The U.S. Military thinks cybernetic enhancements are looming over the horizon, but are worried that movies have made people afraid of them. The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Center recently released documents that pointed towards an interest in experimenting with cybernetic enhancements.
The army suggests that cybernetics could be possible in the coming decades and are anticipating a universe in which soldiers are given superpowers through technological implants, lending them powers like the ability to see and hear further and in different waveforms. But, their studies noted that the general populace has a poor opinion of these enhancements, possibly due to the way they’ve been presented in media such as RoboCop. As technology begins to catch up with how film, television, and other mediums have imagined it, the associations those works have made will begin to cause actual problems for emerging devices and gear.
A write up from VICE noted that while these abilities will hopefully increase a soldier’s effectiveness both on and off the field, they would more than likely receive their implants following a significant injury. For example, researchers noted that “Ocular enhancement would be an attractive medical option in situations where the eye tissue has been damaged or destroyed by injury or disease,” because the probability of a person to have a functioning part of their body removed and replaced with electronics is low.
The Military predicts that the medical industry will push to advance cybernetics over the next 10-15 years, which will allow worldwide militaries to look into these hypothetical enhancements and use them to bolster their troops. Interestingly, the document notes that, as of right now the law’s understanding of technology is behind the times and that it may become exaggerated when adding portions of this tech into the human body. “A cyborg’s activity is presumptively recorded and that data may be stored or transmitted,” the document notes and warns that because many laws currently assume that people themselves aren’t physically connected to technology in any way, that cyborgs will raise a plethora of political questions regarding security, privacy, and discrimination in the future. Will employers be able to fire an employee because they’re a cyborg? Is footage recorded by someone’s cybernetic eyes treated the same way as regular cameras and cellphones?
With robots and cyborgs appearing all over pop culture, it’s interesting to see how the subjects of so many stories will play out in real life. Elements of the Skynet warned about in Terminator movies can already be seen in smartphones and social media. The connectivity of everything has already changed the way society functions in a major way, perhaps lessons learned from this period will help inform the next.
Source: Vice