News story Reflection by Ayaka Lai

source : http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/220806.php

This news story was talking about scientist team from India has developed a biological components which made from human blood and they also explored the possibility of creating a liquid memristor from human blood. The biological components can help to create a cyborg interfaces and circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to an electronic device, such as a robotic limb or artificial eye might one day be possible.

“Memristors” were a theoretical electronic component first suggested in 1971 by Berkeley electrical engineer. A memristor is a passive device, like a resistor, with two terminals but rather than having a fixed electrical resistance, its ability to carry a current changes depending on the voltage applied previously; it retains a memory of the current, in other words.

As you may know that we control our body by send electric pulse to our muscle, but what if a person suffer neuron damaged or lose a limb? Usually, they can install an artificial limb but there are limitations on the movement of those limbs, with the development of this biological components, we may fix the technical problem on connecting artificial limb to human neuron system. This can let the patient move their artificial limb freely or move like their real arm, since the artificial limb may stronger or more powerful than the real one, the patient may get more power by it in the future.

But this also lead to a problem, with the fully function artificial limb connected to human neuron system, we should ask our self what is human and what is machine?

With the development of technology, I believe that the boundary between human and machine will become blur. To me, I will use soul to define human and machine. I don’t think soul can be replace by any mechanic things, so, human can keep the uniqueness by having soul, even if their body is a machine, but as long as someone can keep the human soul, I will regard that person as a human.