Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Instead of tediously learning how to move arms and legs of metal, people will treat these mechanical appendages as if they were real, feeling every nuance of the limbs’ movements via electronic feedback mechanisms.
    This is also evidence of a theory that says the brain is extremely plastic, not fixed, and constantly rewires itself as it learns new tasks and adjusts to new situations. Hence, the brain will be adaptable enough to accommodate any new appendage or sense organ. They may be attached to the brain at different locations, and the brain simply “learns” to control this new attachment. If so, then the brain might be viewed as a modular device, able to plug in and then control different appendages and sensors from different devices. This type of behavior might be expected if our brain is a neural network of some sort that makes new connections and neural pathways each time it learns a new task, whatever that task might be.
    Rodney Brooks writes, “ Over the next ten to twenty years, there will be a cultural shift, in which we will adopt robotic technology, silicon, and steel into our bodies to improve what we can do and understand the world.” When Brooks analyzes the progress made at Brown University and Duke University in hooking up the brain directly to a computer or a mechanical arm, he concludes, “We may all be able to have a wireless Internet connection installed directly into our brains.”
    In the next stage, he sees merging silicon and living cells not just to cure the ailments of the body but to slowly enhance our capabilities. For example, if today’s cochlear and retinal implants can restore hearing andvision, tomorrow’s may also give us superhuman abilities. We would be able to hear sounds that only dogs can hear, or see UV, infrared, and X-rays.
    It might be possible to increase our intelligence as well. Brooks cites research in which extra layers of neurons were added to the brain of a rat at a critical time in its development. Remarkably, the cognitive abilities of these rats were increased. He envisions a time in the near future when the human brain’s intelligence might also be improved by a similar process. In a later chapter, we will see that biologists have already isolated a gene in rats that the media has dubbed the “smart mouse gene.” With the addition of this gene, enhanced mice have much greater memory and learning abilities.
    And by midcentury, Brooks envisions a time when seemingly fanciful enhancements of the body might be possible, giving us abilities far beyond those of the ordinary human. “ Fifty years from now, we can expect to see radical alterations of human bodies through genetic modification.” When you also add electronic enhancements, “the human menagerie will expand in ways unimaginable to us today. … We will no longer find ourselves confined by Darwinian evolution,” he says.
    But anything, of course, can be taken too far. How far should we go in merging with our robot creations before some people rebel and find it repulsive?
    SURROGATES AND AVATARS
    One way in which to merge with robots, but without altering the human body, is to create surrogates or avatars. In the movie
Surrogates,
starring Bruce Willis, in the year 2017 scientists have discovered a way for people to control robots as if they were inside them, so that we can live our lives in perfect bodies. The robot responds to every command, and the person also sees and feels everything the robot sees and feels. While our mortal bodies decay and wither, we can control the motions of our robot surrogate, which has superhuman powers and is perfectly shaped. The movie gets complicated because people prefer to live out their lives as beautiful, handsome, and superpowerful robots, abandoning their rotting bodies, which are conveniently hidden away. The entire human race, in effect, willingly becomes robotic rather than face reality.
    In the movie
Avatar,
this is taken one step further. Instead of livingour lives as perfect robots, in the year 2154 we might be able to live as alien beings. In the movie, our bodies are placed in pods, which then allow us to control the motion of specially cloned alien bodies. In a sense, we are given entirely new bodies to live on a new planet. In this way, we can better communicate with a native alien population on other planets. The movie plot thickens when one worker decides to abandon his humanity and live out his life as an alien, protecting them from