Tech Goes Boom

Your Cyborg is Sick

Kevin Warwick, the guy who put a chip in his arm is concerned about your cyborg health. While I can't believe this is even a blip on the radar these days, I guess some people would find this disconcerting.

This is hardly a new thought, or one worth a whole lot of examination at this point. Cybernetics are still far to rudimentary to be concerned with viruses currently, and this seems like another headline grab for Kevin. To put your mind at rest so you don't have to be concerned about the health of your cybernetic great-great-great grand children, here are a couple of reasons you shouldn't worry for now.

Closed loops: There's no reason for your cyber-arm to be connected to the internet. It only has to receive signals from your nervous system and depending on how advanced it is, stimulate your nerve endings to simulate nerve impulses from the limb. While the advanced microprocessors making sure you don't crush that beer can while you're drinking may crash due to lousy programming, it's unlikely they will be exposed to errant code from outside sources. Any program interfaces to the cybernetic unit will have proprietary interfaces that require certified professionals to do the job with certified code. At lot like the computer in your car.

Supervision and Regulation: Like airplanes, the computer control systems on cybernetics will be pretty robust with lots of fail-safes built in. You don't want an arm you fall on and damage to then start freaking out. These devices will be over engineered and subject to some kind of government approval as strict as the FDC. I'm not saying they will be perfect, (silicon breast implants anyone?) but they will be subject to a lot more scrutiny than say our voting process.

Now there are other things that could play a part, such as rudimentary operating systems, non-writable ROM storage and what have you that would diminish the probability of contracting nastiness in your cyborg parts. But in the same way it's hard for my ipod to get a virus, it would be difficult for cyborgs to suffer from them. That is until you start getting into replacing cognitive function with computers. But I would personally be much more concerned about nano-tech gray goo than I would of cyborg virus rampage.

That is unless of course Microsoft and Diebold teamed up to develop cyborg technology. God help us then.