Yesterday I read this article on Remote-controlled sharks on Boing Boing. I haven’t found something this upsetting in quite some time. Seems those wizards of science at Boston University have done some pretty interesting (and frightening) research.
Please allow me to sum things up. They’ve wired the shark’s brain in such a way that they can fool it in to thinking that it smells food. This allows them to direct the shark and make it go where they want it to. This way they can wire up the sharks with cameras and other equipment to spy on people. I’m sure that someone will take me to task for that last statement “we’re not spying on people, this is for military use.” That is true, but who makes up the military, people. So my first problem with this has to do with governments spying on people.
Now let’s talk about what we are doing to these sharks. We’re wiring up their heads to fool them about when they can smell food. So, imagine that you’re wandering around hungry, really hungry and you smell food everywhere you turn, but there’s nothing there. Nothing. I don’t know about anyone else but that would very quickly drive me nuts. Oh, but sharks are simple creatures this won’t bother them. Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. All I can speak to is that this kind of thing sounds like unbearable torture to me.
Now here’s the part that really scares me. All of the research that makes this possible was paid for by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) which means that it’s now all classified and we can’t look at the research so we don’t really know what they are going to do with it. So now the Navy will be able to implant just about anything they want in to these sharks. So maybe someone will decide that instead of cameras and microphones they’ll put a bomb in the shark. I mean come on, what’s one or two sharks? Before anyone decides to yell at me for being overly dramatic let me remind you that this research is now in the hands of the folks who have no problem testing and using a sonar technology responsible for stranding and killing whales all over the world.
This is upsetting, just plain upsetting.
Did I mention that on the same page that BU talks about their shark research they have a cute little picture of the BU bulldog mascot in the upper right-hand corner. Can you say unfeeling?
