Episode 10: The Cyborg and the Singularity


Mick Ebeling:	00:05	Imagine breaking something. Then, being -told that fixing it is impossible. Many of us would move on. But some, a few, a few special, unusual people among us, would consider it a challenge. A challenge that goes way beyond trying to put the pieces back together. Perhaps beyond our current ideas of how the world is supposed to work. Now imagine the thing that was broken was you, and the challenge, it would disrupt the very concept of what it is to be human. Meet Hugh Herr.

Hugh Herr:	00:48	After my limbs were amputated, I very quickly realized that the limbs need not look human, that they were designable and could take any form. As a young man, I imagined artificial limbs that would enable me to run faster than people with biological limbs. And I even imagined non-anthropomorphic limbs, like maybe my legs are not legs. Maybe they have wings, and I can fly.

Mick Ebeling:	01:14	If anyone can figure out how to fly, it's probably Hugh Herr. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he heads up the Biomechatronics Lab at MIT, and he co-directs the Center for Extreme Bionics.

Hugh Herr:	01:30	The Center for Extreme Bionics, we want to advance the fundamental science and technology that will ultimately lead to a dramatic mitigation of disability, perhaps an elimination of disability.

Mick Ebeling:	01:47	The elimination of disability. If ever there were a concept that seemed impossible, that might be it. And yet, that's the very subject we're going to tackle today. I'm Mick Ebeling, and this is Not Impossible, a podcast about technology for the sake of humanity. Not Impossible is brought to you by Avnet, a company dedicated to helping creators of all types find whatever they need to get from idea to product, and then get that product to market anywhere in the world.

Mick Ebeling:	02:19	We're going to do something a little different today. We're going to devote most of the podcast to one conversation, my conversation with Hugh Herr. Because frankly, he's quite simply one of the most incredible people I have ever met. And as you're about to hear, especially in the second half of today's show, our conversation took us to places I could have never imagined. We'll begin in the place where he works, one of the most inventive and creative laboratories in the world.

Mick Ebeling:	02:54	On the third floor of the MIT Media Lab, students, faculty and visitors walk in and out of various rooms. Each room has a fascinating name like Tangible Media, Effective Computing, and Opera of the Future. Most of the walls are made of glass, so you can peek in at the magic that's going on.

Lindsay R.:	03:14	This is where our human subjects walk. This is our gage analysis treadmill.

Mick Ebeling:	03:17	Only, it's not magic. It's science of the absolute highest order. Taking up two floors in this part of the building is the Biomechatronics Lab. It's several thousand square feet of workbenches covered in mechanical parts and computers. Lining the walls are shelves with dozens of bionic body parts, like a super high tech display in a department store.

Mick Ebeling:	03:40	Life-size mannequins of varying color stand side by side, across from a huge blowup of a Wired Magazine cover featuring athlete and model Aimee Mullins, a woman who lost both of her legs just like Professor Herr. I started our interview by asking him where this long, strange trip of his began.

Hugh Herr:	04:02	I was a mountain climber. I began mountain climbing when I was seven years old. And when I was 17, I was in a climbing accident, and suffered severe frostbite. And ultimately, my surgical team had to amputate my biological limbs, legs, below the knee. So I use artificial appendages to walk and to run. When I was first fitted with prostheses back in 1982, I was shocked at how their lack of technological sophistication. And I really decided to dedicate my life to improving not only prosthetic limbs, but generally bionic devices that will impact the body and the mind in various dimensions, and really, really reduce suffering. For once, usher in a world where technology actually works.

Mick Ebeling:	04:57	At a young age, Hugh Herr really wasn't thinking about anything other than being the best mountain climber he could be. Creating bionic limbs? That was nowhere close to being on his radar. How old were you on the Mount Washington accident?

Hugh Herr:	05:11	17.

Mick Ebeling:	05:13	Okay. And prior to that, had you thought about this before, or was that the moment that kind of switched-

Hugh Herr:	05:19	Yeah, I didn't think about it at all. I was a terrible, terrible student before the accident. I was lucky when I got a D in school. The accident was inspiring, not the accident itself, but the recovery from the accident was inspiring. So my legs were amputated. Everyone told me that my life was over, that I was a cripple, that I was weak. That the technology that was available at the time would never get better. That I should just accept what was provided to me.

Hugh Herr:	05:53	And thankfully I didn't listen to that narrative, and I began designing my own limbs. And very quickly, I returned to mountain climbing, at a level that surprised myself and I think everyone else. I climbed better with artificial limbs than I'd achieved prior to the accident with normal biological limbs. So that experience taught me the power of technology, to heal, to rehabilitate, and even to extend human capability beyond innate physiological levels.

Mick Ebeling:	06:29	Did that piss off your climbing friends?

Hugh Herr:	06:32	It did actually. It's funny, a few competitors threatened to cut their own legs off to compete, which is really quite hilarious.

Mick Ebeling:	06:43	This is an honest question, but a question that I know has been posed to you before. If you had the ability to wave a magic wand and get your legs back, would you?

Hugh Herr:	06:55	I wouldn't, actually.

Mick Ebeling:	06:58	Talk about that, because I think that's going to shock a lot of people.

Hugh Herr:	07:02	So, the fact that a major part of my body is made of materials that are designed, that are upgradable, what it means is that part of my body gets better in time. The fact is, every month or so, I get an upgrade, and my bionic limbs get better, where in my biological body degrades due to typical age-related degeneration. So the older I get, the synthetic part of me gets better, but the biological part gets worse. So I just wish I had more synthetic part of me.

Mick Ebeling:	07:43	Yes, you heard that correctly. Hugh Herr is upgradable. And given the opportunity, Hugh would like more artificially enhanced bionic body parts. And that's precisely what his work at the Biomechatronics Lab is about, creating what you and I might call brilliant computerized artificial body parts for people with amputations. It's what he calls bionic interventions.

Hugh Herr:	08:11	So we develop bionic interventions, designed structures that attach to the body or are implanted inside the body that extend human capability. It could be cognitively, or emotionally, or in terms of sensory experience, or in terms of physicality.

Mick Ebeling:	08:29	So let's talk about that, because for most people listening, that sounds like science fiction. People will see this, they'll see the occasional video on YouTube. But the practicality of what you're doing, not only is it not science fiction, it's reality. But let's talk a little bit about what that means.

Hugh Herr:	08:50	So what are those interventions? So we're developing interfaces between biological tissues and synthetics. So how do we attach machines to the body mechanically, where it's safe and comfortable? Another is electrical. How do we talk to the nerves and muscles, so a person can think and move their bionic appendage, and feel those movements within the nervous system? Third is, how do we build body parts out of synthetics that capture the natural dynamics of the body? So, through these interfaces, we're able to develop technologies that really dramatically mitigate human disability.

Mick Ebeling:	09:33	And I have to remind you once again of what Hugh Herr considers the mission behind all of this. Nothing short of the total elimination of disability.

Hugh Herr:	09:43	Again, not only for physical conditions, but also conditions, cognitive conditions, conditions of the brain. So, it's the right time in history I believe for such a mission, because we now have sophistication in many areas of science and technology, that if we integrate these areas together, we can put forth what even Hollywood would describe as true bionics.

Mick Ebeling:	10:19	True bionics is the perfect way to describe Hugh's own biofantastical, super-upgradable, quite unbelievable legs. From what would be about the knee down, they look kind of like robotic legs, but with a hydraulic pump in the middle. And attached below that is something that looks like the bottom of a rubber-soled shoe. And actually, those bottoms are interchangeable, the same way you change your shoes for various activities.

Mick Ebeling:	10:46	So he has a softer one for walking, a stiffer one for standing on small rock edges, edges about the width of a coin. And then, higher up the leg, they're adjustable. So his height can range from five to eight feet, something that comes in quite handy when you're rock climbing. As Hugh demonstrates in this 2013 documentary from BBC Four, How to Build a Bionic Man, his mechanical appendage has all the capabilities of a biological foot, even if it doesn't quite sound the same.

Hugh Herr:	11:19	So, fully articulating ankle. So it adapts, it can walk slowly. It can suddenly accelerate out. Stop immediately.

Mick Ebeling:	11:34	And you can't imagine what this means to all the patients collaborating with the scientists in Hugh's lab. Using artificial legs developed by Hugh Herr and his students, they are walking and running again. And the most fantastic part? Surgeons at local hospitals are embedding sensors in the living flesh of these amputees, sensors that communicate with computers in the bionic limbs which then in turn interpret nerve impulses coming from the brain.

Mick Ebeling:	12:01	Since I just blew your mind, I'll say that again. Sensors embedded in the living flesh of these amputees that communicate with computers in the bionic limbs, which then interpret nerve impulses coming from the brain.

Hugh Herr:	12:20	So in terms of people, persons with limb amputation, we're moving very, very fast. So we invented a new way of amputating limbs that enables this neural interfacing with the synthetic limb.

Mick Ebeling:	12:35	So Hugh, let me understand what you just said. You're not just in the business ... And I use the business in a liberal way, but you're not just in the business of coming up with new prosthetics and prosthetic technology, but new ways that when amputations take place, you're creating a receptor that's going to be more receptive to the technology you create?

Hugh Herr:	12:57	That's correct.

Mick Ebeling:	12:59	Talk a little bit about that. That's fascinating.

Hugh Herr:	13:02	So I call this area of design, neuro-embodied design, where you not only design synthetics, but you also design the biological body itself, flesh and bone, to enhance the communication, the [inaudible 00:13:18] communication between the design construct and the human nervous system. So yes, we are not only designing synthetics to interact with the body, but we're designing the body itself. So this new way of amputating limbs, we've implemented on 10 patients.

Hugh Herr:	13:40	The team is very diverse that's doing this work. It includes people working in biomechatronics, and neuroscience, as well as cutting edge surgeons. So Matt Carty is the lead surgeon on the team, and these amputations have been performed on human patients for the first time at Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston.

Mick Ebeling:	14:06	And what makes it a better receptor, if Matt did a surgery for me versus a John Doe doctor did a surgery for someone else, what's going to make that surgery better and more receptive to your prosthetics?

Hugh Herr:	14:19	Muscles and tendons are filled with biological sensors that tell the brain their length and speed and forces. So when you move, when you close your eyes and for example move your ankle, you can feel your ankle's positions and speeds and the load applied to the ankle. That's called proprioception. So, in this new novel amputation strategy, we are surgically linking muscles in natural dynamic pairs.

Hugh Herr:	14:51	So when a person thinks about moving their phantom limb, the muscles move naturally in dynamic pairs. And then the brain receives information from the biological sensors in the muscles and tendons about the position speeds, and what not of the phantom limb. So that when they look down and they see the physical synthetic limb, and that limb is moving, they actually then feel those movements within their nervous system. And then it ceases to matter that the limb is synthetic, because it feels exactly as if it were biologic.

Mick Ebeling:	15:28	Do you make the muscle adapt to the prosthetic, or the prosthetic adapt to the muscle?

Hugh Herr:	15:32	We actually manipulate the biological tissues in the remaining leg. We basically create a little biological joint for every robotic joint that we want to control.

Mick Ebeling:	15:44	Gotcha.

Hugh Herr:	15:47	So again, we're redesigning the body to make it more conducive for the control of the synthetic limb.

Mick Ebeling:	15:54	And based on neuroplasticity, does one over time get better in terms of how they control, and their dexterity and their ability to control that prosthetic limb?

Hugh Herr:	16:04	We believe so, but we're observing rapid abilities to control the prosthesis. So within ...

Mick Ebeling:	16:13	At the onset?

Hugh Herr:	16:14	At the onset. Yeah. When we wire the residual muscles to the bionic limb, within an hour, the subject can walk up and down steps and slopes, and exhibiting normal biomechanical functions.

Mick Ebeling:	16:29	Oh my goodness. Did you think that that was going to be that rapid of an adoption, or did you think it would be a little bit more delayed?

Hugh Herr:	16:36	I was pretty shocked. I was pretty pleased. So it turns out, when you give the brain the proprioception information, the brain knows exactly what to do. The brain knows exactly how to control the synthetic limb. And because of that, you need not have much intelligence on the synthetic limb, because you've wired the brain to the device.

Mick Ebeling:	17:02	That's incredible. That's really fantastic. Hugh told us he read fantasy novels growing up. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy, for example. But here's an intriguing fact. He did not read science fiction. If he had, who knows where his research may have led? He might have started out asking the same existential questions as the cybernetic beings from the 1962 film Creation of the Humanoids.

Male Voice 1:	17:31	Are you godless, Cragis? Search yourself, it's important. Are you godless?

Male Voice 2:	17:40	No. No, I don't think so. I'm not.

Male Voice 1:	17:43	Then you can't be soulless. Look, a man may have his leg amputated. Is his soul decreased by that loss?

Male Voice 2:	17:51	No.

Male Voice 1:	17:51	Not even a fraction of one percent?

Male Voice 2:	17:53	Of course not.

Male Voice 1:	17:54	What if a man loses both legs?

Male Voice 2:	17:56	A negative can't be compounded. The soul would be the same. He'd just get artificial legs.

Mick Ebeling:	18:02	So you can see where this is leading. I was a little shy about asking the question, but now that Hugh and I were talking about moving beyond prosthetics, talking about moving to a place where humans become more than human, where they become part human, part brain-controlled machine, does Hugh Herr consider himself a cyborg?

Hugh Herr:	18:25	The word cyborg I define as when you bi-directionally link the nervous system to a design structure. So the moment the person can not only think and move their appendage, but to feel their appendage moving, or when you touch the appendage to feel normal touch sensations, a person has become a cyborg. Now if that appendage emulates normal biological function, then it's also a bionic limb. If it doesn't emulate biological function, it's simply a cyborg limb.

Mick Ebeling:	19:00	So let me repeat this back. So a cyborg doesn't necessarily mean that ... A cybernetic appendage could have a link to the nervous structure, but it could be docile, it could be a little bit clunky, whereas a bionic limb would have, would emulate the more natural function. And if it's cyborg bionic, then it's both. You've got link to the nervous structure, as well as emulating the natural function of the limb?

Hugh Herr:	19:28	Correct.

Mick Ebeling:	19:29	Okay.

Hugh Herr:	19:30	So I'm now a bionic man, but I'm not yet a cyborg, because I can't feel my feet.

Mick Ebeling:	19:37	How far away is that?

Hugh Herr:	19:40	We hope to do a revision surgery in someone like myself in the coming years, where I can also exploit this technology and feel my bionics moving. So for the first time in my life, I'm no longer the most high tech. It's really depressing.

Mick Ebeling:	20:02	That's got to be a little ... Yeah, it has to be a little bothersome, because you've been the guy for a while.

Hugh Herr:	20:09	I know, it's a sore point.

Mick Ebeling:	20:13	Do you ever challenge the other bionic guys to a duel? Do you slap them across the face with the proverbial MIT white glove?

Hugh Herr:	20:21	No. When you compare my performance to the performance of one of our patients that has undergone this novel surgical and neural interfacing procedure, I'm just pathetic. My level of control is so bad.

Mick Ebeling:	20:37	I just have to think, given how competitive of a climber you are, I have to think that shortly thereafter after you've done your proper scientific and medical analysis, that you challenge them to a rock climb of some sort.

Hugh Herr:	20:52	Yeah, that's right.

Mick Ebeling:	20:52	Just to level the playing field a bit.

Hugh Herr:	20:55	Right. It's true.

Mick Ebeling:	21:05	Okay. So as amazing as that part of the conversation was, that's nothing compared to where we went next. Because so far, we've been talking about the past and the present. But when Hugh Herr talks about the future, and where this is all going, well that's when it really becomes mind-boggling. Science fiction writers use the term singularity to talk about a far distant future, when humans and computers become one. But when you talk to Hugh Herr and his colleagues about the future, is it really all that different? We'll tackle that question after the break.

Mick Ebeling:	21:47	You, yes you, are invited to the 2019 Not Impossible Awards. Join us on June 1st in Downtown Los Angeles, to celebrate the inspiring work of people and companies who share in Not Impossible's mission of creating innovative technology to improve the wellbeing of others. For tickets and information, go to notimpossible.com/awards.

Mick Ebeling:	22:12	This is a podcast dedicated to technology for the sake of humanity. But it's also about the people behind that technology. If that's you, Avnet can help, no matter what you build. Why? Because they are the first company ever to offer true end-to-end solutions for product development in-house. That way creators in any corner of the world can take an idea from prototype all the way through mass production. Are you a startup? An established OEM? Do you need help designing your product or organizing your workflow, or getting stuff to market? Avnet's got your back. Your world is one that's always changing, and that's why Avnet is here to help you reach further.

Mick Ebeling:	22:54	And we want to give a special shout out to Avnet's engineering communities, Hackster and element14, who help creators vet and invent the technology of tomorrow. Want to do more than just listen to this podcast? Maybe something like taking on the next Not Impossible challenge? Go to podcastnotimpossible.com to find info for you and for anyone who wants to take their project one step further.

Ray Kurzweil:	23:24	In about 20 years, I've set the date 2029, a machine, an AI will be able to match human intelligence and go beyond it. Artificial intelligence, which will give us not just more human intelligence, but will actually give us superhuman intelligence, will enable us to solve problems that we're not able to solve today.

Mick Ebeling:	23:50	That's the voice of Ray Kurzweil. He's an inventor and a futurist. In the 2009 documentary, The Transcendent Man, Kurzweil explains what he calls the singularity, a time when he says humans and machines seamlessly blend to form a superintelligent hybrid.

Ray Kurzweil:	24:08	We're looking forward to a time where we can back up our brains. Our brains will be largely non-biological, so we will be basically machines. We can stop aging, we can live indefinitely. All of our biological bodies are limited, and we need to deal with overcoming their limitations with one means or another.

Mick Ebeling:	24:32	So as I keep saying, this sounds all really science fiction-y, I know. But this is really what Hugh Herr and his colleagues are starting to think about. And not just think about, they're working on the creation of a very different future. Before we get back to our conversation with Hugh, I want to introduce you to one more ... Well, one more bionic man.

SashaRabchevsky:	25:02	Once somebody has a spinal cord injury, and they get out to society, how do you get back into society? I was injured in 1985, and no one told me, I figured it out. But there is no structure to it. There's no way. So, we are basically doing things that are going to help people improve the quality of their lives.

Mick Ebeling:	25:19	At the age of 19, Sasha Rabchevsky was a strong safety on the Hampden-Sydney College football team in Virginia, when a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. Like Hugh Herr, Sasha said he wasn't always a great student before his accident. But afterwards, he dedicated himself to biomedical research.

SashaRabchevsky:	25:39	I didn't have any self illusions about curing myself, but I wanted to be in a room of the top-minded people in the world, that were deciding how research was being done, and what was being done. And I am doing that now.

Mick Ebeling:	25:55	In 2002, Sasha Rabchevsky, now Professor Rabchevsky, PhD, University of Kentucky, demonstrated that a system of electrical impulses called FES, or functional electrical stimulation, implanted in muscles in the lower back and legs can be used to help people with paralysis stand up and become more mobile. And let me just take a minute to tell you something about Sasha, and some of the other people whose stories we've been bringing you on these podcasts.

Mick Ebeling:	26:25	On an earlier podcast, I introduced you to Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind mountain climber to scale Mount Everest. Erik, and Sasha, and Hugh Herr are all friends and colleagues, and they all share something enormously important. They belong to an organization called No Barriers. The No Barriers mission is to unleash the potential of the human spirit. It's based on the belief that the barriers that we see in front of us are barriers of our own creation. They don't exist in reality, they don't exist in the universe. They exist only in our own minds.

Mick Ebeling:	27:02	Look at every single thing that surrounds us today, everything that is possible today was impossible at one point. That is a humbling, and also incredibly exciting reality. We told you about Erik in our first episode, and we're telling you about Hugh Herr and Sasha today, because that's the connective tissue. If we've tried to communicate anything in these 10 episodes, it's the fact that impossible is a fallacy, and that we live in a not impossible world.

Mick Ebeling:	27:41	So that's something that I admire about all of them, and something that we can all learn from them. It's something they all share. They also, by the way, share something else. A willingness to put their own bodies on the line for science.

SashaRabchevsky:	27:59	Hugh and I met back in 2006, at a [inaudible 00:28:05] initiative in California, where people with all kinds of interventions were basically talking and giving their instructions. And Hugh was there talking about his remarkable bionic biome feet, and incredible I think if you know about these now.

SashaRabchevsky:	28:22	Well I was there because I had undergone in 2002 an experimental procedure where I still have to this day, functional electrical wires, implants that are in my legs, and my buttocks, and my lower back, which when I turn them on a with a stimulator, still to this day still will contract my muscles and allow me to stand and wait there. But I am a rare breed that I am a scientist in the experimental field with research animals, but I am also a subject myself to this day.

Mick Ebeling:	28:52	Sasha has been in a wheelchair since his accident. But he has taught himself to stand with the use of something called a standing frame, a kind of homemade platform made of wood and metal piping. It helps to keep him fit and maintain his quality of life. And combined with the FES, the functional electrical stimulation unit in Sasha's back, it's the kind of technological adaptation that follows an innovative path similar to the one that Hugh Herr was describing earlier.

SashaRabchevsky:	29:20	The prosthetic that I'm using is called the neural interface, and it's commanding. It's still electrically shocking the muscles to contract, so that I can functionally extend my legs. This morning before I came here, I actually stood up in my standing frame at home, and I stood up for about 45 minutes with the use of both the standing frame, which helps me support, but exercising my muscles as I was standing by using this system.

SashaRabchevsky:	29:47	And so, it's not going to allow me to get up and change the remote control from the TV if I wanted to, but it certainly will allow me to exercise my muscles while I'm watching TV. People think it's very Frankenstein-ish. You're not thinking about moving your leg, you're not consciously saying, "I want to wiggle my toe." Well, that may be the case, but I can certainly use my brain to push a button to tell my leg when to move.

SashaRabchevsky:	30:15	And so, I think that if we could increase the awareness of these abilities that do exist already, why not tap into that? So, I think that the future is and it has to be collaborative, and taking people like myself and you who are a little bit, I guess we'll dare say, our own guinea pigs. I mean, I think the passion that we have is because we know we have systems that work, and we want to make them better so that we know it will improve the quality of lives of other individuals.

SashaRabchevsky:	30:45	And you can imagine, I got my implants in 2002. There's not been that much improvement since then. That's what, 17 years? I think that it's time that we start listening and start investing in people that are using interfaces. And that's what Hugh is doing, by the way. He's interfacing the body with a prosthetic.

Mick Ebeling:	31:09	So that leads us back to Hugh Herr. Interfacing the body with the prosthetic. And that leads us back to this whole idea of the singularity. Because while now the desire is to help improve the lives of severely injured people, the future goes to places that affect every one of us. So, the clear connection between this mechanical neural interface for prosthetics, that is ... It's fantastic, it's incredible, it's science fiction made reality. And everything you've just said is truly fascinating.

Mick Ebeling:	31:45	Where does it go from here? You talked about this ability to upgrade versus degrade. As an ex-college athlete, my knees and ankles are shot. Besides getting a hacksaw out and trying to chase Hugh across a mountain with my new limbs, is there a way for us to start to inject mechanics into our existing limbs?

Hugh Herr:	32:09	Absolutely. Absolutely. A great use of technology in my view is to use technology to mitigate injury, to use technology to span the gap from where our bodies are due to age-related degeneration to where they were when we were 18. So I think as bionics becomes more and more sophisticated, it'll mitigate the aging process, where we will age very little. Our performance will be maintained at a very high level throughout our lifetime. You can view aging as a disability to be solved by technology.

Mick Ebeling:	32:59	I definitely see aging as a disability. My mind absolutely has the experience and the perspective to be able to understand what I'm supposed to be able to do on the basketball court, or on a wave, or on a skateboard. And the fact that the body doesn't follow in suit sometimes is incredibly frustrating.

Hugh Herr:	33:21	Right. Imagine how much athletic performance would increase if our greatest athletic talents never injured. If we had the technology in terms of training and what not, where we could optimize the training to eliminate injury. Our bodies are very, very stupid at certain things. And one is, we have very poor abilities to detect when we're about to injure our body. We hurt our knees and we're surprised. We have no, "Oh, wow, I hurt my knee. I didn't know that was going to happen." Can we use technology to make us more intelligent, where we have predictive models that if you continue doing what you're doing, running or jumping, that your knee is going to injure in an hour in the future.

Mick Ebeling:	34:21	Based on muscular fatigue, based on age, based on everything.

Hugh Herr:	34:26	Yeah. Yeah. In the future, every human will have a digital model of themselves, and sensors will continually be taking data and inputting into those models and updating the models. And those models will be used for all kinds of things. What should be the exoskeleton that a person uses, and how should it be controlled, to how clothing and apparel is fitted to the body, to how a surgery should be done.

Mick Ebeling:	35:01	That concept I think is fascinating, especially with a public that right now has, there's two sides of the opinion fence when it comes to things like AI. You've got Elon Musk who's preaching one thing, and you've got others that are preaching another in terms of the benefits, and it's the beginning of the end of humanity. When you contextualize something as being deeply personal and individual, I think it takes a little bit of that I, Robot mentality out of this to make it so that it isn't just a swarm of drones, and a swarm of clones.

Hugh Herr:	35:42	Society has an opportunity. We can design technology that is awkward and non-human-like, and doesn't represent our values. In distinction, we can design a future world with technology that reflects who we are, and reflects what we hold dear, reflects our values. This is something we have to get right. If we don't get it right, we'll have tremendous threats from AI and robotics and bionics.

Hugh Herr:	36:20	But if we get it right, we could do things like dramatically reduce human suffering. We could eliminate disease and disability, for example. So I think we can largely get it right, but we have to aggressively develop policies and legal structures around what might become future augmentation technologies. In the future, it won't only be our data, it will be the body itself. So as citizens, we need to rigorously adhere to the value of individual freedoms, and insist upon that we own our own bodies, and it's our decision what's done with the body.

Mick Ebeling:	37:07	We did an episode with a brilliant scientist who was looking at how to track and record the data of the brain, and the memories, actually be able to track and record the memories, that we might one day be able to play those back or to regenerate those. That concept of data wasn't necessarily a right turn that I thought we were going to take in this interview with you.

Mick Ebeling:	37:40	But once our bodies do become mechanical, and once we've created those interfaces, and you've started to link to nervous structure, and you have sensors, and you have data that's being gleaned from or given to the body, then data, would you say almost is ... It seems data, and how that data is going to be maintained is almost a precursor to all of the technology that you're creating.

Hugh Herr:	38:07	Yeah, it's one important area. Absolutely. Yeah, we have a lot of work to do. But again, I think a lot of people are very fearful of such future technologies. I'm less fearful. I think yes, we need to develop laws to mitigate unintended nefarious uses of technology. But gosh, isn't it exciting to think about a world without severe depression? If a person no longer wants to experience day to day depression, they actually have a means to escape that terrible dark world.

Hugh Herr:	38:52	Wouldn't it be extraordinary if a person with limb amputation can manipulate, and skip, run and jump as they please? So we can simultaneously do wonderful things like end disease and disability, while also adhering with absolute obedience to what we hold dear, such as individual freedoms and human diversity. I think we can do both. I think we can largely get this right.

Hugh Herr:	39:22	You know, if I came to you in a world that doesn't have pharmacological approaches, a world which doesn't have drugs, and I said to you, "I've invented this thing called a drug." And it takes this small size, and I call it a pill. And you pop it in your mouth and it completely changes your brain chemistry. And by the way, I propose that a trillion dollar government agency oversees the development of these drugs by multibillion dollar companies, you would say, "Get out of town, that's a crazy idea, and I'm very frightened."

Hugh Herr:	40:01	But I think we can all agree that there's been a net gain to humanity from drugs. Yes, they're abused. Yes, we need laws and efforts to mitigate abuse of technology. But we're capable of developing very invasive technology and doing great good for humanity. So I'm confident that in realms of genetics, and bionics, and artificial intelligence, that we're largely going to get it right, and we're going to enhance human capability.

Mick Ebeling:	40:44	And so there you have it. A vision of the future with limitless capabilities. When we talk about a brave new world, most of us think about Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel. But I like to think of it in terms of the Shakespeare quote from The Tempest that the title came from. Because when you come away from a conversation with Hugh Herr, you say to yourself, "Oh wonder. How many goodly creatures are there here? How beauteous mankind is. Oh brave new world that has such people in it."

Mick Ebeling:	41:33	Well, The Tempest is believed to be Shakespeare's last play. And this is the last podcast of Season #1 for Not Impossible. Thank you so much for listening. If this is a podcast that you enjoyed, we encourage you to rate it, to like it, to share it, to subscribe to it. Thanks again to our sponsor Avnet for making this possible. Avnet is a company that provides true end-to-end technology solutions to help people who make, well, anything, anywhere in the world, reach further.

Mick Ebeling:	42:10	And I want to invite you to check out their communities, Hackster, the world's fastest growing developer community for learning programming and hardware, element14, the biggest designer engineer community on the planet. You can find links to their websites on ours, podcastnotimpossible.com. David Goodman produced today's episode. Our Associate Producer is Vicki Schairer. Our Development Director Erin Sullivan, Director of Partnerships Joe Babarsky.

Mick Ebeling:	42:38	We had help from Lindsay Reynolds at the MIT Media Lab, thank you Lindsay, as well as Gus Contreras, Karyn Czarnecki, and Charlie Rozina. Thank you to Caskey Ebeling for helping make all of these podcasts possible. And thanks also to my partner in crime and Executive Producer, Phil Lerman. It's quite possible that we might have doubted we would get to this point. But with Phil's incredible fortitude, incredible writing and researching skills, we're here today.

Mick Ebeling:	43:14	I'm Mick Ebeling, until next time, remember, the things in your life you think you can't change, maybe you can't change them yet. Maybe you can't change them right now. It may be tough, the solutions may be part to find, but they're most definitely, unquestionably, not impossible.