Imagine a world where you can never lose your mobile phone because the technology has been implanted in your jawbone; a future where elite football teams play to neurally downloaded tactics and where everything you buy comes with GPS software to help you keep track of it. It may sound like science fiction but, according to a leading academic based in Scotland, it could soon be fact.

Andy Clark, a shock-haired professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, believes his finger is on tomorrow’s pulse. He burst into the academic stratosphere with the 2003 publication of Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. That book explored the way human minds might interact with emerging technology, instantly becoming both a key scientific text and a crossover hit in the United States, casting Clark in the role of scientific seer.

Two years on, and in the week that Newcastle-based scientists cloned Britain’s first human embryo, Clark argues that, thanks to recent research advances, there is now very little conceptual difference between a freestanding computer workstation and one implanted in our flesh. In a paper published in the current Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Clark suggests that the next stage of human development will be technological rather than biological.

He sees our ability to enter into profound relationships with our technologies as a defining characteristic of being human — whether the connection is via a computer terminal or through the direct wiring of flesh. If the key to humanity’s evolutionary survival has been our ability to adapt to changing circumstances, then we will find ourselves becoming less and less squeamish about the prospect of foreign agents in our bodies, just as we’ve grown blasé about driving, flying and even breast implants.

“I think,” says Clark, “that it is precisely our neural plasticity and long evolutionary development that combine to make us more likely to incorporate prosthetic extensions than any other species. Philosophically speaking, our everyday idea of ‘the self’ is an illusion. We are less of a self-contained entity and more like a bag of finely tuned equipment interacting in response to genetic and societal stimuli. Above everything else, the contingent nature of our supposed humanity is the most profound thing the future will teach us.”

But if we implant night vision capabilities or military maps into the brains of soldiers, will that mean creating a “robot” army? Clark says the precedents are already well-established in the form of mobile phones and wristwatches. “Wearing a watch, we have instant access to the time and date, which we lose the moment we take the watch off. The new technology will work in much the same way — our brains will access it when we need it. It won’t be an all-pervasive adjunct to our personalities.”

Clark also believes that with genetic research pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human, virtually everything we know is up for grabs. “Our sense of self is skewed because we are conscious beings but the reality is that while we’re going about our business we’re not aware of the functioning of our heart or our liver or our muscles. In time, we’ll get used to additional software agents that we’ve ‘wired’ into ourselves. A computer can perform functions and report back to us in the same way as a brain, a liver or a heart does.”

Clark’s latest paper, Re-inventing Ourselves: the Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing and Mind, quotes numerous examples of humans and animals already manipulating their environment through the interface of mind over matter — from monkeys neurally controlling a robot arm to retrieve treats to pilots flying helicopters via an inflated tactile suit that responds to their vaguest physical movements.

Ultimately, Clark says, the boundary between our own genetic intelligence and information that exists externally to us is shrinking. We’re looking at a scenario where very powerful computers are incorporated into our bodies, our clothing and as detachable gadgets. In fact, credit cards that can be implanted beneath the skin of a shopper’s arm have already been invented as a possible means of tackling identity theft. Mobile phones could also be implanted in the jaw that would respond to sub-vocal commands: to all intents and purposes, the user would look like a telepath while carrying out “private” conversations.

Clark’s great skill lies in his ability to act as a conduit between public curiosity and arcane science. Like the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, his growing stock can be ascribed to the simple way his writing harnesses the power of scientific fact to the poetic imaginings of futurology. Clark’s cutting-edge role in academe will be confirmed in July, when he delivers the keynote address at the annual congress of the Cognitive Science Society in Italy.

He is a Londoner who came to philosophy after aborting a degree in English and French at Stirling University. “My dad was a policeman in the Met who had a passionate interest in science fiction, comics and popular science. He said, “Son, you should get into cybernetics. Nobody knows what it is yet but it seems interesting. It sounds like it will be important to the future.”

As Clark says, what’s now called popular science didn’t exist 10-15 years ago. “Ordinary people sense that there are exciting things happening with genetic engineering, nanotechnology and computing. We are as excited as we are afraid, but overwhelmingly there’s this profound sense that we ought to understand where we’re going as a civilisation.

“Essentially, we’ll be human beta testers for a while. As with all technology, some people will get burned, corporations will manoeuvre to become the dominant force in the marketplace and winners and losers will emerge.”

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