As I was recently discussing the subject of bionics (the conjunction of biology and electronics) with a friend, she expressed serious concern at the thought that electronics might one day invade our bodies and was rather surprised that I may welcome such a prospect.

The example I gave her of one of my wishes in that domain is extremely trivial but nonetheless something I'd really like to have at my disposal, at least in theory: Many of us have both children and a camcorder (made or acquired usually in that order). The trouble is that, as much as we hope to capture the cutest, funniest antics of our little ones on video, it usually doesn't work: the camera is not handy or the batteries are empty when something special happens; the camera's too bulky to take on outings; or the candid kid action or remark vanishes as soon as the camera starts shooting. In any case, one is faced with a constant, bothersome choice between living the moment or recording it for posterity (so far, we can't do both). My wish, in order to solve that crucial problem: to be able to record through my own eyes, going unnoticed at it, with a system at my constant disposal, hopefully with no battery problem.

I told you it was trivial, didn't I? In any case, we're probably decades away from being able to tap in the optical nerve and to convert its impulses into an animated bitmap format that can be played on a home video deck. (I assume that the temporary storing of audio/video data in the body and interfacing it with the outside world will be less challenging.) And whereas I do want that capability as much as I wanted, say, the satellite TV system I got last month, I'm far from sure that I would really accept having such hardware grafted in such a critical area of my body.

This fantasy of mine is, however, certainly not unshared. We've had centuries, and more particularly the last two centuries, to marvel (and sometimes cringe) increasingly at what we could get our tools, our machines, to do for us. Needless to say, the advent of integrated circuits and computers have upped both the possibilities and the fascination one order of magnitude (at least).

Not far from fascination is often the desire to fuse with the object of said fascination, in this case, a desire to unify the warm, wet, pulsating, sensitive, analog attributes of life and the cold, predictable, efficient, digital clarity of machine. From the rigged chess-playing automata of the 18th century to Max Headroom to Artificial Intelligence and expert systems, we've experimented with transvesting the machine into something that resembles us more closely. The flop of the Artificial Intelligence promise may have set us on the alternate path: grafting machine-like capabilities onto man.

In an age when we tend to overplay the ethics bit, as if trying to compensate for numerous past individual and collective ethical sins, such a project will certainly raise much controversy. For this kind of issue, however, science-fiction is a genre that is still largely immune to political correctness and enjoys a generally permissive "licence to imagine". Augmentation of human faculties ranks almost as high as alien encounter ("contact") or time travel as a major sub-genre and has been treated numerous times.

In a recent best-selling novel called The Reality Dysfunction (review available at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue47/books.html#rd), British SF author Peter Hamilton grandly depicts a multi-galactic Confederation set circa AD 2600 where humans carry "neural nanonics", i.e. electronics and informatics tailored by nanotechnology and interfacing with the nervous system. Their range of functions is impressive although considered "normal" by the story's characters, in the way that cochlear implants (artificial ear), for instance, are for us. Neural nanonics manages a very powerful auxiliary data station which allows you, for instance, to scan a face that you don’t instantly recognise, apply pattern recognition to compare it with thousands of photos stored in your internal database and retrieve that person's name and other public information. Neural nanonics allows visualisation of data by 3D superimposition directly on the optical nerve and permits datavising, i.e. wireless exchange of information with another human or a machine. Neural nanonics also acts as a super internal doctor using the whole range of body chemistry to heal small and serious injuries alike.

Without going so far (although, quite frankly and again, in theory, these futuristic possibilities excite me to no end), we must admit that the more we use machines in our professional lives, the more the idea of these automatic functions lives in us. Let's take a poll: how many of those of you who work daily with computers have found themselves one day looking for some object around the house and unconsciously reaching for a phantom FIND command inside your head? I certainly have for one, and the realisation of that strange reflex both gives you an eerie feeling and makes you wonder if you haven't just had a glimpse of some future "miracle".

Next to the symbolic trend (the integration of man and machine fantasy) and the functional trend (increasingly thinking of "computer-aided" tools to invent), there is also a physical trend at work: via technological progress, all electronic tools tend to be increasingly smaller and, to our great satisfaction, increasingly portable (a definite keyword of the times). And what's the ultimate portability? That's right, the ultimate portability is inside (with such side benefits as natural waterproofness, sandproofness, etc.).

Of course, science-fiction is not always optimistic, technophile and ethically-impaired (if you're interested, read one of the masters of ethical science-fiction, Orson Scott Card); it can just as well evoke the darker aspects of a given technology. In an episode of the SF TV show The Outer Limit, the main character injects himself with nanobots (nano-robots) which are supposed to take care of all internal housekeeping and optimise the carrier health, i.e. prevent cells from going cancerous, scrape atheroma from artery walls, etc. and also have a limited capability to evolve, to become more "intelligent" in their task. The first side effects of their presence in the hero's body can be deemed mild or even positive, as they induce generation of proteins that make it absolutely unpalatable for the subject to drink alcohol or smoke. Things do get worse as, to reinforce protection of the subject, they grow him a second pair of eyes on the back of his head. They finally make his life definitively unbearable when they change his skin to a jelly-fish-like tissue that is supposedly perfect to repel potential enemies. That story may be somewhat caricature and coarse but gets the point across.

So where does that leave us? In terms of technical capabilities, augmentation of human faculties is not exactly at hand yet but the time will undoubtedly come when it will be. In terms of our desire, we are ambivalent about it but there is a definite pro-augmentation component. In terms of our collective ethics, the current consensus seems to be that it is ethical to use bionics to repair ailing human functions (e.g. artificial hearts, artificial ears) but not to augment them. There is in such an attitude a commendable desire to shield ourselves from too much hubris and presumption of our abilities. We are also reluctant from considering our body as an object we can freely operate on and build upon. In a forthcoming article, I will try to further explore the issue of the objectification of the body.