Elon Musk's Neuralink, which has been working to implant brain chips in humans since last September, has announced that it is looking for volunteers for human clinical trials to test the device. The device, known as a brain-computer interface (BCI), collects the electrical activity of neurons and interprets those signals as commands to control external devices. This technology enables people with paralysis to control cursors or keyboards with their minds. In addition, Precision Neuroscience implanted its brain implants in three people last year for about 15 minutes to determine if the implants could successfully read, record, and map electrical activity on the brain surface. They plan to expand the study to more patients in 2024.

These industry leaders, who are talking about the maturity stage where science and technology can have a real and dramatic impact on the human condition and its conditions, are increasingly realizing a huge increase in capital investment for commercialization. However, this change is not simply a technological achievement, but also a starting point for a fundamental questioning of our human relationship with our bodies, and ultimately, the complex social conventions and meanings of life and deaththat need to be remembered.

A birth certificate records the moment we are born, while a death certificate records the moment we die. This distinction reflects the traditional notion of life and death as a dichotomy. The biological definition of death has generally meant the "irreversible cessation" of life-sustaining processes maintained by the heart and brain. However, around 1960, the invention of cardiopulmonary resuscitation gave rise to the term "cardiac arrest," providing a criterion distinct from the previous unconditional meaning of death. In addition, ventilators have turned brain-damaged people into living corpses, sparking medical, ethical, and legal debates about whether patients can be declared dead. In neuroscience, until recently, examples have been presented that contradict the conventional notion that the brain begins to be damaged after a few minutes without oxygen, suggesting that the boundaries between death and life are becoming increasingly unclear.

In Madagascar, an island nation off the east coast of Africa, there is a ritual called Famadihana in which the bodies of ancestors are exhumed from family tombs and danced with the bones of the dead to the accompaniment of brass bands. This ritual shows a somewhat dramatic way of seeing death not as a final farewell, but as an ongoing relationship, a process of life. For them, the excavation process is experienced as a time for families to reaffirm their love for each other. From those who say that they have made their ancestors very happy through this ritual, we see another provocation of consciousness, activity, relics, and relationships beyond biological death.

We live in an age overflowing with services that tell the human story. We can see every moment how smart things like products, the web, and wearables are making our lives more convenient and responding directly to our needs. But we need to pay attention to the suffocating gaze of this personalized and present-oriented view, which is presented competitively and remains only in each living moment, making us constantly forget that we are beings on a limited path of death, tabooing and distancing ourselves. In 2014, cultural anthropologist Inga Trætle conducted a survey of desires and needs for death with 150 participants in Berlin through an interactive card game. This process revealed that previous conversations about death, which would have been isolating, confusing, and painful, could actually be experienced quite openly and interestingly, confirming that the assumption that it would be an uncomfortable topic was aligned with the cold and strict existing funeral practices. In addition, he found that the experience of small deaths, such as turning off the lights and going to sleep alone as a child, initially increased fear but over time became a process of gaining courage and strength.

Advances in technology and science are causing our understanding of death to continue to evolve. The discovery that brain activity continues for some time after the heart stops raises the possibility of reversing the body's activity, and offers a richness of new insights into the change of specific end-of-life care and the very meaning of life, about what kind of new rituals we will prepare and conversations we will experience as a family before and after death.

It's 2024. Perhaps this is the most appropriate time to pay attention to various perspectives on death as a benchmark for how we remember, experience, and expect the past, present, and future.

Referensi

The Race to Put Brain Implants in People Is Heating Up

The Biggest Questions: What is death?

In Madagascar, the Living Dance With the Dead

We need to talk about death

Putting Death in Its Place: Using Ethnography to Redesign Death⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠