Isn't it clear from history alone?
Mechanical hearts, pacemakers, screws and rods holding bones together, hypnosis (programming) are new(er) ways in which humans change their biology with artificial outside influences, devices, and materials.
Humans have been becoming "robots" to escape natural selection for hundreds of thousands of years.
Tools...are the same as software. They are separate appendages from our biological body that provide additional functions. A screwdriver doesn't come with our appendages, but is created by a human, and used by a human, as an additional appendage, in order to perform some function that would either be impossible, or extremly difficult otherwise.
Hell, you can look at civilization as a motherboard that connects disparate groups of people together.
In almost any civilization/society, certain groups of people perform specific functions that seem alien to other members of that same society.
I can speak in legalese, and most people here will have no clue what the fuck I'm talking about.
Turismon can speak computer networking/programming, and I'll have no idea what the fuck he is talking about.
Yet, we are connected by the same civilization/society/language (motherboard) where what I know and what he knows can be intertwined. I can perform a function relating to computer networking by explaing to Turis applicable laws he probably doesn't know about, that actually governs what he does. Turismon can additionally explain to me computer networking that I use everyday, without knowing the details.
This diversification of skills that can still work together is like a CPU and Ram chip communicating, even though they both are based on different architectures, languages, and physical functions. The motherboard connects the two, the same as civilization/society/language can connect people of different professions, or skillsets.
While that may seem abstract, it should represent just how predictable it is that humans, a species forever attempting to rid itself of limits, are coming closer and closer to losing our purely human attributes. We've been doing it as a species for as long as we've been a species (unless of course you believe in an invisible man, then all of this logic is lost on you. Disregard what I'm saying, it will be easier on your psyche).
While "biometrics" may seem interesting, I'd point out that genetic engineering is a hell of a lot more promising (if you like humanity changing itself) than just implanting some chip in your brain that can detect brainwaves. An MRI can detect brainwaves too, the only new thing is implanting the chip in your body, and using the chip to communicate with an Atari-like program to move a dot around.
Any biometrics you see that has someone "becoming" a robot is basically old hat - you are simply putting a standard sensor into your body to detect electric pulses. Childs play, compared to generic engineering.
Humans will die, no matter how much metal is inside of their bodies. Not very robot-like, since a Robot isn't theoretically alive, and cannot die.
But, as humans are genetically engineered by nature to self-destruct, once humans can bypass that self-destruction code, humans will be robots, and humanity will have evolved into a species that doesn't die if it doesn't want to.
Then we will have become a Human-robot. But just throwing some metal into your body, that's been done since the stoneage.
|