Darren delivers a compelling synopsis of a report released by the UK Department of Defence earlier this year regarding the field of Human Augmentation. Could integrating the abilities of both people and machines be critical to winning future wars?
Download direct: mp3 file
Human Augmentation strategic implications project (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Great report on human augmentation. In fact, Darren brought up several points I had never even considered: As the military develops various augmentations, what will happen when the soldier leaves the service? Will they remove the “chip”? Or will the person keep the augmentation and thus be more desirable for private company employment? When will all this start coming to fruition? One could argue that a lot of augmentation is already in place, in very minor, mostly medical conditions.
However the main point of this note is to call your attention to a series of sci-fi novels where the concept was fully developed as far back as 1986, starting with “When Gravity Fails,” by the late great George Alec Effinger. I suspect the concept had already been posited by others but Effinger makes this a central theme of his trilogy. “Chips” are used for everything from conversing in foreign languages to assuming horrific personalities for purposes of mayhem.
Regards from Phoenix, Arizona