As Snowden roams free in robot form, our cyborg future has arrived

I take it back I take it all back.

The Beam teleconference robot is not the douchiest product of all time, as I so cynically claimed after seeing it in action during the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show. In fact, its amazing so amazing that its use by NSA whistleblower and eloquent fugitive badass Edward Snowden at this weeks TED Talks made me realize an idea that is both astonishing and, somehow, already a normal part of 21st century life: Thanks to technology, we are not longer merely humans at all. We are cyborgs. The line has been crossed.

Using Beams keyboard-powered interface, Snowden wheeled around the stage, giving himself a better look at the audience.

Beam, if you havent yet encountered it, is a remote presence system made by Suitable Technologies, and first launched in 2012. The $16,000 contraption has an iPad-like screen for a face, multiple Internet-connected cameras, and has wheels that allow users to pilot around a room (or, in Snowdens case, a conference center).

The company touts many uses for Beam eliminating the need for business executives to travel to international offices, allowing doctors to better treat quarantined patients, remote learning for university students all of which I dismissed as secondary to Beams eerie presence after experiencing it on the show floor of CES. In retrospect, I realize that I was simply being an unimaginative jerk.

The next time I came across a Beam was this week, while streaming TED Talks to my TV with Google Chromecast. (Highly recommended, FYI.) Thanks to the Beam, Snowden appeared on stage in Vancouver for a 35-minute interview with TED head Chris Anderson. Using Beams keyboard-powered interface, he wheeled around the stage, giving himself a better look at the audience. He shifted his digital gaze to have a quick chat with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, father of the Web, who had a brief on-stage cameo. He wore, below his screen, a big name tag that read Edward Snowden, citizen.

Seeing as this is a TED, home of next-generation ideas and thinking, it is easy to take this futuristic scene for granted. But lets just pause for a moment to reflect on what took place: From a secret remote location in Russia, Snowden, one of the most sought-after fugitives from the U.S. government, gave an interview, chatted with the inventor of the Web, tooled around on a stage some 5,000 miles away, then mingled with the TED crowd, and even had his picture taken with Googles Larry Page.

That is goddamn incredible.

Without the Beam, most of that would have been impossible. Yes, he could have still done the interview part, like he did at SXSW. But he certainly couldnt have taken selfies with TED-goers. And, I imagine, it wouldnt have felt like he was really there. Even from my remote location (on my couch), Beam-Snowden seemed like a person, like a living being occupying space around other living beings. He wasnt just a face on a screen.

This idea that we are already cyborgs an interdependent mix of man and machine is not new. But it is part of our reality. Just snatch a smartphone away from a 16-year-old, and youll see that neither function well without the other. Nor is it novel that technology allows us to do things that were previously impossible thats the point. But Beam-Snowden is something different; he (it, whatever) existed in a place outside his body. He did, in fact, go to Canada.

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As Snowden roams free in robot form, our cyborg future has arrived