On his book Inventing Iron Man: The Possibility of a Human Machine
Cover Interview of November 24, 2011
The wide angle
Using the Iron Man suit (if it existed) would require a technological interface bridging the gap between our nervous systems and devices like computers and robots. Let’s say that was possible…what happens then?
A lot of really bizarre things, actually. In Inventing Iron Man I give the example of plasticity in brain maps for the body muscles and skin areas. It is well known that after traumatic injuries like limb amputations other brain regions can take up the function of areas not in use because the body part is missing. This “remapping” is a really extreme example of neural plasticity—the reshaping of nervous system connections due to changes in activity.
This brings up the idea of what would happen when using a device like the Iron Man armor.
But there is a huge difference between thinking about how the brain remaps when something is lost and what happens to an intact nervous system. Someone using the armor hasn’t had an amputation and there isn’t anything missing. There is no brain territory to remap. So where does the armor go? I ask in one section “Is there space in Shellhead’s brain to store a skin of iron?” I phrase it as a funny question but the truth is, we don’t know. This is not a natural event, interfacing with machines and computers. We have no clear understanding of the long term effects of such interfacing.
This last bit is important if we take this line of thinking to its eventual conclusion—long term integration of computers, machines, and human minds. What would it do to the biological human connected to the technology? Where does human end and machine begin? What does it mean for being human, not just for human beings?
My main motivation behind writing the book was my continued passion for the popularization of science. I had some success using Batman as a popular culture icon for illustrating human biology. A lot of Becoming Batman helped satisfy the kinesiology part of my personality. Now I wanted to more specifically address my inner (and outer) neuroscientist!
I think many of the issues raised in Inventing Iron Man are important because they can help people understand how their brains work and why they work that way. And the vast mysteries that remain about how their bodies work. We all use technology routinely and we are rapidly converging on a point where we have to have a fundamental change in how we connect to the tech. Inventing Iron Man provides some answers and also raises some probing questions related to all these.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The wide angle
Using the Iron Man suit (if it existed) would require a technological interface bridging the gap between our nervous systems and devices like computers and robots. Let’s say that was possible…what happens then?
A lot of really bizarre things, actually. In Inventing Iron Man I give the example of plasticity in brain maps for the body muscles and skin areas. It is well known that after traumatic injuries like limb amputations other brain regions can take up the function of areas not in use because the body part is missing. This “remapping” is a really extreme example of neural plasticity—the reshaping of nervous system connections due to changes in activity.
This brings up the idea of what would happen when using a device like the Iron Man armor.
But there is a huge difference between thinking about how the brain remaps when something is lost and what happens to an intact nervous system. Someone using the armor hasn’t had an amputation and there isn’t anything missing. There is no brain territory to remap. So where does the armor go? I ask in one section “Is there space in Shellhead’s brain to store a skin of iron?” I phrase it as a funny question but the truth is, we don’t know. This is not a natural event, interfacing with machines and computers. We have no clear understanding of the long term effects of such interfacing.
This last bit is important if we take this line of thinking to its eventual conclusion—long term integration of computers, machines, and human minds. What would it do to the biological human connected to the technology? Where does human end and machine begin? What does it mean for being human, not just for human beings?
My main motivation behind writing the book was my continued passion for the popularization of science. I had some success using Batman as a popular culture icon for illustrating human biology. A lot of Becoming Batman helped satisfy the kinesiology part of my personality. Now I wanted to more specifically address my inner (and outer) neuroscientist!
I think many of the issues raised in Inventing Iron Man are important because they can help people understand how their brains work and why they work that way. And the vast mysteries that remain about how their bodies work. We all use technology routinely and we are rapidly converging on a point where we have to have a fundamental change in how we connect to the tech. Inventing Iron Man provides some answers and also raises some probing questions related to all these.