done in a fraction of the time and urgent text messages received while driving could be answered without so much as a glance away from the road. But how far of a leap is it to go from writing a document with a mere thought, to barely moving a muscle each day as your thoughts achieve nearly every task you had to accomplish each day?
Before you know it, you might be sitting in a motorized recliner, staring endlessly at the blue light from the screen in front of you, while the built-in soda machine caters to your every sugary desire.
