Are People Programmable?

For the month of June, DevCentral is highlighting our Programmability Month and Codeshare Challenge. A fantastic opportunity to catch up on the power of programmability and learn how the BIG-IP platform can transform your infrastructure with a few lines of code.

Since my coding ability is still in the infancy stage, I thought of looking at programmability from a different angle. Can we code a human?

First, the word 'Programmability.' According to multiple sources including dictionary.com, it is derived from the adjective ‘Programmable’ or capable of being programmed. As a noun, it can be an electronic device that can be programmed to perform specific tasks. We hear the word Program in many different contexts – a plan of action to accomplish something, a schedule of events, a television/entertainment program, a planned group of activities for a purpose and so forth. In computing, of course, we hear the word programmer as someone who writes code to facilitate certain functionality within a computer program or application.

But can code be applied to humans? Are we programmable?

DNA is our personal genetic code. It determines our eye and hair color, gender, and all of the traits, characteristics and personality that make you, you. Every cell in our body contains a complete set of our DNA. While 99.9% of the DNA from two people will be identical, it’s the 0.1% of DNA code sequences that vary from person to person. This is what make us unique. This is our genetic marker and what scientists look for to use when doing a DNA test.

Genetic disorders are situations where there’s a bug in the DNA code. The gene mutated. For instance, the GLUD1 gene is a Protein Coding gene that encodes mitochondrial enzyme glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) and is used to control insulin secretion in the pancreas. But if the gene is mutated, then the person could produce too much insulin. The pancreas server works perfectly but it is the gene’s code telling the pancreas what to accomplish that is flawed. My daughter has this genetic disorder – HI/HA GDH. Her GLUD1 code has an insulin bug.

Doctors have been able to flip genes. In lab studies, researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have reprogramed gene expression, showing a proof-of-concept for potential therapy. Reprogramming the gene expression to reverse a biological switch. Imagine being able to reprogram a gene to function properly. Diagnosed with a certain ailment? Let’s change the code with an i{Human}Rule to 0.

It's also interesting and partially scary to think that in the future, instead of getting colored contacts to change your eye color, you could insert the color code into your DNA for a particular look.

And now for something slightly different…

In 1942 Nikola Tesla said, ‘If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.’ There is a frequency or vibration of energy that fills the Universe. It's alive.

The Universe is energy and each basic element of the atomic chart consists of energy at different rates of vibration. Each person also has their own frequency. With this in mind, I recently went to have some Quantum Biofeedback ‘new age’ therapy due to some back/neck issues. I already see a chiropractor and acupuncturist and thought this might help me delay back surgery.

The idea behind Quantum Biofeedback is that the body is electric and therefore reactivity in the body can be measured electrically since every cell, organ, meridian and emotion has a characteristic electro-magnetic signature. You get hooked up to a few electrodes and it takes a bunch of measurements to determine the electrical factors of the body. It calculates combinations of impedance, amperage, voltage, capacitance, inductance, and resistance. If the frequency of your lungs are off, the system can send the exact frequency of healthy lungs until your lungs respond with that frequency. Essentially reprogramming your lungs to the correct frequency to function properly.

There's also the notion that the 520Hz frequency is the Love frequency. Supposedly it is the 'Miracle' note of the original Solfeggio musical scale. These core creative frequencies were used by ancient priests and healers in advanced civilizations to manifest miracles and produce blessings. The claim is that listening to 528Hz tones/music will heal your DNA. Amazon has a whole section of 528Hz music and if you didn't know, John Lennon's 'Imagine' was recorded in 528Hz. That's why you feel good when listening to the song.

As with any of these non-traditional techniques, there are the pseudoscience naysayers, those who feel it is a scam and those who received no benefit from the therapy session. Their body simply didn’t respond. Happens often in medicine and science. For me, it helped a little but I’m still looking at getting cut and wearing a neck brace for a couple weeks to fix my back issue. As with anything like this, your mileage may vary and I'm not endorsing this technique, I have my wonders too. But the idea of being able to reprogram the human body via energy, frequency and vibrations is interesting. At least to me.

There are a few folks, of course, studying this.

In 2008, scientists looked at Free Will vs. The Programmed Brain to determine if we have a choice about anything. If our actions are determined by prior events and if people believe that they don’t have free will, what will the consequences be for moral responsibility? Do we have any responsibility for what we do since our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action? Essentially, what happens when we think our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that? They found that we hold ourselves responsible when we think that our actions come from free will and we behave less responsibly if we feel our actions as beyond our control. If we think that there’s no point in trying to be good, then we’re less likely to try.

The World Bank has discovered that people are programmable from an economic perspective. In 2014, they released the 2015 World Development Report looking at mind, society and behavior. The assumption for many economic policies is that human behavior arises from “rational “choice with people considering all readily available information, and making decisions on their own. In recent decades, however, novel policies based on a more accurate understanding of how people actually think and behave have shown great promise in addressing some of the most difficult development challenges. They seem to conclude that people are programmable, and some (poor people) are more programmable than others. A number of folks are critical of the report as you can imagine.

Lastly, Gartner’s 2015 hype cycle for Emerging Technologies gives a hint of our programmable future. While IoT is currently riding the top, you can see a few coming up in the next decade that have programmable humans in sight. They got Human Augmentation and Brain-Computer interface neck and neck. Want to become an expert in no time? Simply connect your brain to your laptop and download all the knowledge. Personally I think the brain interface is more about thinking what you want done (click the mouse), and the computer does it with no hand interaction. We’ll shall see.

This article started as an idea about humans, habits and if we can be programmed to change behavior. As I dug in, it became apparent that it wasn’t so simple to concretely conclude but appreciate you coming along this far. As you engage with this month’s Programmability features and how they can help with your environment, think about how programmability may impact all our lives in the near future. Or you can watch this gem from The Office: The Office Classical Conditioning.