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Interviews Silicon Man Lives One of Peter Cochrane's favorite television characters is Star Trek's Captain Jean-Luc Picard. In a favorite episode, Picard is turned into a menacing half-machine, half-man creature: a Borg. Cochrane -- the head of research at British Telecom Laboratories (BT Labs), the British version of Bell Labs or Xerox PARC -- is working to make that fantasy come true. Cochrane and his R&D staff of 660 biologists, engineers, and physicists are working on the kinds of technologies that usually exist only in science fiction movies. Cochrane's team researches technologies as mundane as switching and networking and those as advanced as artificial life, virtual reality, and wearable computers. It is not hard to see the appeal of such a future to Cochrane. The fast-talking, 52-year-old electrical engineer already zips from topic to topic like a multiplexing computer. In his recent book, Tips for Time Travelers, Cochrane describes the technology of the future as being an omnipresent part of our lives. Products will be smaller, more compact, almost invisible, some even becoming embedded in our bodies. In his view, people will one day embrace technology far more deeply than most of us can even imagine. For example, Cochrane believes that humanity's future, its bermensch, will be a new bionic creature: CarboSilico Man. Cochrane's interest was piqued six years ago by BT Labs' research into online surgeries. Cochrane, who joined British Telecom in 1973, had been part of a team developing optical systems technologies and artificial intelligence. From this experience Cochrane saw a logical connection between medicine and electrical engineering. Today, artificial implants in human beings are commonplace. According to Cochrane, there have been more than 1 million pacemaker implants, 1,700 cochlea (inner ear) implants, and 16 artificial retina experiments. Microchip implants are increasingly being inserted into pets and livestock for identification. Chips are also being used to track criminals -- the chips are set into the transponder bracelet or anklet worn while under house arrest. For Cochrane this is only the beginning. He is eager to take the next step: universal silicon implants. Cochrane estimates that silicon implants will be common by 2010. Initially, he predicts, they will be used for medical purposes -- helping people who are paralyzed or who suffer from neurological disorders, or even from more minor problems such as incontinence. Scientists have already conducted some chip- embedding experiments. A 52-year-old stroke victim in Atlanta has a chip in his brain that allows direct wireless communication to his computer. The chip amplifies his brain signals, which are transmitted through an antenna to his computer. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary have been using rabbits to test silicon retinas that may someday cure blindness. And the National Institutes of Health implanted a chip into the visual cortex of the brain of a blind person, allowing the individual to see faint images. Cochrane doesn't have a chip embedded in himself yet, although he'd really like one. He does have a chip in his signet ring, however, that includes such personal information as his medical records and bank account and passport numbers. One of his associates has had a chip embedded under his skin. It bears the same kind of information as the chip in Cochrane's ring, and its data can be accessed by radio. "People get paranoid about being tracked, but the concern is wrongly placed," Cochrane says. "If I were mugged in San Francisco, there would be no way to access my medical history if I were unconscious." Why the rush to embed these chips and incorporate them -- literally -- into themselves and others? Because, says Cochrane, the human brain is reaching its evolutionary peak. Computing power increases a thousandfold each decade. By comparison, human brains have remained largely unchanged for 50,000 years, consistently downloading about 20,000 terabytes of information in a lifetime. The logical next step, he says, is to embed a chip in the brain to maximize its capabilities. In a 1996 paper, Cochrane dubbed this chip "Soul Catcher" and described its advantages: "Among the desirable features of a silicon extension -- PC in your head -- would be high-speed data processing and memory, no distortion or decay, but with a delete function." The most prized aspect of this technology would be a kind of immortality. Cochrane dreams of the ability to access, and even interact with, the greatest minds of our time. "People like Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman develop ideas and then they die," he says. "Their only echo is a book." But if a silicon chip were embedded in their brains, it could capture their thoughts and also be removed once they died. People would be able to ask questions of these great, disembodied minds (their answers, of course, would be based on the information those individuals knew at the time of their death). Imagine: A lifetime's worth of thought and wisdom will be only a keystroke away. |