LEAP 2: Listening and Speaking

Audio Transcript

CHAPTER 6 Engineering the Future

LISTENING 2 Our Better Selves (page 126) (7:39)

KAREN MORRIS: Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Karen Morris. I work in the field of human-
machine interfaces and am interested in exploring the edges of what it means to be human and
what it means to be a machine. In short, I’m curious about the idea of how far we might go in
making ourselves better by integrating technological and biological enhancements into our bodies.

Much of my work involves the design of devices used to help the differently abled overcome
problems that restrict their range of motion and other abilities. The most common adaptation I work
with is a responsive prosthesis meant to replace a lost foot and ankle. This new limb is responsive
in that it relies on signals from the human nervous system as well as pressure signals to make it
behave in a more natural way. The same pattern recognition and other tricks used in activity
trackers help share information to maintain balance while walking and going up and down stairs.

But today, I’d like to branch out from the practical to the speculative and engage you with a number
of “what if” questions to do with enhancing your senses. Of course, we can already enhance our
senses with technology. For example, we can see both farther and closer with binoculars and
microscopes. We can use microphones to hear the faintest sounds across great distances. We
have machines in development that can smell cancer in a person and others that can analyze
textures too fine for a finger to distinguish. But what if some of these technologies could be
incorporated directly into the human body?

If I can just backtrack for a moment, let me explain how I became interested in this topic. I’d have to
say that I blame my father. When I was young, my father—who wore thick glasses—jokingly called
me his “eagle-eyed daughter.” At the time, I wondered what it would be like to have an eagle’s
vision, and, with a little research, I found out. An eagle’s vision is among the best in the animal
kingdom, and if you had an eagle’s powers of magnification, you could read the small print on a
newspaper from thirty metres away. You would also see more detailed colours and even ultraviolet
light.

Without moving its head, an eagle can take in 340 degrees side-to-side, compared with the 180
degrees a human can see. However, for you to accomplish this wide vision feat would mean
repositioning your eyes on the sides of your head. Any volunteers? [laughs] I thought not.

But how many of you would choose to have your eyes upgraded, just to see distance and color
more accurately, if that were possible? [pause, rustling sound] Ah, quite a few hands raised this
time. I’m not surprised. You might wonder whether eagle eyes will be possible in the future, to
which I’d say that we live in an age of wonders, and, if we are growing artificial kidneys today,
there’s no doubt that eagle eyes might be possible within, say, fifty years. However, what
particularly fascinates me is the question of how increased abilities might change the ways our
brains work.

If you implanted eagle eyes, how would it influence your thinking? You would certainly take in far
greater quantities of information. Would your brain be able to process it? I would say yes; the
brain is a very flexible organ. Your awareness—and I suppose your interest—in the world would
increase. Artists, for example, have a greater awareness and memory for colour than non-artists.
Let’s move the argument further. What about your other senses? Let’s consider hearing.
Animals like elephants and pigeons can hear sounds below the human spectrum, and creatures
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like bats and moths can hear far above it. Dogs can hear sounds both above and below the
human spectrum, allowing them to sense the very low rumble of a distant storm approaching as
well as a high-pitched whistle. Dogs can also discriminate with their hearing to a high degree—
for example, recognizing different people’s footsteps in another room.

Imagine you had a dog’s hearing. We cannot focus our hearing the same way we focus—or close—
our eyes, so it would be distracting to be able to hear dozens of near and far conversations and
other sounds—perhaps overwhelming. But here’s another question: If we all had better hearing,
would it make us a more polite society? After all, you might be careful about what you say if you
were aware that others could always hear you.

Cochlear implants are already being used to help hearing-impaired people regain a small degree of
hearing. It’s quite possible that future versions could increase your range of hearing. How many
would like to have a dog’s hearing? [pause] Ah, some, but not as many as voted for eagle eyes.

Beyond better vision and hearing, we can consider taste and smell. Much of what we taste is
actually processed through our sense of smell. This is why food doesn’t taste as good when we
have a head cold. I’m not aware of any experiments exploring improving these senses in people,
although higher sensitivity would serve the same purpose as that used by animals: helping them
identify food that is safe to eat. Other dangers could also be avoided. For example, African rats
have been trained to smell and locate explosive land mines. How many think a better sense of
smell is as important as other senses? [pause] Hmm. Not so many.

The final frontier is our sense of touch. Laboratories are currently growing skin, but it doesn’t
promise to be any more sensitive than what you already have on your tongue, lips, and fingertips.
But what if we could improve your sense of touch? Again, turning to the animal kingdom, we see
the jewel beetle, whose skin has infrared sensitivity that makes it able to sense a forest fire 50
kilometres away. Other creatures, like moles, can distinguish the texture of a worm from
surrounding dirt. I believe that increased sensitivities would actually grow our brains, increasing our
processing power. Based on touch, the mole, for example, makes a decision to eat a worm in a
millisecond. That’s quick thinking. If implants and changes to our biology made us more sensitive in
this and all our senses, it would likely trigger changes in our reactions, but also, in the bigger
picture, to our concerns about the world. Take pollution: If we used new technologies to increase all
our senses, we would become acutely aware of different kinds of pollution that we see, hear, taste,
smell, and touch. We’d see many more protests.

Technologies that give us better senses might be just the thing to make us a smarter—and by
smarter, I mean a more caring—species.

LEAP 2: Listening and Speaking Transcripts

My eLab Documents Chapter 6: Engineering the Future
© ERPI Reproduction authorized solely for use with
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