Telekinetic Monkeys and Other Party Favors.

As I was driving back from running errands yesterday I was listening to NPR (National Public Radio.) The Diane Rehm Show in particular, it’s a current events talk show out of Washington D.C. In the second half of the show they were speaking to a reporter for the Washington Post, Joel Garreau. Who had recently written a book called “Radical Evolution.” The book discusses things like the frontiers of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology. And asks the question whether these advances will change our comprehension of what it means to be human. Or what we understand to be human now.

One of the things he spoke of was DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.) This is a branch of the DOD (Department of Defense) that comes up with laser cannons, jet packs, and mind control helmets. This is no joke. He began to tell the host of the show that the things we think don’t exist, do. Powers that you see in comic books do have already been created and are alive and kicking in some lab somewhere. The one story that I caught while in my car was one about a telekinetic macaque monkey named “Belle.” Now keep in mind NPR and PBS are the last bastions of legitimate broadcast news reporting in America. Some of this HAS to be true.

The story of Belle the Telekinetic Monkey starts at Duke University, where Belle was trained to play video games around using a joystick. Using positive re-enforcement (play the game, get some juice) they hooked Belle onto playing video games. Now here is where it gets a little “Planet of the Apes” like. After Belle was hooked to playing the games, she was fitted with tiny electrodes to her brain. Once that was done, she was set lose on the joystick. But the device was rendered inactive. The electrodes the scientists planted in Belle’s head were tuned into the game itself. Belle no longer needing positive re-enforcement just wanted to play the game. That’s where her head was at and she quickly discovered that’s what she had to use to play the game. Belle knew she wanted to play the game and the stick wasn’t working but because she desired to play so much she learned she could play with the controller. Belle the Telekinetic Monkey was playing the game just by thinking about it. Kind of scary, huh?

Mr. Garreau talks about these and other advancements from both sides of the coin. He calls them the “Heaven” and “Hell” scenarios. The Heaven side being these advancements helps mankind and progress us to a more utopian like society; a place where hunger, disease, crime, etc. are all things of the past. But then there’s Hell where computers see humans as obsolete, dinosaurs roam the earth again, and apes enslave all mankind. Jeff Goldblum had a great line in the first “Jurassic Park” movie that applies to all of this. Science is rushing around creating these things to see if they could, no one has stopped to ask if they should.

I say, take your time. As long as no giant 12 legged chipmunk or genetically altered cabbage is trying to eat me while I’m tooling around in my jetpack, I can wait.