BTC -The legislation has been passed. Healthcare providers are required to report status of internal devices to a US federal agency as a condition of the Affordable Healthcare Act. If that internal network device is hardware attached to your brain then, yes, the government is going to get reports about it.
According to predictive programming author, Ramez Naam, a futurists sci-fi complex will be driven by brain implants combined with pharmacological injections. He posits in a Seattle Times interview that we will become the droids we are looking for, exemplifying the ~250,000 people walking around with brain implants now.
"It feels like there are people who think that would be obscene somehow, to improve the human body with technology.
There absolutely are. Under President (George W.) Bush there was a President’s Council on Bioethics. They had hearings about brain-computer interfaces, smart drugs, gene therapy, life extension technologies. They put out a report saying, “Hey, we should consider using the power of the state to restrict the ability of people to use these technologies.”
Consider, they did. And while Bush didn't go that mile with Kurzweil, Obama did in his healthcare law.
However, it's not illegal to self augment. Naam's narrative seems to contrive a sense of repressed community who is savagely limited by public options to dope up their own brain with neurotech.
Naam may not have noticed or cared, but the powers-that-be are not earning public trust with the tech they are given. To date, there is a mass surveillance race between developed nations: not to enhance natural rights, but to control them for their restritctive, licensed purposes with technology. The government has proven with hard cold appropriations they will pay for robo-control with drones, panning for biometric results on targets. These drones proceed to massacre an entire range of human beings adjacent to their original target. Hell, who said Pentagon issue technology has to be accurate or operate according to human ethics? There are a lot of frustrated people who share this sense of being ignored along with Mr. Naam.
These circumstances make it hard for people who want market options for technological upgrades to forego mistunderstanding. The reality we live in unfortunately requires US government involvement now in any tech implants. That puts an unfortunate dystopian forecast on Naam's enhanced version of humanity.
If there are government limits on the ability to make yourself a cyborg, we'll listen to your tale of woe. That's a story we can't wait to hear.
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