Lamprey Cells Drive Robot

xmatt writes: "Eurekalert has a story posted from New Scientist about connecting neural material from a lamprey to light sensors and a cybernetic "body" made of two wheels and circuit board. Steve Grand, a expert in artificial life with Cyberlife Research in Somerset, describes the work as "laudably perverse" and likely to bring the world of cyborgs one step closer."

Comments

Fishbots

[Samedi1971]

What I'm wondering is how soon can I get a copy of the new Lego Mindstorms "Lamprey" kit, and will I have to supply my own fish nerves?

Re:Arthur C. Clarke, you were right...

[thantos]

"... too advanced for its own good."

While it might amuse you to know that I suspect the watchers while fire was first harnessed were thinking the same thing, I'd counter that, if anything, such a Luddite attitude is actually pretty insulting to at least some of us out here working to try and make human existance better, healthier, and more whole. Perhaps science is moving too fast for your ability (or even the masses' ability) to readily forcast new developments' impacts. Perhaps the act of research is creating new methods and approaches, entire suites of understanding, that require humanity to develop new social structures and mores. Perhaps, just perhaps, the flaw is not in science moving too swiftly, but in individuals being too foolish and reactionary to follow suit.

One of the primary motivations and goals of science is the pressure it places on society to grow, adapt, and change to accomodate eternally new situations and events. Without that, you might as well live in Imperial China, where scientific innovation could have gotten you beheaded (though society was 'protected' for thousands of years at a stretch). Perhaps you are willing to exchange a little safety for the liberty afforded by new ideas, new ways of thinking, new perceptions which we are granted by the strenuous efforts of thousands of scientists. The Internet, for example, is not an inherently safe thing, but a medium of facilitation unmatched in human history (save by the telegraph, or before that, speech).

Given the opportunity, I'd more than happily upload my personality and move into an immortal world of silver and silicon, leaving behind my useless arms, my insufficient sight, and the slowness of meat-memory. Give me a single opportunity and I'll happily exchange my left eye for an implant, my right arm for cybernetics, and my blood for nanotech-enhanced immunity to disease and wounds.

Bring to me the future!

In the end, it comes down to a simple axiom: Those who do not partake of the new fruits of the vine will suffer, wither, and die, while those who do, who move, who evolve, transmutate, transcend, will not. In the end, its that simple.

I choose life.