Neuroethics and Implanted Brain Machine Interfaces

Transformations of humans through advances in bioelectronics, nanotechnologies, and computer science are leading to hybrids of humans and machines. Future brain-machine interfaces will enable humans not only to be constantly linked to the Internet, and to cyber think, but will also enable technology to take information directly from the brain. Brain-computer interfaces, where a chip is implanted in the brain, will facilitate a tremendous augmentation of human capacities, including the radical enhancement of the human ability to remember and to reason, and to achieve immortality through cloning and brain downloading, or existence in virtual reality. The ethical and legal issues raised by these possibilities represent global challenges. The most pressing concerns are those raised by privacy and autonomy. The potential exists for control of persons, through global tracking, by actually “seeing” and “hearing” what the individual is experiencing, and by controlling and directing an individual’s thoughts, emotions, moods, and motivations. Public dialogue must be initiated. New principles, agencies, and regulations need to be formulated and scientific organizations, states, countries, and the United Nations must all be involved.

Global Tracking Systems in the Australian Interstate Trucking Industry

Technology, trucking, and the surveillance of workers in the workplace: helpful or a hindrance? Technological advances are produced by the creative ideas individuals: these ideas then become selling items in their own right. Do tracking devices effectively regulate traffic breaches and criminality within the trucking industry? The data collection was conducted in the field while the authors rode as a passenger with truck drivers on long-haul trips. The complexities of tracking systems became more apparent as the authors listened to the men and placed their narratives in a broader context for a broader audience. The results of the work indicated that the Global Positioning System (GPS) has a role in the management of the industry as a logistics tool, but that there are limitations to the technology. The drivers use the devices and also feel the oppressive oversight when managers use the data as a disciplinary tool.

Surveilling the Elderly

This chapter describes the usefulness of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) implant technology to monitor the elderly, who are aging in place in various retirement arrangements, and who need to maintain optimal functioning in the absence of available, and on location, service or care providers. The need to maintain functioning or sustainable aging is imperative for countries experiencing rapid growth as a demographic trend for the elderly. The chapter also raises some concerns including the social acceptance or rejection of RFID implant technology, despite the utility of the device. These concerns include a variety of political, social, and religious issues. Further, the chapter also attempts to show how RFID implant technology could be used in combination with other emerging technologies to maintain physical, emotional, and social functioning among the growing population of elderly. What follows is the introduction and a partial literature review on emergent elderly needs, and on the utilization of RFID and other technologies.

Knowledge Recovery

The ability to “write” data to the Internet via tags and barcodes offers a context in which objects will increasingly become a natural extension of the Web, and as ready as the public was to adopt cloud-based services to store address books, documents, photos, and videos, it is likely that we will begin associating data with objects. Leaving messages for loved ones on a tea cup, listening to a story left on a family heirloom, or associating a message with an object to be passed on to a stranger. Using objects as tangible links to data and content on the Internet is predicted to become a significant means of how we interact with the interface of things, places, and people. This chapter explores this potential and focuses upon three contexts in which the technology is already operating in order to reflect upon the impact that the technology process may have upon social processes. These social processes are knowledge browsing, knowledge recovery, and knowledge sharing.

Uberveillance, Standards, and Anticipation

Uberveillance of humans will emerge through embedding chips within nonhumans in order to monitor humans. The case explored in this chapter involves the development of nanotechnology and biosensors for the real-time tracking of the identity, location, and properties of livestock in the U.S. agrifood system. The primary method for research on this case was an expert forum. Developers of biosensors see the tracking capabilities as empowering users to control some aspects of a situation that they face. Such control promises to improve public health, animal welfare, and/or economic gains. However, the ways in which social and ethical frameworks are built into standards for the privacy/access, organization, adaptability, and transferability of data are crucial in determining whether the diverse actors in the supply chain will embrace nanobiosensors and advance the ideals of the developers. Further research should be done that explores the possibilities of tripartite standards regimes and sousveillance in relation to nanobiosensors in agrifood.

Willingness to Adopt RFID Implants

This chapter presents the results of research designed to investigate differences between and among personality dimensions as defined by Typology Theory using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The study took into account levels of willingness toward implanting an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip in the body (uberveillance) for various reasons including the following: to reduce identity theft, as a lifesaving device, for trackability in case of emergency, as a method to increase safety and security, and to speed up the process at airport checkpoints. The study was conducted with students at two colleges in the Northeast of the United States. The author presents a brief literature review, key findings from the study relative to personality dimensions (extroversion vs. introversion dimensions, and sensing vs. intuition dimensions), a discussion on possible implications of the findings when considered against the framework of Rogers’ (1983; 2003) Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DoI), and recommendations for future research. A secondary, resultant finding reveals frequency changes between 2005 and 2010 relative to the willingness of college students to implant an RFID chip in the body. Professionals working in the field of emerging technologies could use these findings to better understand personality dimensions based on MBTI and the possible affect such personality dimensions might have on the process of adoption of such technologies as uberveillance.

Practical Experimentation with Human Implants

In this chapter, the authors report on several different types of human implants with which the authors have direct, first hand, experience. An indication is given of the experimentation actually carried out and the subsequent immediate consequences are discussed. The authors also consider likely uses and opportunities with the technology should it continue to develop along present lines and the likely social pressures to adopt it. Included in the chapter is a discussion of RFID implants, tracking with implants, deep brain stimulation, multi-electrode array neural implants, and magnetic implants. In each case, practical results are presented along with expectations and experiences.

Uberveillance

The intensification and diversification of surveillance in recent decades is now being considered within a contemporary theoretical and academic framework. The ambiguity of the term ‘surveillance’ and the surreptitiousness of its application must now be re-considered amidst the emergent concept of Uberveillance. This chapter presents three cases of organisations that are currently poised or already engaging in projects using location-enabled point-of-view wearable technologies. Reference is made to additional cases, project examples, and testimonials including the Australian Federal Police, Northern Territory Fire Police and Emergency Services, and other projects funded in 2010 and 2011 by the former Australian Flexible Learning Framework (AFLF), now the National VET E-learning Strategy (NVELS). This chapter also examines the use of location-enabled POV (point-of-view) or Body Wearable Video (BWV) camera technologies in a crime, law, and national security context, referencing cross-sectoral and inter-disciplinary opinions as to the perceived benefits and the socio-ethical implications of these pervasive technologies.

Veillance

This chapter builds upon the concept of Uberveillance introduced in the seminal research of M. G. Michael and Katina Michael in 2006. It begins with an overview of sousveillance (underwatching) technologies and examines the “We're watching you but you can't watch us” hypocrisy associated with the rise of surveillance (overwatching). Surveillance cameras are often installed in places that have “NO CAMERAS” and “NO CELLPHONES IN STORE, PLEASE!” signage. The author considers the chilling effect of this veillance hypocrisy on LifeGlogging, wearable computing, “Sixth Sense,” AR Glass, and the Digital Eye Glass vision aid. If surveillance gives rise to hypocrisy, then to what does its inverse, sousveillance (wearable cameras, AR Glass, etc.), give rise? The opposite (antonym) of hypocrisy is integrity. How might we resolve the conflict-of-interest that arises in situations where, for example, police surveillance cameras capture the only record of wrongdoing by the police? Is sousveillance the answer or will centralized dataveillance merely turn sousveillance into a corruptible uberveillance authority?

Introduction

When or how uberveillance will be implemented in its full-blown manifestation is still a subject for some intriguing discussion and a topic of robust disagreement, but what is generally accepted by most of the interlocutors is that an “uberveillance society” will emerge sooner rather than later, and that one way or another this will mean an immense upheaval in all of our societal, business, and government relationships. What is apparent from the numerous qualitative and quantitative studies conducted is that microchipping people is a discernibly divisive issue. If we continue on the current trajectory, we will soon see further divisions – not just between those who have access to the Internet and those who do not, but between those who subjugate themselves to be physically connected to the Web of Things and People, and those who are content enough to simply have Internet connectivity through external devices like smart phones, to those who opt to live completely off the grid. Time will only tell how we as human-beings will adapt after we willingly adopt innovations with extreme and irreversible operations. This introduction serves to provide a background context for the term uberveillance, which has received significant international attention since its establishment.