By Robert Gotcher, from the Spring 1994 issue
My apologies to Dr. Gotcher for taking so long to post this. I have another of his articles to post but I need to look through the back issues and see what issue it was in.
The subject is more timely than ever, I think, with various "trans-humanists" even more bent than they were twelve years ago on the prospect of a human-machine merger. Which I think is impossible and absurd from several points of view, but who knows what bizarre activities they may get up to in pursuit of it?
–Maclin Horton
Not so impossible or absurd– actually it is quite arguable that it has already happened.
Here we are, on the Internet.
The problem is distinguishing between what CAN be done, technically– and what SHOULD be done.
Well, actually I don’t think it’s arguable, at least if you’re referring to the Internet. Now, that work Honda just announced which allowed a person’s brain waves to move a robotic arm is something different.
But what I was thinking of when I wrote the post above was the trans-human ideas (Ray Kurzweil et. al.) based on the assumption that the self is a set of software and data that can be loaded into a computer. Can’t prove it but I think that’s not even a theoretical possibility.