Intimacy With The Interface

It is more apparent than ever that the relationship between computer and human is the closest it has ever been. But is it as close at is will be?

The intimacy between human and computer is achieved through an interface. So what is it?

An interface is the means in which people interact with a particular machine or device. It provides both input and output; the input is what the user manipulates and the output shows the effect of the manipulation. An easy example is to use a computer mouse as an interface; the input is the user clicking the mouse and the output is the reaction on the screen from that click.

However, modern day technology means it can be a lot more subtle for a human and interface to interact. And not just P.C’s, phones or games consoles. What I will be looking at in depth this week is technology implanted into the body and how this affects both the human and the computer.

The most common example of this is the pacemaker, a device implanted into a patient’s chest that regulates their heartbeat. A general pacemaker is a small box with wires that run to the heart, the energy from the battery runs through the wires to simulate a heartbeat.

A similar device is an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD), this is most commonly used as a preventative treatment and sends a larger electrical shock to the heart than a pacemaker and aims to reboot the heart. Modern devices combine the two where the ICD can sense an abnormal or dangerous heart rate and correct it before the person suffers from cardiac arrest (where the heart stops beating altogether).

Nowadays, surgeries like this are seen as normal, and are said to save many lives every year, but is it really a natural thing to insert robotics into our body?

With the growth of implanted electronic devices I am going to look at the possibilities of when things go wrong. As with any computer there will be faults, and although there would have been extensive tests before things like pacemakers were implanted into people, were all the corners searched. Had the creators thought about the possibility of hacking? As far-fetched as it might sound I wanted to know the possibility of it.

An article on Forbes.com claims that yes hacking is completely possible within pacemakers and, more worryingly, it may go undetected and unidentifiable. Marc Goodman, a global security expert, said: “the evidence of medical device tampering might not even be located on the body, where the coroner is accustomed to finding it, but rather might be thousands of kilometres away, across an ocean on a foreign computer server.”

During a security conference in Melbourne last year one presenter Barnaby Jack showed his audience a video that proved an attacker as far as 50 feet away could trigger an 830-volt shock to someone through their pacemaker. Barnaby Jack is urging the medical companies that produce these machines to do more extensive research and up their security so this sort of thing is not possible. Not only did Barnaby prove he could hack a single pacemaker he also showed how he could hack into the software and upload damaging material to cause greater damage to a whole series of machines. He said: “we are potentially looking at a worm with the ability to commit mass murder. It’s kind of scary.”

Below are a list of links I used when researching for this post

·         http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/PacemakerImplantation/Pages/Introduction.aspx

·         http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/12/06/yes-you-can-hack-a-pacemaker-and-other-medical-devices-too/

·         http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/17/hacked-pacemakers-could-send-deadly-shocks/