-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Walker [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, January 25, 1999 11:11 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: NUFOIA: Professer Gets Chip Implant - The Wave Of The Future?...Or
The Mark of The Beast???
SIGHTINGS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
Professer Gets Chip Implant -
The Wave Of The Future?
CNN news
By Sam Witt
1-15-99
(IDG) -- Is the human body a fit place for a microchip? The debate
is no longer hypothetical. The same computing power that once required an
entire building to harness now can be inserted in your left arm.
Better yet, somebody else's left arm.
Professor Kevin Warwick, director of cybernetics at the University
of Reading in the U.K., is that somebody else. On Monday, Aug. 24,1998,
Warwick became the first human to host a microchip. During a 20-minute
medical procedure described as "a routine silicon-chip implant" by Dr.
George Boulos, who led the operation, doctors inserted into Warwick's arm a
glass capsule not much bigger than a pearl. The capsule holds several
microprocessors.
The British Broadcasting Corp. was on hand to document the historic
event - and to trouble the professor's already frayed nerves. "In theory, I
was able to see what was going on," Warwick says in a phone interview
several days after the operation (which he described as slightly more
pleasant than a trip to the dentist), "but I was looking in the opposite
direction most of the time."
Although Warwick winces at the comparison, Boulos likens him to a
latter-day Edward Jenner, who injected himself with cowpox in 1776 to
further his research into a smallpox vaccine.
"The doctor pinched the skin and lifted it up and sort of burrowed
a hole underneath the skin and on top of themuscle," Warwick says. "It's
well inside my body, in my left arm, just above my elbow. [It's] held in
place by three stitches - partly so that the wound is held together, but
also so that the capsule doesn't float around anywhere."
Though he declines to reveal the chip's manufacturer, Warwick did
disclose that it's a "commercial" product. "For obvious reasons, both
positive and negative, they didn't want us shouting about what the name of
the exact product was," he says.
The approximately 23mm-by-3mm device stayed in Warwick's arm for
only nine days - partly to avoid medical complications, partly because it
was fairly limited in power. "Half of it is an electric coil,"Warwick says,
"and half is a number of silicon chips." The chips used only eight of an
available 64 bits of information to communicate with the University of
Reading's intelligent building.
Which brings us to the question: Why?
Warwick has spent more than 20 years researching and developing
intelligent buildings. "In our building in the Cybernetics department,
we've got quite a number of doorways rigged up so that they pass a radio
signal between the door frame," he says. "When I go through the doorways,
the radio signal energizes the coil. It produces an electric current, which
the chips use to send out an identifying signal, which the computer
recognizes as being me."
And so, for a little better than a week, doors that normally
require smart cards swung open for the professor. A system of electronic
nodes tracked his movements throughout the building. Lights blinked on when
he entered a room.
"Hello, Professor Warwick," his PC announced when Warwick crossed
the threshold of his office, before casually mentioning how many E-mail
messages he had received. It also was reported that Warwick used the device
to run a bath and chill his wine.
Warwick
How did he like it? "In my building I feel much more powerful, in a
mental way," Warwick says. "Not at one with the computer, but much, much
closer. We're not separate. It's not as though we're good friends or
anything. But certainly when I'm out of the building, I feel as though part
of me is missing."
Asked if he named his chip, Warwick laughs. "I don't see it as a
separate thing," he says. "It's like an arm or a leg."
Warwick's family was a little slower than his body to accept the
chip. "My wife finds it really strange," he says. "She didn't want to go
near my arm for a couple of days. It was as though I had some funny
disease." His 16-year-old daughter reportedly called him "crazy."
And the day after the operation, Warwick played a game of squash
with his son, but not before issuing a stern warning: "Whatever you do,
don't hit my arm. The implant could just shatter, and you'll have ruined
your father's arm for life."
Real-world applications
Though the experiment sounds like an episode of Dr. Who, its
real-world implications are "right around thecorner," says Warwick, who
foresees enormous medical applications. Through a system of embedded chips
interfacing with an artificial motor system, Warwickimagines paraplegics
walking. And that's just for starters.
"Simply take measurements off muscles and tendons and feed them
into the transponder," Warwick says. "That means, ultimately, that you
wouldn't need a computer mouse anymore. You wouldn't need a keyboard."
Charles Ostman, a senior fellow at the Institute for Global Futures
and science editor at Mondo 2000, agrees. "Neuroprosthetics are . .
.inevitable," he says. "Biochip implants may become part of a rote medical
procedure. After that, interface with outside systems is a logical next
step."
Warwick's eagerness is palpable, engaging, contagious. "This is
where you can speculate," he says. "This is where we take a technical thing
and say, 'Right-o, got the signal, got the implant; all I've got to do is
run a wire from the implant to my nervous system.' . . . I'm so excited
about it, I want to get on with the next step straight away. Let's see if
we can control computers directly from our nervous system."
Witt is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
http://www.sightings.com/ufo2/chipimplants.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ZZZXXXZZZ
eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/ufolist
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com
The Wave Of The Future?
By Sam Witt
|
Free Web-based e-mail groups by www.eGroups.com
