- (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.
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- Better yet, somebody else's left arm.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Which brings us to the question: Why?
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- Warwick
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- Real-world applications
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- Witt is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
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