our world is changing rapidly as an
engineer and technologist I’m really
fascinated with all the emerging
technologies that make our lives simpler
with uber you can become a taxi driver
of your own car within a week in London
to become a caps cab driver you have to
pass an exam to prove that you know the
streets of the city
Wikipedia even says it’s like having an
atlas of London implanted in your brain
in 2011 Alana Maguire published a brain
imaging paper showing that it’s actually
nearly the case the brain volume of
London cab drivers is nearly 50% larger
with Google Maps we don’t need to
remember our roots and without Google we
get lost usually it’s not such a big
deal but having spent the last 15 years
of my life designing technology to help
people with brain disorders I’m starting
to get increasingly concerned about a
series of recent results that I would
like to share with you in primary
schools children get more and more often
digital tablets to write things down and
they have to type the homework on a
computer but more and more research is
showing that actually this reduces their
learning capacity for some reason we
don’t understand learning how to write
helps us to memorize more words
and to remember things better in Germany
a nationwide study showed that children
who spend too much time using digital
devices develop attachment developmental
and language development disorders as
well as hyperactivity and in another
study it was shown that 2.6 percent of
teenagers are suffering from social
media addiction leading to apathy lack
of sleep and in one-third of the cases
depression South Korean scientists have
even measured neurotransmitter changes
that are similar to what is normally
observed in drug addiction so it makes
you wonder where is this leading us his
technology failing us or are we failing
here let me take you back a little bit
in time no not that much
there when I was a boy walking to school
I had those questions why are we
thinking what our thoughts even you know
what makes me me and why am I still
myself when I wake up in the morning
thirty years later the BBC broadcasted a
documentary series entitled brain story
presented by Susan Greenfield finally I
was getting some of the answers on the
questions I was struggling with when I
was a kid but in return I got many more
other questions at that moment I decided
I have to make a change and do something
that is related to the brain but how was
that going to happen given my lack of
relevant knowledge as a physics engineer
luckily some of my colleagues around the
world were starting to use micro
technology
gee and microfluidics the things I was
doing as well for biology so there was
some hope and indeed on that morning in
the fall of 2004 I came to work and
found on my desk three research
proposals my manager at Philips research
back then thought they might be the
right challenges for me one of them was
entitled implantable neuro stimulation I
was back on track to pursue my boys
dream soon with my team we started to
work on developing a new version of
brain pacemaker to help people suffering
from Parkinson’s disease a couple of
years earlier that therapy which is
called deep brain stimulation was
introduced in the United States let me
show you a short movie displaying its
it’s always incredible to see the
enormous relief of that man when he
brings the controller on his chest
activates the pacemaker and his
trembling receipts now you’ve seen the
effect of this babe in this kind of
pacemaker I’m sure you will be amazed to
hear that less than a few percent of
Parkinson’s patients actually receive
one why well here is the first reason
you have to lie down with your head
locked into a metal frame while the
neurosurgeon is accurately inserting the
electrical probe into your brain and
because the surgeon needs to check that
the therapy will work there you have to
stay awake during the whole operation
and you can’t take your drugs against
Parkinson so you are exposed to the full
effect of your disease no wonder that
people are scared at taking that
intervention but in return the positive
side is many of them come to the
hospital in a wheelchair and after
recovery they leave walking so there’s
an actually another reason to which we
could do something we thought I have to
explain you a little more on how deep
brain stimulation works here for you to
understand where side-effects come that
so many people suffer from fifteen to
thirty percent of the people have side
effects like tingling sensation in the
skin ideation muscular contractions and
so on the region of the brain where mild
electrical pulses have to be sent is
shown here as a bright region called
target we want to cover this area with
as much current as we can when we
started working on this problem the
electrodes that were used were fairly
large like displayed on top of the
picture and they were distributing the
current
equally in all directions like this so
that when the electrical probe the
little gray disk would be a little bit
misplaced by only a millimeter or so
like that the currents would actually
spread outside the intended target and
invade another region shown in blue here
and if that region takes care of your
eye control well your eyes will suffer
from deviation with my team we thought
we could use micro technology to do
something about that we designed smaller
electrodes that would be dotting the tip
of the electrical probe this allowed us
to control the shape of the electrical
currents and make sure that more current
would go on the target and as little as
possible would cause side-effects this
allowed us to really improve the brain
stimulation and to inspire new devices
so that more people in the world could
have access to this therapy what really
drives me in this technology is that it
gives people a humane life again and
that is characteristic of medical
technology by bringing together
engineers medical doctors psychologists
ethicists we make sure that we improve
the effect and reduce or even suppress
the side effects and this brings me back
to the worries about digital technology
which is accelerating in all
compartments of our lives
take for instance artificial
intelligence and machine learning in
2011 Watson the intelligent the
artificial intelligence software
developed by IBM won the u.s. quiz show
Jeopardy against two of the most
legendary human players
the game of Go is presumably the most
complex game that we know of when the
chess champion garry kasparov
lost to IBM’s deep blue in the 90s go
remained as the last frontier and indeed
by 2014
still no computer had managed to beat a
professional go player until Google
arrived and decided to tackle the
problem last year the number one world
ranking professional player of go was
beaten by alphago three two one so
what’s in store for us will a I take
over some very big entrepreneurs have
decided not to let this to chance
Elon Musk with neuro-link wants to
connect our brains to the cloud in order
for us to keep control of artificial
intelligence Brian Johnson from kernel
aims at finding a way to supercharge our
brains so that we can keep up with the
machines and Dmitry Itskov with the 2045
initiative is working to develop an
artificial brain in which you main
personality can be transferred at the
end of one’s life virtually making us
immortal how this should work how would
it feel like for us no one knows how
would it affect us what we still need to
sleep or ever dream would we still be
ourselves when we wake up in the morning
nobody knows but sure thing very smart
people are getting a lot of money to try
and make it work
it seems we are on a train that can’t be
stopped
and maybe it shouldn’t be stopped most
of us benefit from technology
development and if you’re so unfortunate
as to get a disease like Parkinson’s
well anyone should get a technology that
helps them to regain their humane lives
so this brings me to the biggest
contrast here medical technology follows
very strict practices to make sure that
it helps people and it doesn’t affect
them negatively digital technology
doesn’t have those practices and so as
it’s accelerating and invading all the
aspects of our life we should really
wonder is it affecting us or not and you
should remember the examples I gave you
that really give us evidence that this
doesn’t work like we should children
having their learning ability affected
by using digital tablets development
disorders and teenagers getting
dependent on social media I think that
technology development only brings
progress and if it helps us to be more
human and we can can take example to
medical technology and change it so that
we integrate other fields of science in
technology development should include
biology and Applied neuroscience in
order to respect the nature and needs of
our bodies and brains instead of
overflowing them or depriving them
technology development should include
cognitive and behavioral sciences in
order to benefit our personal
development and growth and that of our
children
technology development should include
philosophy moral and ethics in order to
explore and support who we are and what
makes us human
instead of taking us over the resulting
technology will improve our lives serve
our true needs and help us to be more
human together let’s create humane technology
engineer and technologist I’m really
fascinated with all the emerging
technologies that make our lives simpler
with uber you can become a taxi driver
of your own car within a week in London
to become a caps cab driver you have to
pass an exam to prove that you know the
streets of the city
Wikipedia even says it’s like having an
atlas of London implanted in your brain
in 2011 Alana Maguire published a brain
imaging paper showing that it’s actually
nearly the case the brain volume of
London cab drivers is nearly 50% larger
with Google Maps we don’t need to
remember our roots and without Google we
get lost usually it’s not such a big
deal but having spent the last 15 years
of my life designing technology to help
people with brain disorders I’m starting
to get increasingly concerned about a
series of recent results that I would
like to share with you in primary
schools children get more and more often
digital tablets to write things down and
they have to type the homework on a
computer but more and more research is
showing that actually this reduces their
learning capacity for some reason we
don’t understand learning how to write
helps us to memorize more words
and to remember things better in Germany
a nationwide study showed that children
who spend too much time using digital
devices develop attachment developmental
and language development disorders as
well as hyperactivity and in another
study it was shown that 2.6 percent of
teenagers are suffering from social
media addiction leading to apathy lack
of sleep and in one-third of the cases
depression South Korean scientists have
even measured neurotransmitter changes
that are similar to what is normally
observed in drug addiction so it makes
you wonder where is this leading us his
technology failing us or are we failing
here let me take you back a little bit
in time no not that much
there when I was a boy walking to school
I had those questions why are we
thinking what our thoughts even you know
what makes me me and why am I still
myself when I wake up in the morning
thirty years later the BBC broadcasted a
documentary series entitled brain story
presented by Susan Greenfield finally I
was getting some of the answers on the
questions I was struggling with when I
was a kid but in return I got many more
other questions at that moment I decided
I have to make a change and do something
that is related to the brain but how was
that going to happen given my lack of
relevant knowledge as a physics engineer
luckily some of my colleagues around the
world were starting to use micro
technology
gee and microfluidics the things I was
doing as well for biology so there was
some hope and indeed on that morning in
the fall of 2004 I came to work and
found on my desk three research
proposals my manager at Philips research
back then thought they might be the
right challenges for me one of them was
entitled implantable neuro stimulation I
was back on track to pursue my boys
dream soon with my team we started to
work on developing a new version of
brain pacemaker to help people suffering
from Parkinson’s disease a couple of
years earlier that therapy which is
called deep brain stimulation was
introduced in the United States let me
show you a short movie displaying its
it’s always incredible to see the
enormous relief of that man when he
brings the controller on his chest
activates the pacemaker and his
trembling receipts now you’ve seen the
effect of this babe in this kind of
pacemaker I’m sure you will be amazed to
hear that less than a few percent of
Parkinson’s patients actually receive
one why well here is the first reason
you have to lie down with your head
locked into a metal frame while the
neurosurgeon is accurately inserting the
electrical probe into your brain and
because the surgeon needs to check that
the therapy will work there you have to
stay awake during the whole operation
and you can’t take your drugs against
Parkinson so you are exposed to the full
effect of your disease no wonder that
people are scared at taking that
intervention but in return the positive
side is many of them come to the
hospital in a wheelchair and after
recovery they leave walking so there’s
an actually another reason to which we
could do something we thought I have to
explain you a little more on how deep
brain stimulation works here for you to
understand where side-effects come that
so many people suffer from fifteen to
thirty percent of the people have side
effects like tingling sensation in the
skin ideation muscular contractions and
so on the region of the brain where mild
electrical pulses have to be sent is
shown here as a bright region called
target we want to cover this area with
as much current as we can when we
started working on this problem the
electrodes that were used were fairly
large like displayed on top of the
picture and they were distributing the
current
equally in all directions like this so
that when the electrical probe the
little gray disk would be a little bit
misplaced by only a millimeter or so
like that the currents would actually
spread outside the intended target and
invade another region shown in blue here
and if that region takes care of your
eye control well your eyes will suffer
from deviation with my team we thought
we could use micro technology to do
something about that we designed smaller
electrodes that would be dotting the tip
of the electrical probe this allowed us
to control the shape of the electrical
currents and make sure that more current
would go on the target and as little as
possible would cause side-effects this
allowed us to really improve the brain
stimulation and to inspire new devices
so that more people in the world could
have access to this therapy what really
drives me in this technology is that it
gives people a humane life again and
that is characteristic of medical
technology by bringing together
engineers medical doctors psychologists
ethicists we make sure that we improve
the effect and reduce or even suppress
the side effects and this brings me back
to the worries about digital technology
which is accelerating in all
compartments of our lives
take for instance artificial
intelligence and machine learning in
2011 Watson the intelligent the
artificial intelligence software
developed by IBM won the u.s. quiz show
Jeopardy against two of the most
legendary human players
the game of Go is presumably the most
complex game that we know of when the
chess champion garry kasparov
lost to IBM’s deep blue in the 90s go
remained as the last frontier and indeed
by 2014
still no computer had managed to beat a
professional go player until Google
arrived and decided to tackle the
problem last year the number one world
ranking professional player of go was
beaten by alphago three two one so
what’s in store for us will a I take
over some very big entrepreneurs have
decided not to let this to chance
Elon Musk with neuro-link wants to
connect our brains to the cloud in order
for us to keep control of artificial
intelligence Brian Johnson from kernel
aims at finding a way to supercharge our
brains so that we can keep up with the
machines and Dmitry Itskov with the 2045
initiative is working to develop an
artificial brain in which you main
personality can be transferred at the
end of one’s life virtually making us
immortal how this should work how would
it feel like for us no one knows how
would it affect us what we still need to
sleep or ever dream would we still be
ourselves when we wake up in the morning
nobody knows but sure thing very smart
people are getting a lot of money to try
and make it work
it seems we are on a train that can’t be
stopped
and maybe it shouldn’t be stopped most
of us benefit from technology
development and if you’re so unfortunate
as to get a disease like Parkinson’s
well anyone should get a technology that
helps them to regain their humane lives
so this brings me to the biggest
contrast here medical technology follows
very strict practices to make sure that
it helps people and it doesn’t affect
them negatively digital technology
doesn’t have those practices and so as
it’s accelerating and invading all the
aspects of our life we should really
wonder is it affecting us or not and you
should remember the examples I gave you
that really give us evidence that this
doesn’t work like we should children
having their learning ability affected
by using digital tablets development
disorders and teenagers getting
dependent on social media I think that
technology development only brings
progress and if it helps us to be more
human and we can can take example to
medical technology and change it so that
we integrate other fields of science in
technology development should include
biology and Applied neuroscience in
order to respect the nature and needs of
our bodies and brains instead of
overflowing them or depriving them
technology development should include
cognitive and behavioral sciences in
order to benefit our personal
development and growth and that of our
children
technology development should include
philosophy moral and ethics in order to
explore and support who we are and what
makes us human
instead of taking us over the resulting
technology will improve our lives serve
our true needs and help us to be more
human together let’s create humane technology
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