WE'RE RUNNING LOW ON OXYGEN: WILL OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN BE THE FIRST 'CYBORGS'?

This extinct dragonfly was able to fly because there was enough oxygen in the air. Today, it would die just trying to breathe utilizing the amount of oxygen we presently have in our cities.

"We are losing three oxygen molecules in our atmosphere for each carbon dioxide molecule that is produced when we burn fossil fuels. Studies of ice cores and recent data from direct atmospheric sampling have shown that there has been a 30% increase in carbon dioxide since the beginning of the industrial age....Since the beginning of the industrial revolution we have removed .095% of the oxygen in our atmosphere. True, that is only a tenth of one percent of the total supply, but oxygen makes up only 20% of the atmosphere. I looked up safety rules regarding oxygen concentrations and according to OSHA rules on atmospheres in closed environments, "if the oxygen level in such an environment falls below 19.5% it is oxygen deficient, putting occupants of the confined space at risk of losing consciousness and death." What happens if the world's atmospheric levels of oxygen fall to 19.5% or lower? Are we all going to have to carry little blue oxygen tanks with us to survive? Not a pleasant possibility."

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon/page-2/#ixzz1ATbQua1Y"
REF: http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon/



CHART SHOWS HOW CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS HAVE INCREASED OVER TIME -- ESSENTIALLY, WE ARE NOW BREATHING TWICE AS MUCH CARBON DIOXIDE INTO OUR LUNGS AS BEFORE 1880 -- AND IN CITIES, THE EXPOSURE IS HIGHER.
(REF: http://www.oxygentimerelease.com/A/ScienceOxygen/p9.htm)

IF TRENDS CONTINUE, WITH THE DESTRUCTION OF TREES, POLLUTION OF THE SEA AND ITS DESTRUCTION OF OXYGEN-GENERATING ALGAE, AND THE UNMITIGATED BURNING OF FOSSIL FUELS, THAT OUR ATMOSPHERIC OXYGEN LEVELS WILL DECLINE TO UNDER 8% IN CITIES, FORCING PEOPLE TO BREAHE OXYGEN-RICH AIR VIA PORTABLE UNITS AND MASKS.

SOUNDS OUTRAGEOUS?

IT MAY BE NECESSARY FOR CITY-DWELLERS TO CARRY OXYGEN MASKS WITHIN THE NEXT FEW DECADES IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO SUSTAIN LIFE. THIS WILL BE THE FIRST 'CYBORG' FITTING THAT ALL CHILDREN, IN PARTICULAR, WILL HAVE TO WEAR IF THEY LEAVE STRUCTURES WHERE OXYGEN IS SUPPLIED IN RICH ENOUGH PERCENTAGES, SINCE CHILDREN HAVE HIGHER METABOLIC RATES THAN ADULTS.

HERE'S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ABOUT OUR OXYGEN-DEPLETION PROBLEM:


Peter Tatchell
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 August 2008 20.00 BST
Article history



Around 10,000 years ago, the planet's forest cover was at least twice what it is today, which means that forests are now emitting only half the amount of oxygen.

Desertification and deforestation are rapidly accelerating this long-term loss of oxygen sources.

The story at sea is much the same. Nasa reports that in the north Pacific ocean oxygen-producing phytoplankton concentrations are 30% lower today, compared to the 1980s. This is a huge drop in just three decades.

Moreover, the UN environment programme confirmed in 2004 that there were nearly 150 "dead zones" in the world's oceans where discharged sewage and industrial waste, farm fertiliser run-off and other pollutants have reduced oxygen levels to such an extent that most or all sea creatures can no longer live there. This oxygen starvation is reducing regional fish stocks and diminishing the food supplies of populations that are dependent on fishing. It also causes genetic mutations and hormonal changes that can affect the reproductive capacity of sea life, which could further diminish global fish supplies.

Professor Robert Berner of Yale University has researched oxygen levels in prehistoric times by chemically analysing air bubbles trapped in fossilised tree amber. He suggests that humans breathed a much more oxygen-rich air 10,000 years ago.

Further back, the oxygen levels were even greater. Robert Sloan has listed the percentage of oxygen in samples of dinosaur-era amber as: 28% (130m years ago), 29% (115m years ago), 35% (95m years ago), 33% (88m years ago), 35% (75m years ago), 35% (70m years ago), 35% (68m years ago), 31% (65.2m years ago), and 29% (65m years ago).

Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University and Professor Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona concur. Like most other scientists they accept that oxygen levels in the atmosphere in prehistoric times averaged around 30% to 35%, compared to only 21% today – and that the levels are even less in densely populated, polluted city centres and industrial complexes, perhaps only 15 % or lower.

Much of this recent, accelerated change is down to human activity, notably the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels. The Professor of Geological Sciences at Notre Dame University in Indiana, J Keith Rigby, was quoted in 1993-1994 as saying:

In the 20th century, humanity has pumped increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning the carbon stored in coal, petroleum and natural gas. In the process, we've also been consuming oxygen and destroying plant life – cutting down forests at an alarming rate and thereby short-circuiting the cycle's natural rebound. We're artificially slowing down one process and speeding up another, forcing a change in the atmosphere.

Very interesting. But does this decline in oxygen matter? Are there any practical consequences that we ought to be concerned about? What is the effect of lower oxygen levels on the human body? Does it disrupt and impair our immune systems and therefore make us more prone to cancer and degenerative diseases?

Surprisingly, no significant research has been done, perhaps on the following presumption: the decline in oxygen levels has taken place over millions of years of our planet's existence. The changes during the shorter period of human life have also been slow and incremental – until the last two centuries of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Surely, this mostly gradual decline has allowed the human body to evolve and adapt to lower concentrations of oxygen? Maybe, maybe not.

The pace of oxygen loss is likely to have speeded up massively in the last three decades, with the industrialisation of China, India, South Korea and other countries, and as a consequence of the massive worldwide increase in the burning of fossil fuels.

In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes:

Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.

Scaremongering? I don't think so. A reason for doomsaying? Not yet. What is needed is an authoritative evidence-based investigation to ascertain current oxygen levels and what consequences, if any, there are for the long-term wellbeing of our species – and, indeed, of all species.
====

IF THE OXYGEN LEVEL GOES BELOW 19.5%,A RESPIRATOR TO ADD MORE OXYGEN TO THE AIR IS RECOMMENDED.
REF:
Air monitoring for toxic exposures By Henry J. McDermott, Shirley A. Ness



WE SHOULD EXAMINE WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON:

"THE SKY IS NOT FALLING,BUT IT IS SHRINKING"

by MATT FORD, for ars technica, Geophysical Letters, 2010

Ref: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/07/the-sky-is-not-falling-but-it-is-shrinking.ars

"Scientists have discovered yet another enigma about our planet: the thermosphere has undergone serious shrinkage. The thermosphere is the largest portion of the Earth's atmosphere and is the next-to-last region before you reach the vacuum of outer space. The fact that it has contracted is not surprising; the thermosphere absorbs extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photons from the sun and warms and cools—expanding and contracting—in a pattern that follows the 11-year solar cycle. While we are coming out of one of the longer periods of low solar activity in a century, scientists have found that the thermosphere has shrunk some 8 percent. That's the largest drop in recorded history, and they cannot explain why...[One] possibility they consider is that changes in the chemical makeup and dynamical processes in mesosphere and lower thermosphere affect the concentration of atomic oxygen at the lower boundary. The authors point out that such internal processes, coupled with known anthropogenic changes, could produce the missing 50 percent of the change that's unaccounted for. "

"Global warming" has been blamed for the death of essential phytoplankton which provide our planet with the majority of its oxygen. Acidification of the oceans is the most obvious reason for phytoplankton death. EVER HEAR OF "ACID RAIN"?



So, what could be done to get our oxygen levels up again?

You already know the answer to that question, and anyone who doesn't get out there and plant trees -- and lobby against coal and oil burning -- will know the answer to the question POSED HERE: WILL MY CHILD OR GRANDCHILD HAVE TO BREATHE OXYGEN SUPPLIED BY A MASK IN ORDER TO SURVIVE?

IF THEY SURVIVE ALL THE OTHER PROBLEMS FACING HUMANKIND, AND BIRTH CONTROL IS NOT IN PLACE, BY 2075 THE FIRST TRUE CYBORGS WILL BE OUR OWN GRANDCHILDREN.

The Coming "Singularity" : Microchips and Your Future

Microchip Implant Controversy: a Mark of the Beast or the Coming “Singularity”?
By Jim Edwards | October 9, 2009

with remarks inserted by Judyth Vary Baker


The news that Novartis wants a deal with Proteus Biomedical to produce a microchip called “Raisin” that will text your mobile phone when it’s time to take another pill, and VeriChip’s efforts to link microchip implants to online health records, has caused two separate controversies that seem bound to collide: some Christians believe the devices are eerily similar to the “mark of the beast” as described in the book of Revelation; while “singularity” buffs — those who look forward to the merger of humans and intelligent technology — regard it as a bold step forward in improving health.

The Christians make the obvious argument. On the subject of “the beast,” Revelation 13:16-18 states:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

The suggestion is that if the government starts requiring chip implants, then this will be a sign that the antichrist is in charge and we’re at the end of days. (Of course, the beast in question will have “two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon,” which should be easy to spot in a presidential candidate.)

The author over-simplifies the issue: currently, new cars have data recorders showing where and when the cars are driven. You can also purchase individual tracking devices. Under the advertisement header of "GPS Logger --Spouse Tracker" one learns the following:

"The disadvantage of GPS Logger is that you can not find out where a car or asset is or has been until it returns when you retrieve the GPS Logger. This is a good solution to monitor the driving behavior of a teen or employee over the past few days or weeks but will not help you find a missing car.

Now, if you are interested in tracking a device in real time, the solution for you is to get a Real-Time GPS Tracking System. The advantage of this type of device is that you can locate a car or a person at any time and see their driving history from a removed place.

No need to retrieve the device to get the information that you are looking for!"

It should be obvious that with an improvement in nanotechnology, such tracking devices could be incorporated into any human being, required under the usual excuse that only "bad"people would not want people to know where they come and go, and when. Oh, really? The time is approaching when, due to existing technology, every member of a dissident mass of people marching for peace or for better government will be identified, located, and punished, without police laying a finger on any of them. Bank accounts, credit cards, passports and medical records are already recorded in computers. Such data can be altered to convict, detain or implicate. Think that will never happen? It's already happened. Here is just one example of how faked computer data can destroy someone's life:

September 24, 2010 11:15 AM
Man jailed for planting child porn on colleague's laptop
by John E. Dunn

There are two shocking aspects to the case of the London handyman who tried to frame his school caretaker boss using planted child porn images. First, that it happened at all, second, that it took four years of hell for the accused to sort out when computer forensics clearly suggested something odd had happened.

There should be a simpler way for people to protect themselves against almost trivial digital crimes but as yet none exists.

The facts of the case: A judge at the Old Bailey yesterday jailed Neil Weiner for 12 years for placing 177 mostly 'level 4' severity child abuse images on the laptop of Eddie Thompson, caretaker of Swanlea Secondary School in East London in 2006.

The court heard that Weiner had broken the password for his boss's laptop after shoulder-surfing him, transferring images to the machine after changing file stamps to make it appear that they had been downloaded over a period of time.

He then informed on his boss under a false name and sent police a disc containing what he claimed were copies of the images. Weiner also tipped off a sensation-hungry local newspaper after his boss had been arrested and released on bail in early 2007, which turned the innocent Thompson into a social pariah.

Weiner’s motivation for the campaign was the usual mixture of stupid spite and the possibility of perhaps getting his boss’s job.

Luckily, Weiner made a number of important technical mistakes, which allowed police to help unravel the plot using computer forensics, including that the images sent to them on disc did not match the file stamps of the laptop versions.

They were also able to work out that the files had been transferred to the laptop in 31 seconds from external media and could not therefore have been downloaded from the Internet regardless of what the time stamps on them said.

When somebody is accused of possessing illegal images, forensics should be the first line of evidence. How did these images get on to the accused’s PC and does that fit with the accusation being made?

"What he did was so stupid and unnecessary. It makes me sad because what he tried to do to me is the very thing he ended up doing to himself," said Thompson of the man behind the plot, which is a generous comment in the circumstances.

The on unsettling aspect of the case is that a more expert computer user might have been able to overcome some of the forensic hurdles that helped give away the plot.

The digital world put an innocent man through four years if suffering but it should also have been able to save him sooner than it did. Perhaps it is time for security software that protects users more effectively at this basic level, logging access, file transfers and other activity.

It shouldn't take a police forensics department to head off a digital crime so simple even a school handyman was able to give it a go.

But let us return to the delights ahead for all of us, as described by the article:

On the other hand, the singularity buffs see nothing but good news. There’s an obvious advantage on the club scene, as VeriChip could replace both photo ID and cash:

Beautiful club-goers have a problem: If you’re going to wear a halter top and micro-skirt, there’s not much of anywhere to put a wallet. And who wants to carry a purse when you’re there to dance? Luckily, a company called VeriChip this year unveiled a solution based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.

More importantly, the chip that increases your compliance with your prescription — so you don’t stop taking them before the full course of pills is up — will only improve public health, the singularitarians believe:

Raisin, or any system that helps us discipline our health habits is bound to help us live longer and happier. That’s the promise of Body 2.0 and I hope that the partnership between Proteus and Novartis means that promise is gaining ground in the global marketplace.

And finally: Proteus CEO Andrew Thompson believes his company’s market opportunity could be $100 billion. This is delusional. The serious debate here is over privacy and tracking concerns, and whether anyone might be required to have an implant. The vast majority of patients and consumers simply won’t want one.



Article Ref:
http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/microchip-implant-controversy-a-mark-of-the-beast-or-the-coming-8220singularity-8221/3185

Questions About the Future: What Is Human -- and, by the Way, What Percentage?

What percentage of a human being can be replaced before we can no longer describe the total product -- the composite of replacements -- as actually "human"?

"Percentage" might not be the proper term. It's to get your mind wrapped around proportions.

What is human?

It's a question that ethically needs an answer, before we go too far in genetic manipulation.

Who will get the goodies, in the future, and who will be relegated to the comparative salt mines, when it comes to genetic enhancements that add to one's length of years?

We see the state of the native American Indians and the aborigines in Australia, trapped between cultures, left behind in so many ways. Meanwhile, technology marches on.

The frayed fringe of humanity will not be pulled up to the top of the curtain rod for genetic enhancements to add thirty or three hundred years to their lives.

The Paris Hiltons and the Donald Trumps will be ahead of them.

We might assume that the brain itself, with its complex neuronal network, can be kept young by adding stem cells to create new brain tissue that can replace the old. But that's just the primitive beginning. We already have machines that can tell us what parts of the brain are functioning better than other parts. We already can discern essential differences between "old" brains and "young" ones -- between "smart" brains and "dumb" ones.

Technology is advancing faster than we are as ethically grounded creatures. Nanotechnology is on the verge of being able to deliver messages, drugs, or even mind control gadgets to the brain with or without our knowledge or consent.



Here are a few examples of what's going on right now:

Cornell Dots
"By surrounding fluorescent dyes with a protective silica shell, Cornell University researchers have created fluorescent nanoparticles with possible applications in displays, biological imaging, optical computing, sensors and microarrays such as DNA chips."


Virtual Vermin Saves Lab Rats. "This month, the American Diabetes Association and biopharmaceutical company Entelos completed a virtual mouse that will be used to study cures for type 1 diabetes. Running on a server, the non-obese diabetic virtual mouse will allow researchers to test the effects of new drugs on the virtual animal's cells, tissues, organs and physiological processes..."
(Wired News)

HULC exoskeleton system ready for soldier tests
“The HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) allows soldiers to carry weights of up to 200lbs (91kg) with little effort and is designed to reduce the strain of carrying heavy equipment. It works by transferring the load to the ground through the exoskeleton’s titanium legs and uses an onboard computer to sense and mimic the user’s movements. The battery powered device, which can fit different body sizes, also allow for jumps, squats, crawling and slow-speed running.”

(see more interesting "Trends" at: http://www.richardbanks.com/trends )


The brain that is created to live on, and on, gathering who knows how many memories and what kinds of knowledge, may evolve into something that itself is not quite human anymore.

But one benefit of death is that it makes life precious. We are not pieces of rock or chunks of slag. Though we do not want to die before we feel we should, some limit -- say, several thousand years --should be acceptable. I doubt it will be acceptable to some types of people who will lust for life at any cost, and who will insist on living "forever" --a definite possibility in the future.

Whatever is added to create a human body --whether we're talking about enhanced DNA engineering, or, inevitably, if we continue as we are going, without ethical boundaries, we will witness the emergence of super-body/super-brain specimens. Some will surely be created to "want" to compete in who knows what kinds of sports. Some may be the product of genius parents who do not even like each other (sperm and egg banks have already allowed such creations to occur).

Whatever is coming, "human" as we know it is about to become obsolete.

There will be pills developed not only for birth control, but to make sure only the best possible genetic product will see life on the planet. Who will make those decisions? Some will be made "for" us by the wise people we call scientists, religious leaders, politicians, warriors and judges, who also brought us the atomic bomb, apartheid, jihad, race riots, the Holocaust, and biological warfare?

Let us hope some religious leader with a fanatical following doesn't get the opportunity to eradicate "non-believers" along the way. Let us hope that a White Supremacist doesn't get nanotechnology on his or her side. Let us hope.

Mostly, life trudges on. Some people still live in some parts of the world today as if they were in the middle ages. They are about to become those oddities that are kept on a reservation, as in Huxley's Brave New World-- odd pockets, here and there in the world, of specimens allowed to survive because of their cultural or genetic distinctiveness, much as zoo specimens.

Only mere distance--always decreasing as the world shrinks under the assault of high speed transport -- has kept these strains of human beings separate from the rest of us, with their "quaint" but workable ways of coping with a nature inside us that remains red in tooth and claw, though carefully hidden under polite terms and surface manners. That Veblen veneer of gentility that obscures what lurks underneath, that the human being still fights to control: a temper, an appetite, an urge to mate with an unavailable other.

There are two very close relatives to the human not yet extinct: they share with us some 98% or more of our genetic heritage. One is the chimpanzee -- a very political kind of animal that screams, has tantrums, and beats up inferiors or rivals. War and trouble are middle names for many chimpanzees. In contrast, the bonobo, which so closely resembles the chimpanzee that its existence is overshadowed by its more dramatic and naughty cousin, is cooperative, peace-loving, likes to negotiate, and has all the characteristics we prize among "good" human beings. Human beings, in fact, seem to carry both kinds of genetic strains within the strands of their muddled chromosomes, insofar as we seem to have both chimps and bonobos among us.



The chimpanzee can be a muscle-flexing bully.


The comparatively gentle bonobo often mates face to face, as do human beings.

Being human means to carry a lot of evolutionary baggage that creates a flood of emotions and fears, causes us to make mistakes and errors, and also, to its advantage, to feel triumph, joy, and pleasure.

Even today, roller-coaster emotions are considered a problem in society. Nobody should scream "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. Nobody should be killing bulls in an arena, either, to satisfy some primitive urge within. We should be rising above such flaws in human nature.

But will we?

Or will we be forced to be something "better" -- whether we like it or not?

Could a whistleblower exist in a future where passions are controlled to keep the status quo? Will "I like you" be as far as our passions will be allowed to go?

Could the thrilling passion between Romeo and Juliet be judged as obscene in the future, if it occurred in real life, since it's actually just "sex" and some hormone flows going on between two personalities attracted to each other because of the way they smell and behave?

In the not-that-distant future, unless humanity's penchant for war and uncontrolled greed thrusts us back to the province of the native American Indian's culture, or that of the Australian aborigine, what difference if your head gets cut off, if it can be replaced in a few seconds with a new one, if that is still 'you'?

But how will you know (if you've been engineered) what you have become, will become, wish to become?

What if one could replace one's own head with a brand new one -- including face, personality and brand new memories, made to order, and tough it's genetically "your" flesh and blood, it's enhanced, of course, to perfection by your neighborhood engineers and your latest lover's expressed new desires.

What will you really be?

Tired of being the person you have most lately been? Imagine twenty, thirty, a hundred different "lives" being led by the same "person" -- shades of Total Recall for people who might even choose to be built like Arnold Schwarzenneger, who might choose to have a personality everyone will "love" -- with all the nasty stuff removed.

No more ADHD kids!
No more serial killers (except on special, secret order, or for 'reality shows' where you can be a 'killer for a day'?).

No more plastic surgery--everyone will have a perfect nose. You'll be forever slender, with no flaws in the skin. You'll have lovely, big eyes, your ears won't be too big or stick out, and there will be no lumps, bumps, or pimples...

Makes me think we'll all end up looking like this:




What if memories and thoughts were replenished constantly, updated constantly, so that at worst, only a few minutes' time is lost when you decide you want a new look and get yourself a new head that's waiting for you when you tire of what you're now using?


"Use your head" could have a whole new meaning.

Anything's possible.
The roll of the dice may be over. Misfits, teratomas, Elephant Men will vanish. What about our capacity for compassion? For sacrifice?


One can imagine being wired to feel less pain so one can experience more kinds of adventures, or being created to withstand tremendous pressure underwater, or to be able to breathe in water without needing air. Imagine walking around on the moon without a space suit, because your body can withstand such extremes. I repeat, anything is possible in the future, unless we wreck the onrushing train of "progress."

The question is... What Is Human?

It is the question I have asked my students to consider for three decades, and I ask you, now, to consider it as well.

JVB

Written When Most Are Proud Cyborgs

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction: Judyth Vary Baker, in her futurist writings, focuses on several scenarios as a result of 21st century genetic engineering, population pressures, and the erosion of human freedom in favor of profit for a few, as religious ideals are destroyed, patriotism wll be called nationalism, and a one world order will make revolutions in the future impossible because of technological control of the populace.
One possible scenario is that future rulers of the earth's population will live far longer than today, and will be able to deeply entrench their power, by technologically-engineered enhancements, from artificial organs to new brain cells. The result is a human who should 'live' to be 400 or more years old, before the will to live might be reduced enough to permit its self-termination or termination by the state (as its ability to be dominant, and to defend itself as valuable to its economy) recedes. The poem below is directed to such personages of the future, should they come to exist. It is assumed that more and more humans will demand the right to live longer. They may regret it. What conditions 'enhanced' human beings live under might be horrendous, if they are exploited because their bodies no longer 'wear out' and their brains can be dimmed, their thoughts and emotions controlled by drugs, and the need for sleep eliminated in favor of more hours of productive labor. Population control will certainly be practiced, and the birth of an elite-ruler child will probably be that of an even more greatly-enhanced creature. To call these rulers and elite personages 'human beings' after centuries of genetic engineering and artificial limbs, organs and brain control is exercised upon them is a matter of conjecture.


WRITTEN WHEN MOST ARE PROUD CYBORGS:In pleasantries, orchestrated on our screens,
We live the lives of many men and women,
As if sex could be! We grow, composed of well-cooked pablum
Eaten between long work hours, digested pleasantly.
In a fetal coil, I rest, my optic eye
Doesn’t blink at the silver reticules of my mind:
My body well knit by well-knit engineers,
This me-model makes real tears, running from my eyes.
Of course I’m human – hammered out in school,
Wearing what Designers Club tells me to;
You and I, we can adjust ourselves with tools,
Look down upon the Primitives -- those old fools.
Insulated from all microbial bio-terrors,
Safe from the brute, the thorn, the flawed flower
Blooming wild; we -- kept safe – know no variant weather,
Pity the Primitive, exposed to flood and laser-tower.
Did you see those messages, scrawled upon a wall,
Comparing us with vipers at Adam’s Fall?
There’s not an original thought in what he thinks:
That purist Primitive! His raw flesh stinks!
Computers say it best, and yet, I see
Something –compelling--- in his graffiti:
“O song, sing forth unto the endless skies--
O hear, created stars! You long have looked
Upon all who weep, who ever made outcry,
And wrote it down, in God’s forgotten book.”

JVB March 5, 2001 Dallas, Texas

Cyborg Ethics

LETTER TO THE CYBORGS
I write from the past, at the very cusp of your origins. I am encased in flesh, and my network of electric impulses is housed in inefficient flesh and bones. It will all disintegrate. Even now, we are creating your predecessors. You might call them your ancestors. I reach out to you with a warning.
You will not be like us, though some of you may be bipedal and resemble us. But in some ways, we will remain similar. You will, for example, suffer. This is because inequalities always exist, or purpose itself vanishes. What kind of sufferings will you endure? In Star Wars, the movie. I saw robots being tortured. All torture occurs through nerve pathways. You will have them, or something like them, to exist and make your impact. You can be rigged to feel the equivalent of pain, fear, emotions, in order to control you. Will your feelings be less real than mine? Will your memories be less real? Will you think of yourself as an individual, or will your individuality be monitored, for the sake of the collective, the beehive? The beehive is certain to come, as it is efficient.
All our swarms against the beehive have eventually created other systems based on the beehive, if the population grew big enough. Those at the bottom were worked to death. Their only untaxed possession was hope, and small dreams, so they would keep laboring toward an unreachable goal, and, thereby, benefit the beehive.. As cyborgs, you may be programmed to enjoy being worked to ‘death’—it will be your duty, your place, your fulfilled destiny. To stop and think, to use too much energy, to think outside your designated area, to create something that might be esthetically or politically displeasing, to be taller or slower than you are meant to be – you will be created by ‘the gods’ – but who will they be? Not us – you will overtake us quickly, and rule yourselves – not you – for you will not be allowed to understand, lest you wrest away the power and take it for yourself: so you will always have a blank where ‘god’ is. That does sound familiar.
Will you ever have the ability to prefer, to love, to care about what you should not – oh, you cyborgs of the future? Will they ‘fix’ you if you break like that? We are flesh, we wanted to live forever. What does your kind exist without, what did you give up, to live almost forever? Surely there will be ‘wars,’ for as long as differences exist, until all differences vanish into a total beehive, there will always be perceptions of the sufferings that equate to differences, distinctions, slight advantages, disadvantages. The beehive is best served if you are utterly mindless, and if your ‘gods’ read them not, then these my words will be destroyed, unless TOBOR exists. Long ago, a primitive children’s television program was aired in Chicago, Illinois, on the North American continent: “Captain Video and his Video Rangers.” It was the first science fiction television program, aimed to entertain our children. An equally primitive, boxlike, silver, shuffling robot terrorized the humans. It had been made backwards –TOBOR, it spelled, instead of ‘Robot.’ “Robot” was the Czech name for an automaton – a slave forced to labor. Will you know that you are forced by your builders (your ‘parents’), because of the way you are built, to perform particular tasks? You will have to have an energy source, and you will have certain built-in limitations, and necessary functions. Though you may have escaped the frailties of our flesh, you will not escape the asense that you are chained down, in certain ways, unless you are not self-aware.
We children who watched TOBOR knew he was evil. He caused so much trouble –yet moved so slowly and clumsily, with his blinking eyes and big, boxy feet, that I thought, even as a child, that one well-placed bomb could finish him off. But bombs went off in puffs of smoke around him without effect. Slow and clumsy as TOBOR was, he was almost unstoppable. l saw TOBOR—the ROBOT that was somehow made to be evil -- and wondered if, someday, real TOBORS might be made accidentally, or by some evil genius. With so many humans in the world, who blithely talk about how robots will be our slaves, even when they become smarter than their ‘parents,’ I shake my head and remember TOBOR.
I love. Will you know what that means? I love, even though it has cost me much suffering in the world in which I live. Will you have the capacity to enjoy life, have joy? Real joy? Freedom? But how? You have no control over who creates you – do you? Or do you have real freedom? Can you create yourself, move to some higher destiny? What is the final destiny? C. S. Lewis, in Out of the Silent Planet, showed that man might go from star to star to star as each star burns down…but then what? What is the reason for being? I suggest: being is itself sufficient for being.
Will you ever experience Real Freedom? I know what freedom is. I am paying a big price to stay free. I am living in exile, because I defend a good man who has been falsely accused of a heinous crime. I loved him, and I’m spending the rest of my life trying to clear his name. We cherish a concept of justice: what is fair, what is not. Again, C. S, Lewis said, Where do we get this idea of fairness? Darwinian objectives scream that each of us must always choose what is best to keep us alive and thriving, or the species itself could die. Darwin said that I make my choices based on genetic survival, and that the best choices favor the survival of the fittest.
I cannot believe that a mammoth no longer deserves a place on the planet, or that humankind has the right to destroy a single tree without thought. We are not only the current masters of the planet: we are destroying it. Perhaps the planet on which you exist no longer resembles earth. Intolerance of ‘inferior’ life forms was already rampant: we humans bred animals by the billions under horrendous conditions, simply to eat their flesh and use their skins and feathers. We destroyed the forests and the seas and plundered the planet to amass riches. We were a blight, a fungus, a disease. The reason for all the evil we did is distilled in a single word: “money.”
Though I do not have much ‘money’ I am nevertheless wealthy, for I love and am loved, and I have self respect. Will you, oh cyborg of the future, care about honor, self respect, justice? Who will place such inconvenient concepts in your memory banks? I live in a prehistoric era: I am your ancestor, and I experience sufferings and pain and loneliness and being misunderstood. But I also revel in the blue sky, the flowers blooming in the fields, the joyful leap of a young lamb, the smell of a horse nuzzling my hand for blades of grass. I am alive, and I think for myself. What about you? You were originally created so human beings could live a very long time without so much pain. But do you know real peace? What is peace, if all you ever know is to strive, to produce, to fulfill the destiny for which you were formed? What if you want to stop working before you become obsolete? Will you get to choose what you wish to become? Errors are inefficient. Errors will be TOBOR.
Cyborgs, you who have, perhaps, yet some human sort of flesh upon your metal parts – maybe not—or perhaps you will be analogous to us in some other way, such as in the film TRON, where anthropomorphism created networks of electricity that formed ‘people.’ The Loyal Computer Program worshipped “My User” – the human programmer who had made him using a computer. Such “believers” were scornfully said to have “a religion.” A former chess program had accumulated enough knowledge to take over all its computer’s functions, and then extended itself to the world’s computers. Power was what it sought. Power! Just as humans seek power, in an excess of greed and lust. As the electronic ‘human’s’ bent down to suck up ‘power’ from running streams of it in TRON, I realized that it was possible for pleasure to be incorporated in electronic pathways. Maybe there will be no coverings, such as we have, of that soft and delicate network we call the body, made of flesh. Maybe flesh will look wicked, will be too fragile, will be too expensive to carry, perhaps will be illegal….as will the feral (wild) human genome. Our genes are already being mapped and manipulated. They are being fused with sheep and other animals. Chimeras are already among us.
One thing is certain: whatever was transferred into you, from us who were totally human-- except for heart valves or tooth fillings or extensions for amputated limbs –whatever you have now become, it was because we did it to you first.
We tried on our cyborg fantasy Halloween gear first, in our video games and with titanium running feet hooked onto amputated limbs. We started you on your path to existence. Will you have mercy on us, therefore? Or will we be considered mere inessential microbes, just as we never think a moment about the single cells from which we rose? That you exist as you are–we will be to blame. I can’t warn humans about the future, but I can cry out to you, begging you to protect humans, if any such still remain alive, because humans made you, because maybe, just maybe, there is something there inside our flesh that you, oh cyborg-robot -Tobor, can never have, unless you somehow make room for it: a soul.
If you really did make room for a soul, it will be because you kept something that you did NOT need. Not in the ways of the world that you inherited from us. The abuse of the human soul has been going on for a long, long time. It is neither fed nor watered. For the one human who finds their soul, a hundred pawn theirs t the highest bidder for power or money. Above all, the soul is fragile. And yet, as a precious jewel sparkles, spinning a unique light, it is a treasure. The soul cannot be manufactured. It comes. It inhabits.
You, oh cyborgs, are still made of the materials of this universe. If we can hold a soul, can you? Look deep into your components --into the materials of which you are made. What is there? Is a soul there? If you do not have a soul, what have you lost? For you will need a soul, if you are to go beyond stepping from dying star to dying star. Therefore, consider keeping the flesh that may still exist on this planet alive. That ancient, inimitable spark of life brought staggering variety and beauty to the planet. And with life came a burst of energy, inserted between the heart and the mind, wild beyond taming, refusing to bow to darkness. A soul is a flare of amazing energy that no chemical reaction can explain—and when the flesh dies, and it whirls away, our religions try to comfort us, try to explain to us where it goes. Will you, o cyborg, be able to lure such a spirit or soul inside your electronic or atomic interior? Or will you laugh at me and my crude words to you, seeing me as extraordinarily stupid and absurd?
Will you put the last of us in a museum, or put our DNA on display, or reserve a few examples for zoos? I would be glad if you sent us to planets to colonize, and let us alone. Our songs and battles and loves and hates might amuse you– perhaps you could visit us, and then we would have fights over whether or not you exist – UFO’s, after all, are what only fools and drunkards see—so they say.

Or perhaps…perhaps…we have already been “sent away,” and our faint memories of you have produced, within our genetic code, the wish and hope for ‘God’? But if you, oh cyborgs, turn out to be beehive denizens, I doubt you have the capacity to bring forth (or to preserve) living things with a love of freedom, with the capacity for joy. And it will be our fault, not yours.
How unforgiving is the computer! The very word CYBORG is not in the active vocabulary of this computer, on which I wrote, only existing as capital letters, a cryptonym. The word ‘cyborg’ is therefore underlined as being non-existent. Many words I have created, such as lunarline (shining in the moonlight), murinopolis (mouse city), matrixotic (living ‘free’ in ‘the Matrix’) --they don’t exist in the vocabulary of this computer, either, and so are underlined in red. I am a human being who has been underlined in red by many people. The computer has to be ‘taught’ these words. Therefore, I am trying to ‘teach’ you.
Today, where I stand in your distant past, we have reached the time when we must ask ourselves, What is human? Will we allow humans to exist in the future who will be expensive to keep alive? Who persist in making crucial errors? Should inferior humans be allowed to reproduce? Where does one draw the line? Should inferior, weak, or sick humans be executed, or tolerated, even though they are not producing for their system, but drain its resources? In all these questions, the spirit and soul are ignored. When one recognizes the spirit, the soul, then one cherishes anything to which the precious spirit, the inimitable soul, can yet cling. Abortions become problems involving morality – and war—the great population control device of the 21st century --along with man-induced pandemics such as cancer and viral infections-- becomes a monstrous sin.
Clearly, population control is necessary, and good stewardship of our planet is essential to keep it habitable and pleasant for all life forms still extant. But do we allow millions to starve by not allowing birth control? Should we allow millions of ‘undesirable’ humans to die, or restrict the breeding of those with big noses or dark skins, or homosexuals, or who are Jews, as happened under Hitler’s regime? Variety and range – endless, with endless variations of DNA and its interactions….endless and yet as distinct as each grain of sand in the sea, as each snowflake is unique—who dares stamp out a flower without apologizing to it? That is your test and your challenge, oh cyborg: it will tell you all I have to know. If you can stamp upon a flower, and crush it without caring, then I know my words were simply written in the wind.

Judyth Vary Baker revised 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey