Michelle Roberts of BBC news recently wrote an article on Leeds University’s Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (iMBE), dedicated to research which will ultimately allow human beings to achieve “50 active years after 50.” Here’s their mission statement:

Driven by clinical challenges, we undertake solution focused pioneering research and education in the fields of medical devices and regenerative medicine, innovating and translating novel therapies into practical clinical applications.

Our expertise is in the area of musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems with our research focusing on three main areas – Joint Replacement, Tissue Re-engineering and Functional Spinal Interventions.

Roberts adds, “New hips, knees and heart valves are the starting points, but eventually they envisage most of the body parts that flounder with age could be upgraded.” The article is titled “Science to ‘stop age clock at 50,’” and it is this desire to “stop” the clock which Freud, Otto Rank and Ernest Becker argue drives a great of deal human activity.

The adage “nature vs. nurture” is generally used to describe the debate among scholars (across disciplines) as to whether or not we are primarily products of biological, evolutionary imperatives, or cultural, relative or “artificial” factors; now more than ever this has ceased to be a mere adage – science and technology is at war with nature itself. The iMBE, and “Science” generally, has been tasked with stopping the natural processes of aging, or, at least, the terribly unpleasant side effects which come with it. A lofty mandate indeed.

To make the situation even more desperate, this science of life, which increases quantity and quality of human existence, must not only compete with the relentlessness of nature, but with itself also, in the form of the militaristic sciences or science of death. 2 against 1, no fair.

A little while before the iMBE article was posted, I came across an article (wonderfully) titled, Call for Debate on Killer Robots. Here, Jason Palmer interviews Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield, who calls for restraint in the development and use of unmanned or autonomous military robots (e.g. the Predator Drones currently used in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere), and Nigel Mills, an “aerial technology director” at QinetiQ (a defense contractor), who explains that “Complete autonomy – where you send a UAV off on a mission and you don’t interact with it – is not compatible with our current rules of engagement, so we’re not working on such systems” – in other words, the current rules of engagement dictate that clearance, presumably human, must be given before a fire mission is carried out, and so developing fully autonomous war-bots is either avoided, or classified.

However, the article also cites excerpts from the U.S. Air Force’s “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047,” which predicts that in the near future,

Advances in AI will enable systems to make combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints without necessarily requiring human input; [however]… Ethical discussions and policy decisions must take place in the near term in order to guide the development of future UAS capabilities, rather than allowing the development to take its own path apart from this critical guidance.

Professor Sharkey is pleased that they’re at least taking ethical considerations into account, and hey, so am I. But these two articles illuminate a stark (though not so startling) contradiction: the same tools we use to extend life simultaneously work to end it. Technology is the ultimate global auto-immune disorder, tirelessly working against itself. What can account for this?

Of course it’s too complicated to say definitively, but according to Rank and Becker, we can trace the roots of both technological drives back to the desire for immortality by way of self-esteem. This is clear when discussing the medical sciences (they allow us to live longer and “upgrade” faulty parts), but perhaps it is less clear in light of the militaristic sciences. Yet, killing was likely one of the earliest forms of a symbolic elixir of life. In Truth and Reality: A Life History of the Human Will (1936), Rank writes, “The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the sacrifice of the other; through the death of the other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying, of being killed.” Ending another life implies the supremacy of one’s own – it’s the ultimate domination.

Becker adds that early on in humanity’s evolution, we became aware that we were relatively weak when compared to larger animals (or other humans), and so looked for “alternative” sources of power. Becker writes, “This is one way to understand the greater aggressiveness of man than of other animals: he was the only animal conscious of death and decay, and so he engaged in a heightened search for powers of self-perpetuation [i.e., symbolic]” (in The Ernest Becker Reader).

With the rapid advances in technology, our ability to “self-perpetuate” via death has increased exponentially, to the point where it is conceivable we will bring about our own extinction. Well, medical science, it appears you have your work cut out for you – not only must you fight against the forces of nature, but against your evil twin sibling, military science, as well. Good luck; we’re going to need it.

Both the panorama and its successor, the diorama, offered new forms of virtual mobility to its viewer. But a paradox here must be emphasized: as the “mobility” of the gaze became more “virtual”–as techniques were developed to paint (and then to photograph) realistic images, as mobility was implied by changes in lighting (and then cinematography)–the observer became more immobile, passive, ready to receive the constructions of a virtual reality placed in front of his or her unmoving body.

-Anne Frieberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern

As Paul Virilio suggests in Open Sky, our technologies are without a doubt rendering us immobile. The link between obesity and sedentary media usage has been clearly documented in North America, and some think that we should be trying to disrupt this linkage. As Virilio suavely notes, in typical Virilio poetics, we are a culture that is “mobile on the spot.”

And then there’s Graffiti Research Lab’s Eyewriter project. We all know GRL for the laser tagging spectacles that made them famous, such as those projected onto City Hall during the CAFKA 09 biennial.

Kitchener City Hall at night dugin CAFKA 09 - GRL on stage at left

GRL showcasing Laser Tag on City Hall

But GRL’s most recent graff innovation turns the technology/immobility argument on its head. At CAFKA 09 GRL showcased an application called “Eye Writer,” developed for graffiti artist Tony Quan, who was diagnosed with ALS and is now completely paralyzed. By outfitting an eyetracking apparatus with laser tagging devices, GRL has allowed Quan (aka TEMPT) to continue his art.

Tony Quan sporting the Eye Writer gear

According to GRL co-founder James Powderly, Quan gratefully thanked the graffinnovators for giving him a way to “be in the world.” Eat your heart out, Heidegger.

Read about Eye Writer on the F.A.T. site.

Check out Maclean’s reporter, Scott Feschuk’s, latest opinion piece on immortality at:

http://www2.macleans.ca/category/opinion/scott-feschuk/

Feschuk, being Feschuk, compiles our greatest concerns involving death and the side effects, ones we will surely live to witness and in all likelihood solve, if our greatest achievement becomes a reality.  Robotics flowing in human blood streams, serial marriages followed by serial divorces, and of course, problems concerning money, land, food, health, etc, etc, etc.  Does Feschuk fear death?  How has a national magazine zoned in on a common concern and exerted efforts to unload Canadian citizens of the fear of death?  Simply put, Feschuk aims to transform the positives into negatives: such as, you love your wife but will you love her when she is 472?  Perhaps the goal is to redefine death, not as necessarily primal and animalistic, but as essential to human happiness.

The film, Flight From Death, speaks of culture as an outlet for individuals to feel valuable by immortalizing part of their identity.  In a Hiedeggarian sense, we create external ‘beings’ or copies of ourselves to remain ‘on-call’, largely with the help of technologies such as Facebook, Myspace, and blogging that are embedded in culture today.  Perhaps not as recent of a technological development, journals and photography are also important modes of development.  Why do magazines carry articles with little floating heads on the opening page of the author, as if readers won’t believe it is the right person without proof.  Or, does by having a photograph accompany the article make that author popular, known, even, famous?

In the end, I suppose Feschuk is concerned less and less about death as more and more people read his articles, publishers store his words in fireproof vaults, make copies, and so forth.  Earnest Becker reminds us that part of buying into cultural immortality involves recognition, so here it is, I’m recognizing, I’m passing Feschuk on, and in some way or another, I am making him a little more immortal.

The LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker application.

I recently came across an article on the CBC website entitled “Using your cellphone to get in shape”. The article discusses various developments in the world of smartphone fitness applications. While apps like these have been around for a while, I think they’re interesting to evaluate in light of Necromedia’s central themes of technoculture and mortality.

Fitness apps for BlackBerrys and iPhones help facilitate fitness tracking and health management using a device that many people spend most of their days using (or wanting to use) for both work and play. It makes sense that through applications such as these, mobile devices have started to centralize all human activity to be so efficiently managed. Relying on handheld devices for health tips, calorie counting, workout logging, fitness appointment-keeping, progress monitoring, GPS-aided route tracking, and the like is certainly convenient for busy people trying to make health a priority. As the writer of the article mentions, one application aids customers to stay healthy “through motivational reminder e-mails about fitness goals and shopping lists based on preferred foods.” This motivation can arguably be regarded as especially positive in the face of a modern-day work environment that makes maintaining a healthy lifestyle increasingly difficult.

At the same time, fitness applications serve to make users hyper-aware of health risks, including their own failings in areas like diet, exercise, and lifestyle choices. While I’m certainly not endorsing ignorance, it would seem that this hyper-awareness is directly related to an over-dependence on mobile devices—both physical  and emotional—that is just the opposite of healthy. Thus, we become even further chained to our little pocket buddies for reassurance that we’re doing something positive for our health (even if we’re not). Fitness applications boost our perception that we have control over an aspect of life—physical health—which is inextricably linked to the continuation of life. Providing users with the ability to “collect and analyze data instantaneously, whether it’s the calorie count and nutritional makeup of a bagel with cream cheese or the pace and splits of a just-completed eight-mile run” simply provides us with an illusion of control.

This article on CBC today, which reports the deaths of a Quebec couple hit by a car while they slept in their bed, would suggest that, in fact, our technological gadgetry provides little bastion from the inevitability of an, oftentimes, unpredictable death.

The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize winners were announced on Thursday, October 1st. The Ig Nobel Prize is awarded to research that seems too strange to be useful, but isn’t. There are some interesting connections between some of this years winners and a few of the projects at the CrimeLab.

A pair of Newcastle researchers have shown that cows with names give more milk than cows without. I think there are some interesting implications for this in terms of human-animal interaction. The researcher suggests that acts of kindness towards the cows can increase milk production. The study also looked at the effects of petting and grooming the cows.

The public health prize was awarded to a Chicago based team that has developed a bra that can be converted into a two-person gas mask. An interesting confluence of fashion and terror of death. Apparently it looks no different from a regular brassiere.

Here is an article about this year’s awards: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/10/02/tech-science-ig-nobel-prize.html