Cybernetic experiment

Citation

Rudall, B.H. (2001), "Cybernetic experiment", Kybernetes, Vol. 30 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2001.06730aaa.003

Cybernetic experiment

Cybernetic experiment

In this section we have already reported that Professor Kevin Warwick plans to have microchips implanted in himself and his wife in a two-week experiment. Professor Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the Cybernetics Department of the University of Reading, UK, and has published extensively in the fields of systems and cybernetics.

The experiment could go a long way to help explain many of the feelings we, especially partners, sense about each other. By having implants in both himself and his wife Irena, Professor Warwick will have devices which will enable them to sense each other's pleasure or pain and maybe other actions and reactions which many humans sense about each other, The experiment of implanting the £250,000 device could produce many fascinating results. Questions such as "I know exactly how you feel?", "Will the implants improve a couple's love life?", "Will there be a greater emotional empathy between couples?", "Are phobias transmitted from one to the other?" and a great many other questions will be asked and the experiment may well offer some interesting answers and also provide much data for yet more such implant experiments.

A report of the experiment says that:

In an hour-long operation, the couple will have the chips, about the size of a mint wafer, implanted into their arms and connected to various nerves. Electrical signals from the brain – which are naturally carried along the nerves – will be converted into radio waves via the chips and beamed to an ordinary computer.

The computer, fitted with special software, transmits the signals between the two implants. When a signal is received by a chip wearer, he or she should experience a similar physical effect to that being felt by the sender.

It would appear that not only will the implanted devices enable a couple to share excitement, pleasure and pain, but they should also feel the sensation of movement. Indeed, we are told that eventually the implants may allow one person to move the limbs of another.

Professor Warwick is reported as speculating during the planning of the experiment that:

… the signals could be held, even temporarily, in the computer to produce a delayed action. If I move a finger, the computer will be able to store that signal. We are looking at transmitting that signal back down to my nervous system from the computer, maybe a couple of hours later, so hopefully my finger will burst into life at the signal.

Now is not the time to overestimate the potential of this – a first experimental venture. Professor Warwick has made it clear that he and his wife will not be able to access each other's sense of sight, smell or taste, nor read each other's minds. He is also well aware of the possible dangers implicit in such a venture. He sums it up succinctly when he says:

The biggest problem, apart from possible nerve damage and loss of feeling or movement, is mental. Will my brain cope? I could go crazy. Or maybe it will be OK when it's just me – but when Irena is hooked up, we both go crazy.

One interesting facet of the experiment is whether phobias will be exchanged. Professor Warwick says that he is afraid of heights and his wife Irena hates spiders. Will they feel each other's fears? The implant will be completed at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK. It will be recalled that Professor Warwick was engaged in another experiment in 1998 when he was implanted with a chip which, via his desktop PC, enabled him to control various routine office tasks (see also "Telepathy chip", Kybernetes No. 1/2, 2000, pp. 9-10).