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Cyberneuroethics • 181
persons would be swallowed up with the development of the ultra-person;
instead, a union of individuals would take place ‘centre to centre’.376
A number of futurists have sought to compare Teilhard de Chardin’s ulti-
mate realm of personal being, the Noosphere, with the Word Wide Web
as an emerging global electronic brain where each individual represents a
neuron.377 Indeed, because an ever-increasing amount of personal informa-
tion is being uploaded to the World Wide Web, this could be considered as a
significant step in the evolution suggested by Teilhard de Chardin. The Web
could then become the first universal setting of intellectual exchange provid-
ing the basis for a complete transformation of the human condition.378
A similar idea to Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere was presented by the
British author Peter Russell in his 1982 book The Global Brain,379 where
he discusses the prospect of humanity becoming a fully conscious super-
organism in a universe that becomes conscious. He suggests that the Earth is
itself a living being of which every cell in the planetary nervous system is an
individual.
In the Global Brain scenario, Russell indicates how telecommunications
and computer networks can be considered as connecting all human beings
to one another and to machine intelligence, leading to the formation of a
collective intelligence. This, in turn, could influence every aspect of culture,
politics, business and medicine. He then demonstrates how this convergence
of powerful trends is creating the required conditions for an evolutionary
shift in consciousness from egocentrism to geocentrism.
This collectivist form of existence was further described in 1993 by the
American author Gregory Stock in his book Metaman: The Merging of
Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism.380 In this, he shows how
the symbiotic union of machines with humans, combined with increasingly
interdependent global communications, trade and travel, is coalescing civili-
sation into ‘Metaman’, which again can be represented as a planetary super-
organism. With Metaman, Stock explains how such an organism can support
a positive future when, for example, it responds to emergencies such as global
warming and overpopulation, while at the same time expanding future pos-
sibilities, such as in genetic engineering, space exploration and medicine.
It can further be noted that the Noosphere has similarities with the ‘Borg’,
which recurs as a supervillain in the American Star Trek science fiction film
series created in 1966 by the American Gene Roddenberry (1921–91). As
such, the Borg is a collection of personal individualities originating from
different galactic species who have been turned into a network of cyber-
netic organisms (cyborgs) functioning as drones for a hive mind called the
‘Collective’. Accordingly, all the identities of the different individuals are
destroyed when they become absorbed and integrated into this Collective
or supra-person. The principal aim of the Borg is to ‘assimilate’ by force
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Cyborg Mind
What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics
- Title
- Cyborg Mind
- Subtitle
- What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics
- Author
- Calum MacKellar
- Publisher
- Berghahn Books
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-1-78920-015-7
- Size
- 15.2 x 22.9 cm
- Pages
- 264
- Keywords
- Singularity, Transhumanism, Body modification, Bioethics
- Category
- Technik
Table of contents
- Chapter 1. Why Use the Term ‘Cyberneuroethics’? 9
- Chapter 2. Popular Understanding of Neuronal Interfaces 25
- Chapter 3. Presentation of the Brain–Mind Interface 31
- Chapter 4. Neuronal Interface Systems 43
- Developments in Information Technology 44
- Developments in Understanding the Brain 45
- Developments in Neuronal Interfaces 46
- Procedures Involved in Neuronal Interfaces 47
- Output Neuronal Interface Systems: Reading the Brain and Mind 49
- Input Neuronal Interface Systems: Changing the Brain and Mind 57
- Feedback Systems of the Brain and Mind 67
- Ethical Issues Relating to the Technology of Neuronal Interfaces 84
- Chapter 5. Cyberneuroethics 99
- Chapter 6. Neuronal Interfaces and Policy 217
- New Cybercrimes 218
- Policy Concerns 223
- Conclusion 229
- Human Autonomy 232
- Resistance to Such a Development 234
- Risks of Neuronal Interfaces 234
- Appendix. Scottish Council on Human Bioethics Recommendations on
- Cyberneuroethics 239
- Glossary 244
- Index 251