The Alien Organs

        

                            

Science Fiction! Is it really fiction in the 21^st century? Watching various characters in the movies, one thought which must have occurred to all of us is that - Is it really possible? And today we are in a time where anything is possible (or can be made possible). You imagine something today and maybe the next day you will be reading something about it in some magazine or newspaper. The ‘WOW’ factor which scientific research has created with various innovations and developments has put us in a state where maybe one day we could get an answer to life’s biggest mystery- immortality.  And when I say immortality, I do not only mean it for the human race but for other forms of life as well. Now, here the question arises – would this advancement ultimately stab us in the back? Are humanoids going to be the next stage of human evolution? Or, will the machines dominate life on earth and change its very definition as we know it?

In most of the sci-fi movies, we see aliens with antennas, a flexible body with some weird shape and various other inhuman features, which were made only to attract the audience and mostly kids (with some logic to explain their occurrence, of course). For a common man, it is just weird to think of some human with an antenna. It was until recently that I found Neil Harbisson , an artist born with Achromatopsia , a disease of colour blindness , permanently attached an antenna inside  his skull! It consists of two antenna implants, one vibration/sound implant, and a Bluetooth implant that allows him to connect to internet and thus receive colours from satellites and other people’s cameras, as well as receive a phone call directly into the skull.

Fig. : Neil Harbisson with an implanted antenna     

Fig.: Stelios Acadio with an ear arm

Fig.: Jesse Sullivan with an artificial arm

 Fig.: Jens Naumann artificial vision

Fig.: Jerry Jalava with a hard drive storage finger

 Fig.: Cameron Clapp with prosthetic legs

Manfred Clynes called those humans with electronic or artificial implants as ‘Cyborg’ and what I would like to call these organs is ‘Alien Organs’. The basic question which arises while using the word ‘Alien’ is - do they really exist? Which seems quite similar to- ‘Is there any life after death?’            I can’t comment on existence of aliens but I can say that we are creating an alien sub-species from the existing human race.

When I found someone with an antenna , my curiosity level was driven to another level and only then, to my surprise, I found that there are significant number of people who actually have these kinds of artificial implants, some having an artificial arm, some with artificial legs, artificial retina, electronic skin, artificial ear and even scientists are planning to develop a system which can replace the kidneys in case of failure  and who knows maybe someday, we create a robot which actually thinks…

All this information just makes me wonder…

·         Are these innovations answers of human immortality?

·         Can we call these innovations as evolution of the human species?

·         Are we moving towards a time where machines will dominate the world?

With some questions still to be asked and with some issues still to be interpreted and encountered, I only hope that this will lead us to a better and brighter future.

Written by:

Nitin Kumar Singh