Fr. Shenan J. Boquet: Transhumanism: Will Human Machines Become “Godlike”?

Noland Arbaugh was paralyzed from the neck down in his early twenties after a diving accident. He is now twenty-nine years old and a quadriplegic. Recently, however, several videos of him playing video games went viral.

The reason for the widespread interest in Arbaugh’s video gaming is not his prowess with the games. What’s astonishing about the videos is that he is not controlling the video games with his hands or feet. He isn’t even using the extremely slow and laborious breath-controlled device that he had previously used to control his computer. Instead, he is navigating the video games entirely using his thoughts.

Arbaugh, it turns out, is the first human subject to be fitted with the Neuralink device—a device that sits in a small hole drilled into his skull, which can receive and translate brain signals through tiny fibers inserted directly into his brain. By simply thinking about what he wants to do, Arbaugh can control his computer in real-time and with such ease that he can even play highly complex games while talking to other people. …