Gaps are among the most meaningful of nonentities. Despite their emptiness, they do not reduce to nothingness, for they are defined by their relationship to something else. A gap, depending on the context and one’s viewpoint, might be regarded as a vacant breach or a bridgeable junction. Located just beyond the boundary of things tangible or discernible, gaps invite questions of possibility.

When the UK Xenotransplantation Authority approached the possibility of using organs from animals to save human lives there were three kinds of questions. Is it safe? Will it work? Is it right? These seem highly relevant questions as we hear of the tremendous advances of neuroscience, which will transform our understanding of the human mind and our very humanity, our behavior and our health and well being.

The story goes back to 1993. During the early era of transplantation, “death” for the purpose of organ donation had been defined as irreversible cessation of all brain function (that is brain death, both “higher” and “lower” centers) as a result of a seminal report by the ad hoc Committee of Harvard Medical School.[1] The transplant community and society then asked a question: Since the traditional definition of death for everyone else had always been irreversible cessation of heart function, might that definition be ethically applied to donors too?

Is it permissible to forgo life-saving dialysis in this man with a stroke based on his family’s refusal?

As a roadmap of where we are heading, here are a few guideposts. First, we will set the stage surveying the current landscape in technological innovation generally speaking. We, then, will turn our attention to discern the nature of technology and to mine the resources of two fields of study likely unfamiliar to many of us (i.e., philosophy of technology and computer ethics) in a section entitled “In Search of a Philosophy of Technology.” While you might be surprised to hear that such a field as computer ethics exists, the issues presented by the convergence of bioethics with communication and information technologies make an understanding of this field critically important. Finally, we will offer some preliminary questions and assessments of the emerging biotech discussion with particular interest in those issues that focus on the remaking of humanity under the rubric of technological responsibilism. My working proposal is that many of the difficulties presenting us with these emerging technologies focus on our underlying inability to assess technology and its relationship to humanity, and that much of this can be alleviated by some attention to a philosophy and more importantly a theology of technology.

The synapse is a specialized junction through which neurons—the brain’s fundamental cellular units—signal other cells. An examination of patterns of neural transmission at the synapse provides an interesting small-scale paradigm for considering principles of effective and ineffective communication among and within human communities. Following a general description of the synapse, this essay will draw parallels to larger realms of human ethical communication.