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Why I'm turning my son into a cyborg (archive) (alt)
Imagine if everyone spoke a language you don't understand. People have been speaking it around you since the day you were born, but while everyone else picks it up immediately, for you it means nothing. Others become frustrated with you. Friendships and jobs are difficult. Just being "normal" becomes a battle.
For many with autism, this is the language of emotion. For those on the spectrum, fluency in facial expressions doesn't come for free as it does for "neurotypicals." To them, reading facial expressions seems like a superpower.
So when my son was diagnosed, I reacted not just as a mom. I reacted as a mad scientist and built him a superpower.
This isn't the first time I've played mad scientist with my son's biology. When he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I hacked his insulin pump and built an AI that learned to match his insulin to his emotions and activities. I've also explored neurotechnologies to augment human sight, hearing, memory, creativity, and emotions. Tiger moms might obsess over the "right" prep schools and extracurriculars for their child, but I say why leave their intellect up to chance?
I've chosen to turn my son into a cyborg and change the definition of what it means to be human. But do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by goodie on Friday July 19 2019, @01:57PM (2 children)
There's a lot of "I did, I did I did..." in this article (I actually RTFA). It reads like the ruminations of someone who is arguably very good at what she does but I don't think it's that innovative to be honest... I mean augmented intelligence and other concepts are fairly close to what she describes. As far as hacking an insulin pump, I have 3 thoughts on that.
- First, good on her because it may show manufacturers that they have to get their crap together and innovate instead of relying on selling dated stuff to people and sit on their fat asses ("look, it's a smart pump because it sends the reading over bluetooth to your phone where you can see a bar chart!").
- Second, great. Now what happens when/if the pump malfunctions?
- I have great discomfort when people use their own offspring as the subject of their scientific experiments.
(Score: 2) by EEMac on Friday July 19 2019, @07:11PM
The person in the article:
1. Saw problems
2. Did something about them
That's good behavior.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:04AM
>I have great discomfort when people use their own offspring as the subject of their scientific experiments.
We are all Mother Nature's science experiment. Like mother, like child.
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