AP 06-JUN-98 BOSTON (AP) Even on a campus known for nerd hi-jinks, the three young men at the top of the stairs in MIT's Media Lab look pretty weird. Leonard Foner resembles a collision between an oversized kid and a Nintendo machine. A chunky eyepiece, apparently scavenged from a camcorder, protrudes from his left eye, supported by Terminator sunglasses. A black vest girdled with circuits and computer hardware wraps his upper body, and a hard drive nestles in the small of his back. His buddy, Thad Starner, looks less menacing. He sports clear plastic safety goggles and carries his computer in a shoulder bag. The third researcher, Brad Rhodes, looks too jolly to be scary. His kinky hair is trying to escape from under a cap which has an eyepiece dangling from its brim. He clutches a small keypad in his left hand, and his fingers twitch furiously as he takes notes on a miniature computer. They belong to a group of grad students who have dubbed themselves the 'borg. They are researching "wearables": personal very personal computers small enough to fit into eyeglasses and hip pouches but powerful enough to access the world's information. This technology looks clunky and a little intimidating today, but it promises to shrink, streamline and grow more inconspicuous. The researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology envision a digital paradise: instant translation among the world's tongues, the ability to monitor or even affect events anywhere in the world, a constant connection to global conversations in cyberspace. But by transcending the limits that nature imposed on our all-too-human flesh, researchers at MIT and elsewhere find themselves poking at the edges of fundamental questions. The answers may change forever what it means to be human. Powerful stuff, eh? Grand-cool visions of a Silicon Age. But is it science or fiction? The root of the question lies in both. The term cyborg, for cybernetic organism, was proposed in the 1960s as a solution to the harsh environment of space. It would be much easier, Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline believed, to adapt an astronaut's body instead of protecting him from the vacuum. Breathing in space is cumbersome, they wrote. "One proposed solution in the not too distant future is relatively simple: Don't breathe!" But the idea of artificial humans goes back farther. Back at least to the Middle Ages when the Golem, a clay creature brought to life by Jewish mysticism, defended the ghetto in Prague. And back to 1818, when Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus." It took Hollywood to bring cyborgs into their own as modern bugaboos. RoboCop, Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator," the chilling Borg Collective on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," a rakish collection of villains and flawed heroes respectively gunning or pining for humanity. In real life, "cyborg" can be applied to anyone with a body-enhancing add-on. Do you have a titanium alloy knee joint, a myoelectric arm, a pacemaker, breast implants, contact lenses, a polio vaccination? Technically, you're a cyborg. So perhaps the 'borg at MIT are onto something. Perhaps their explorations using chunky, clunky electronics are a natural consequence of the increasingly common merging of technology and flesh. As the Borg Collective announce: "Your life, as it has been, is over. ... Prepare to be assimilated." That's the joke of the 'borgs' name: a double pun on cyborg and Star Trek. And they've taken the image of the fictional characters to heart. In small pouches, they carry their processing chips, hard drives, wireless modems and batteries. They often have a miniature video monitor sort of like a camcorder viewscreen affixed to modified eyeglasses or suspended from a hat brim. Instead of a keyboard or a mouse, a handheld keypad allows them to enter data almost fast as someone can talk. The wearable software can remind them of appointments, and let them take notes and surf the Internet. But the potential is much greater. While the handheld electronic organizers of today can help schedule your life, those of the future may help you live it. Soon, says 'borg Brad Rhodes, the wearables will be able to recognize speech and faces. And software he is developing, called a "remembrance agent," will watch over you 24 hours a day, every day, supplying you with the information you need in any given situation. Example: You recognize someone but can't remember her name. Your wearable analyzes her face and scans a database of people you've met. The machine makes a match and displays the dossier on a tiny screen hanging in front of your eye or maybe whispers through tiny speakers in your ears. Now you know her name, occupation and any e-mail correspondence you may have had. While you two talk, your wearable parses the chit-chat, tapping into global databases via a wireless modem for data relevant to your conversation. As you talk about how hot it's been lately, the agent sifts through newspaper clippings feeding you the latest news on, say, global warming. "Let's head to Union Square," you propose, and the computer gives you directions, even pointing you to a coffee shop that serves excellent pastries. Over cappuccino and cannoli, you talk about impressionist paintings, Japanese filmmaking, the backlash against existentialism and that weird Spice Girls fad a few years back, all thanks to data pulled up by your wearable. It gives you limitless memory and access to almost all knowledge. Data without end. Amen. Wearables may be only an interim step. As disk drives and computer chips shrink and streamline, the next step may be to implant tiny computer parts under the skin or behind the ears. The electrical energy in your body could supply the power. Filings in your teeth could be the antennae for your Internet connection, which could pump the data to a heads-up display built into your eyeglasses. "The line between human and computer at some point will become completely blurred," predicted Alvin Toffler in his 1981 book "The Third Wave." That kind of technology, admittedly, is years away, but the implications are troubling. Hacking the body to install a computer that becomes part of you, that grants instant access to the sum of human knowledge... Well, it sounds almost godlike. "'Godlike' implies infinite comprehension," says MIT's Foner. "I don't think we're getting there."

return to engineering