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Testing The First Cyborgs
D3 writes: "The Washington Post has an article on what may be the first cyborg. The article also lists some other pretty cool stuff going on. Soon we'll also be able to relieve ourselves on a microchip to test for cancer as well." I'm still waiting for the spring leg implants that let me leap buildings, but this is a good first step. The eel-robot has been on before, not so some of the other things.
I'm not joking, but this is just sick. Not even in the name of technology do we have a right to be doing this. It simply disgusts me. If we want to try stuff like this, experiment with it on humans. Eel today, monkey tomorrow. We don't have a right to be doing this.
I have a degree in biology, and I think this
is sick... It shows an absolute disrespect
for living things.
You think animals exist for the purpose of being
disected and mutalated for fun?
I don't have a problem with experimenting on
animals if it will yield benefits for humans
- I consider it a necessary evil, but I don't
see how this has anything to do with
benefiting humans. There is nothing that they
discrible in that article that could not be
done by a computer/robot combination alone if
enough AI research is done. This is just
an attempt to cheapin' the process and short
cut it.
Hands up for those of you (especially
the ones making all the borg jokes) think
that having your brain controling a hockey puck
with christmas lights, instead of your body, would
be a great way to live.
Fuckin' eh. That's what I thought.
-Ironstorm
> Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
Is that an allusion to Army of Darkness or The Day the Earth Stood Still? (It could be either, but I'm just curious about how you intended it)
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Strange as it may seem, peta.org used to resolve to the "People Eating Tasty Animals" website.
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
...add some wasabi and it is a Hot Wheels.
pronoblem
This depends on how you define cyborg. Is the definition "A living brain with a robot body," or is it, "A mixture of living and technological parts that make a functioning whole?"
If you ask me, the latter definition makes more sense, and therefore I submit that cyborgs have been around for a long time, at least since the first feasible artificial hearts were successfully implanted; and I'm sure someone could come up with examples that predate that.
Shit man, take a pill. And please stay away from a computer. I don't want any "right wing code" to accidentally find it's way into the Linux kernel.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
They could just change their name to PETCA (people for the enthical treatment of cuddly animals) and that would leave the scientists free to experiment on leeches, wasps, eels, spiders, scorpions, and other animals that don't appreciate all that we have done for them.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Keep the bio out of mechanical? OK, since you're not using your arms and legs. Of course, many people would be reluctant to give up their big mouths.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Very sorry to hear about your accident. I'm hoping everything turned out within episilon of OK in the aftermath.
I think there is a general assumption that by "cybernetic (body part)," we mean a body part that is (1) artificial and (2) computer assisted. For example, unless your shoulder had an embedded processor to handle certain functions, it wouldn't qualify in many people's books as cybernetic. Not that it's not cool. :)
I think computer assistance could do wonders for artificial limbs...they wouldn't even necessarily have to *control* the limb, they'd just have to *adjust* the limb for different circumstances (e.g., rock climbing, bicycling, using an automobile). This could open up a whole new world of accessibility for those with certain disabilities.
Another idea, relatively simpler: computer assisted glasses and hearing aids.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
well, i don't think they'll care. after all, they're for the ethical treatment of animals.
now, if the People for the Ethical Treatment of Disembodied Eel Brains (PETDEB) hears about it, that's a different story.
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Given that he said "Gort!" I'd have to say
"The Day the Earth Stood Still"
Of course... so you're saying that the "left" has
discovered that the human soul is located in the... spleen?
Huh? What good would that do? I mean, bugs obviously don't bother Bill Gates.
There shouldn't be any problem. As far as I can tell, animals only have rights if they're cute, and eels aren't even fuzzy, much less cute.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
At last we'll soon know whether cyborg ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Lower, Beavis.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Why waste the money on the robot parts? We've been breeding fully human sociopaths for centuries. How would not having a soul really have made your average Hannibal Lecter any worse?
On the contrary side, if the soul isn't colocated with your center of self-awareness, then is it possible to take out the soul and transplant it into someone else? Could I get two souls that way? This quickly becomes an absurd discussion...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I read the same book. I believe that the Bibliofind search I just did on a half-remembered title has turned it up--it's The Man Whose Name Wouldn't Fit by Theodore Tyler. The fellow's name was one letter too long, you see, and it aggravated him a great deal to keep getting mail with the last letter of his name chopped off.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
"lamprey eel brain that was removed, kept alive in a special solution"
"The chicken heart was kept alive in a lab, in a vat filled with a special solution.
lub-dub
One night a careless janitor knocked the vat over.
lub-dub
He went to get a rag to clean it up.
lub-dub
The chicken heart grew.
lub-dub
The janitor returned with a rag.
lub-dub
The heart ate him.
.......
I got MY Jello ready in case that brain comes after me.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Harold Hawkins, head of the Office of Naval Research's bioacoustics program, notes that a dolphin can map the sea bottom in its mind's eye with "one, or two, or three" pings from its echo-location system, while the world's fanciest side-scan sonar needs dozens of slow passes to build the same picture.
Does this idea bother anyone else? I know he didn't say it outright, but the author certainly hints that at some point we might want to use dolphin brains to do more accurate sonar. This kinda bugs me. Maybe I'm overreacting.
Then again, computers might be able to dynamically reprogram themselves very nicely if they had RMS' brain trapped inside doing their bidding. Anyone ever read "Satan, His Psychotherapy And Cure By The Unfortunate Doctor Kassler"?
I'm not saying that we have to do something about it... it's just weird.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
As long as we are grafting cybernetics onto biologics what new options would you like?
I'd have to go for the vision enhancements. I'm a very visual person, I learn best by seeing.
I'd like spectral enhancements, nothing too crazy, just low infrared, and upper ultraviolet, but I want filtering so I can select on a small range of the avalible spectrum. Zoom would also be nice, again not crazy 48x would be good. But most important the ability to record what I see. A low power transmitter so I could save the images/video to a near by device.
This is all I ask (probally wouldn't hurt to get the hearing done at the same time).
He probally says, "I have a gun, nobody move, and nobody gets hurt!"
The reason science (and no one else) has found out what "intelligence" or "consiousness" is, is much because they are inherintly ambigious. If you can't get people to agree what is "intelligent" or "coincious" then you will have a pretty hard time explaining it.
;-)
/interesting/ thing to think about, but that doesn't make it true or even sane.)
/isn't/ intelligence check out some AI books. It is generally considered there that what you can make a computer do is NOT intelligence. So little by little we get to the point. (You know, what ever is left when the other stuff has been removed.)
My favourite (scientific none the less) theory is that consiousness is dependent on self referation. If something is capable of knowing what the self is in an abstract way, then it is consious.
Naturally not many animals (besides man) gives a very satisfactory answer if you ask them.
The problem with many "thinkers" as you call them (assuming you mean philospohers) is that they generally think and then come up with something unproveable and useless and designate it "truth". Science at least attempts to get rid of such nonsense. (It may be an
For interesting ideas as to what
This is great! Reverse engineered Borg built with animal brains! hehe.
We are the Borg.
It has recently be brought to our attention that you are attempting to reverse engineer proprietary Borg Technology. This will cease immediately. Failure to do so will result in nasty letters being sent by Legal Unit iii of paragraph 6 subsection MMCMXVII, calling for a cease-and-decist of this function.
Failure to comply with Legal Unit iii of paragraph 6 subsection MMCMXVII's request will result in immediate assimilation and subsequent assignment to the Legal Unit pool of Drones.
Further. We request that you immediately destroy all sites containing Electrospace Conduits to your site. Failure to do so will reault in immediate assimilation and subsequent assignment to the Legal Unit pool of Drones.
We additionally require that you direct us to any associates that are similarly engaging in the illegal reverse engineering of Borg Technology. Failure to do so will result in immediate assimilation and subsequent assignment to the Legal Unit pool of Drones.
Thank you for your co-operation and we look forward to working with you in the future.
Please prepare for assimilation,
ii of III of the party of the first part
Legal Contact Unit
Unimatrix 0
Borg Space
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Why can people not accept that?
It's just a bit torturous to transplant the brain of a creature and start giving it inputs that don't really resemble how it's supposed to work. What do you think the chances are that the impulses that are being sent to the brain are causing it pain, and it's reacting to that. I don't think I like the prospect of my sight and smell being replaced with raw electrical inputs...sounds like we'd be immersing these little creatures in one unending acid trip.
How, I have to wonder, do we define cyborg. The traditional SF term, which means a melding of man (woman?) and machine is satisfied in the abstract by people who walk down the street yammering at the air because they have a hands-free cell phone.
In the more concrete, Christopher Reeves is clearly part machine (without artificial respiration, he would die, though he's gotten better at breathing on his own for short periods). So, we have to ask ourselves, at what point does medical assistance create a cyborg? Is it only when the result is, in some way, fast, stronger or "better" than an average human, or is it when the human and the machine rely on eachother to exist?
Must be "The Day the Earth Stood Still" because Gort was the name of the robot and not mentioned in the AoD Necronomicon cemetary incantation.
I am NOT a geek... I am NOT a geek...
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
I am NOT a geek... I am NOT a geek...
.sig. ;)
.sig.
You know, I was almost ready to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that, despite a general non-geekiness, you just happened to have that one general bit of geek movie knowledge. Then I got to your
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
There are two _____.
HAR-COURT! Harcourt Fenton Mudd, you've been over eating again and drinking....
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I am fluffy of borg, resistance is futile.
Best Slashdot Co
I suspect this is being done for the sake of time travel. It is well known that if machines want to travel back in time they need to be hidden inside a biological organism like a human body. These machines are working on cyborg research so that someday they will be able to travel through time to steal motor cycles, wear black leather jackets and kill their enemies.
You will be able to tell who they are by their thick Austrian accents and their slow monosylabic speech patterns.
----------------------------
How do you explain to them why you set it off?
Have you ever been to any thirdworld-like countries where they are skeptical?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Star Trek isn't real. You do know that, don't you?
They have had machines with living components ever since The Flintstones!
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
I may still get to acutally become the 6-million dollar man.....
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Wow, that's a scary thought because I can completely see the consumer demand for a "real" dog that doesn't leave a mess, eat, and can be shut off (paralyzed/hibernation). Once someone starts to get serious about something like this and the demand is high enough then politicians get bought and protesters are removed/ridiculed in the media. This could easily happen in techno-phillic Japan, with their dog renting services and strict no-pet policies in most buildings.
Lets hope doggie AI is advanced before this becomes feasable and profitable.
Maybe he's a fan of Descartes whom, if memory serves, suggested that the pineal gland served as the bridge between mind and body.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
And any religion provides an answer besides "Because"?
"God" is not an answer; the term is merely a label applied in lieu of a proper explanation, and usually signifying lack of further intent to search for an explanation. Hence, phrases like "Act of God" and "God moves in mysterious ways" get applied instead of answering possibly unanswerable questions. It's the ultimate excuse.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
like in Snow Crash. There's just something very appealing about nuclear powered bionic pit bulls that can run at supersonic speeds.
The cats wouldn't stand a chance...
If they changed the brain out with Bill Gates' brain.. I can hear the scientist's memo's now:
"knee-jerk reaction is the same, but instead of light, it reacts to large sums of money..."
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arcane for life
I don't know about the rest of you, but I want to keep the bio out of mechanical.
-----
crazy dynamite monkey
Just wire some logic into one of those realdolls (realdolls.com? or something. i'm at work and afraid to pull it up...).
Then you could have the ultimate sex machine.. or something closer to Woody Allen's Sleeper.
Jason
Yes, I've been to a thirdworld-like country and set off the alarms. They generally search that part of my body, see the scar, and decide it's ok.
It came out fine, thanks. Took a year to heal fully, and it'll always be a little weaker than the other one, but it works, which is one HELL of a lot better than the state it was in after the accident.
-drin
Of course, it depends on whose definition you use. By many technical standards cyborgs are already here:
:)
A cyborg is a cybernetic mechanism, a hybrid of machine and organism
Or this one...
(1) an organism with a machine built into it with consequent modification of function; (2) an organism which is part animal and part machine.
By this definition, approximately 10% of the U.S. population (I don't have figures for other countries, sorry...) are already cybernetic. Take my own situation, for example. A motorcycle accident two years ago left me with a right proximal humerus made of chromium steel and titanium. In other words, I have a cybernetic shoulder. You can tell to look at it, and it functions completely normally, but it's there.
And yes, I set off the metal detectors in airports...
-drin
Or dogs that have bees in their mouths, so that when they bark they spit bees trained to seek di-nitro toluene at you. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Eels are members of the kingdom animalia, so they are animals in the scientific meaning of the word, but the normal english meaning doesn't necessarily include them. Or, at least one of the normal English meanings doesn't include them. My webster's gives "mammal" as one of the meanings of animal. I can also see meanings that include all land animals (birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians) to the exclusion of fish.
If I tell you a dog is not a fish, you'd think I was on crack. If I tell you a whale is not a fish, you'd think I was telling you something that you already knew. "If a whale were not a fish, no one would feel the need to say it isn't" (my english professor booth). So English allows that whales are fish. Hebrew allows (or did) that bats are birds.
But anyway, I must be off, so that I can go register petdeb.org.
I'd be afraid if they ever hooked up maybe a worker ant's brain to one of these things...
- [grunby]
with a live dog's brain?
Blender And Linux Fan
I am Eel of Borg, resistance is futile!
You and your machines will be lampreyed.
BTW
AYBABTU
Reality is just a clever Hack, and the Planck constant is the refresh rate.
They're not as simple as you make them out to be. If they were, you'd see perfect replicas of all limbs by now. Check out this Design News article dated a couple of months ago.
Artificial limbs are still being perfected, either in the area of materials or design. Up to now, artificial joints had to be replaced every few years due to wear. A new plastic has been recently developped to increase the lifespan of these devices.
bart
I'm disappointed that there are no pictures of the robot.. the idea is very funny, though.
-- The ballad of arrivederci
just like in the "dark ages" of western civilisation, horrible things were done and repeated many times: horrible tortures, the catholic church, millions of innocents suffering at the hands of "god" - their local noble etc ad nauseum.
I agree... we should revamp or re-invent computing as soon as possible: we know many of the current mistakes and problems and their causes. However, as knowledge is spread, the rest of them will realize that animals are friends and not food; of course many of these realizations will come as billions die of starvation.... but hey... evolution will continue despite technology.
enjoy now while it lasts, because next has the potential to be very different......
... of course I'm sure PETA will catch wind of this sooner or later.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
God 1, Cyborg 1
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
When I was little and I had no sense, I took a wiz on an electric fence
:)
I actually saw a guy do this a long time ago. He screamed.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
> Wait until the wheeled light-seeking eels rule the planet with cruel inhuman efficiency.
Oh man, can I use that as a sig? That is the weirdest statement I have seen in a long time.
Perp
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
I wonder if he used his sonic screwdriver...
--
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
This page has an awesome pic of that remote control roach made in Japan in, what, 1998? I guess that doesn't count as a cyborg...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I think I would define a cyborg as more having the electromechanical parts attached in a non (easily) removable way.
Digital watches would not make a person a cyborg - though a pacemaker would.
The question is wether a prosthetic limb would, as such a device is removeable. Comments?
Physicists are said to stand on one another's shoulders while programmers stand on one another's toes.
Well, none of these new cyborg technologies would be of any use for me; if I had a rat-brain-powered vacuum, my dog or cat would eat it immediately.
Does PETA do anything, but be annoying on these issues?
Yeah its cool having wasps and bees that hunt down diseases.
Imagine being at an airport and seeing some smelly lady get carried away by a swarm of giant stink-wasps!
Klowner
As frightening as this prospect is, it may allow us some glimpse of what it really DOES take to give an organism true sentience, and weather or not a 'soul' is inherint in that. It is entirely possible that the brainstem is all it takes, since the organism was actually born at least somewhat naturally. Will this change when we begin to synthesize brain tissue? There is indeed SOMETHING to consciousness, which we have yet to put a finger on, and it would be fascinating to find out where the line is drawn. Of course personally I'd rather wonder than face the prospect of the 'perfect police force'... *shudder*
I can't wait until cyborg gf's...no more flowers, no more jewelry, and you can turn them off when they get annoying ;)
Or she could turn you off.
I can just see the average cyborg couple having a fight... rolling and wrestling around on the floor, each desperately trying to reach the other's "off" switch.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Doctor: "Please drop your trousers and bend over, Mr. Johnson - this won't hurt a bit..."
Patient: "Um, doctor, what are you doing with that wasp? HEY!!!!!!!"
--
Will we have to get an annoying niece and her dog that would help Inspector Gadget out, while he bumbles along?
I mean, the array of gadgets in the story just wasn't impressive:
- Go-Go-Gadget Eel
- Go-Go-Gadget Wasp
- Go-Go-Gadget Bee
- Go-Go-Gadget Moth Antennae
- Go-Go-Gadget Mouse Brain
I'd be embarassed if those were mine.Wait a minute... Homo Erectus could get at the marrow the meat eaters left behind by cracking heavy marrow bones with a stone hand axe - which started this whole mess!
Richard Dawkins wrote a neat book called The Extended Phenotype(q.v.). Is a spider a cyborg because it uses a web?
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
In the future they'll just fire your body.
Just wondering what the implications are of introducing some of these bacteria used to find toxic plumes and such into a foriegn environment? Will they take over and the landscape will glow with a scary luminescient? (Sp?) And I wonder what would happen to the ecosystem... will it become imbalanced? Then again I'm guessing a toxic plume would be pretty harmful to the environment as it is... but if we deployed bacteria by the billions over a large area just to check for the presence of some toxic substance... Anyways just a thought...
Oh, sure, you think it's interesting now. Wait until the wheeled light-seeking eels rule the planet with cruel inhuman efficiency.
If you don't want my koalas, baby, don't shake my eucalyptus tree.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Go go Gadget Legs!! E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Oh please, let me be the first to p*ss on a circuitboard wired up to the mains.
So... are we worried about pain relief for a lamprey larvae that's to die? They can't be that squiggly that you can't pin them down to keep them from moving.
That's about as dumb as using an alcohol prep pad on the arm of someone who is to die by lethal injection.
This was the plot of a movie that got MST3K'd a couple years back. I think it was called "The Deadly Bees". Any way that's not really a cybernetic organism if all you're doing is training an animal to do something it normally wouldn't. However Dr. Evil's LASER equipped sea bass would count as a cyborg but the fembots being completely robotic wouldn't.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
They'll just freeze when winter comes.
with humpy love,
with humpy love,
humpmonkey
Perhaps this is how the Borg started out?
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
I welcome them...killing these cops wouldn't be murder in the normal sense....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
For the people who can't understand this weird dribble, here's a close translation:
0 486121 --> Long reply to a JonKatz editorial about the way his posts helped to define the Brave New World we're all gonna live in.
:)
MGR-0018: 4b6e6f636b2c206b6e6f636b21 --> First Post!
LJW-7790: 57686f2069732074686572653f --> Rant against stupid first posts.
MGR-0018: 48756d616e --> Goatse.cx link cleverly disguised as a DeCSS link.
LJW-7790: 48756d616e2c2077686f3f --> Microsoft bashing...
MGR-0018: 48756d616e206e6f7420616e796d6f7265212048612048612
There ya go
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
NYTimes, Jan 25, 2043
This is a dark day for the NYPD. As argued by the purists all along, the EelCops have gone loco and have started rampage random shootings. The elderly were shocked when they found these manical cyborg cops were not helping them cross the streets.
The Monkey Swat Team had to be called in to prevent furthur damage. These eel cops could only be subdued by the superior gymnastics of the swat team.
Thank god for these cybernetic monkeys. But wait, who will save us when these monkies go ape ?!?
A concerned journalist.
See this article for more information on Einstein's brain.
As a prosthetist myself, there have been several advances in our community since the peg leg. With each technological advancement, we have become a step closer to recreating the complex structure of the body. I believe with the intergration of cybernetics into the field of limb replacement the possiblities will be endless! Remaining biological structures being intergrated with machinery to edge even closer to the real thing. I hope in the future the fields will continue to merge.
MGR-0018: 4b6e6f636b2c206b6e6f636b210 486121
LJW-7790: 57686f2069732074686572653f
MGR-0018: 48756d616e
LJW-7790: 48756d616e2c2077686f3f
MGR-0018: 48756d616e206e6f7420616e796d6f7265212048612048612
and will be better off for it.
Although I will cringe at the thought of slashdot being a chat room, as you have indicated.
AHHHHHH! The joys of "Cybersex"!
"Laws are like sausages, it is best not to see them being made" Otto Von Bismarck
It's probably a movement (ha!) to save trees.
Still, this may be a way of cooling CPU's!
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"I have delegated it to a pod of Humans, unit MGR-0018"
Some day, in the no-so-distant future, all posts on slashdot will look like this:
MGR-0018: 4b6e6f636b2c206b6e6f636b210 486121
LJW-7790: 57686f2069732074686572653f
MGR-0018: 48756d616e
LJW-7790: 48756d616e2c2077686f3f
MGR-0018: 48756d616e206e6f7420616e796d6f7265212048612048612
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This depends on how you define cyborg. Is the definition "A living brain with a robot body," or is it, "A mixture of living and technological parts that make a functioning whole?" If you ask me, the latter definition makes more sense, and therefore I submit that cyborgs have been around for a long time, at least since the first feasible artificial hearts were successfully implanted; and I'm sure someone could come up with examples that predate that
Yours,
Bob
All the best,
--Bob
...knows that Thad Starner of MIT was the first.
The only certainty is entropy.
So which body part that is bing replaced by the machines contains the soul or the inbourn since of morality?
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Hey, if this keeps up, we'll eventually start using human brains to store data and solve complex problems!
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
I can't wait until cyborg gf's...no more flowers, no more jewelry, and you can turn them off when they get annoying ;)
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
I submit that every human who wears glasses to enhance their vision, is or was a cyborg. I further submit that humans who used technology as far back as the stone age were cyborgs. They used technology to enhance or survive their environment.
Every discovery or advancement merely enhances the natural affinity toward technology that every human has.
There is no cyborg, Humanity is just neurologically wired to interact with technology to adjust our environments...
Black and grey are both shades of white.
I would only if my original limb was going to go, but not a healthy limb. Depends on how good the replacements are :)
But can they make a human run in slow motion while making funny bionic man sounds?
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
I mean, people already sell /. accounts, no? I'm nearly at 25, where the auto bonus kicks in, and I don't like it. My 'all your base'-type posts will get the same rating as a useful but undermoderated post...
Anyways, the point in the original post was that Prosthetics are a mature technology, already, with the major advances already made, or getting there. But the real neat manufactured stuff is just getting started... can you give me an example of one successful artificial organ? I can't think of any, though my bet is on a psuedo-pancreas thing to be the first breakthrough- inject insulin regularly into a regulated sac and it adjusts to handle rapid fluctuations in blood sugar, like when you eat a dozen pixie sticks washed down with a gulp of Coke... a minor improvement on the current technology, but they're also producing patches that can deliver medicines through the skin with micro-needles, eliminating the pain of injection... mix the two ideas, and you could carry a fanny pack full of insulin around your abdomen, and such. Progress is cool, and the medical technology is finally starting to catch up with the sci-fi ideas of wired nerves and such...
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
So I found this article interesting, and would agree that this is a pretty big step forward in Cybernetics. I mean, they're almost to the point of keeping brain slices alive for weeks at a time now, and using them in sensor technology! Though when it comes to replacing human organs, my money is on biotech. Maybe we'll have replacement livers, kidneys and hearts by the time I'm decrepit and in need of them, who knows? But I'm signing a donor card for now, so I can still be useful in the event of an accident. We need a bit more work until we have replacements as good as those that come from donors, yet. So be a responsible citizen and sign your donor card, and tell your family about it.
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
Finally we could save our soldiers and send super ninja moths after the Chinese government and Saddam SET US UP THE WASPS stops (takes a deep breathe)
going out of stories sale
360 degrees of Karma
Sharks with frickin' "Laser" beams strapped to their frickin' heads.
Or, maybe just some ill-tempered sea bass.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
These aren't implants, and you won't jump buildings, but it looks like you could jump over a car...
Power Skip
Sure, PETA will undoubtedly swing into full action as the previous guy who has FP on this discussion mentioned, but it looks as if scientists have already been doing this for a while now. I doubt that PETA could do much more than be annoying on this issue.
What will be interesting and exciting is having dirty rats going out in hords in front of our soldiers sweeping minefields and checking for booby traps. I would think it would be a lot cheaper to breed a bunch of vermin to be used as cannon fodder than build big minesweeping equipment.
Reminds me of BattleCats from SNL. ;)
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that using these devices that can translate smells into mechanical movement (or whatever else you want, I guess), in conjunction with the iSmell (may it rest in piece), would make the beginnings of a nice Rube Goldberg invention?
Well, yeah, it was his originally, but he gave it to Ben with the express purpose of having it given to his son. So, it was really Luke's at the time of the unfortunate incident.
OK, drug-sniffing robots are cool and all, but when can I have a medical droid give me a new right hand when my dad cuts it off? (Lost a perfectly good lightsabre, too, dammit.)
You can engineer the organisms to eat almost anything.
Spam.
I want them to eat spam.
E-mail spam.
Get on it.
--Blair
P.S. There was a book I read about 25 years ago about an old man who filled his grandson's squirtgun with moldy grape juice and used it to dissolve 9-track database tapes at some MegaCorp's computer center, in order to get revenge on them. I think it was a Donald Westlake book. Web searches are turning up nil.
This article in wired in 1997 discusses cyborgism.
There was another essay, also in wired, discussing the fact that we are already cyborgs as a species, due to thinks like Lasik, pacemakers, sub-cue drug supplies, internal hearing aids, contact lenses, digital watches and the ilk.
The intersection of science fiction and reality is always fascinating. How often are inventors/researchers inspired by books/movies/tv shows to invent what they do?
Of course, now I'll probably get modded down as Offtopic. I fear no moderation! I am a man, not a number!
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Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
What an intresting little assination tool.... Just simply train 10,000's of bees on the sent of the target and let them loose.... What a scary way to die though....
By the way, anyone have any thing of Bill Gates?
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
His name was Steve Austin, I think he was killed fighting big foot or testing a rocket sled. I forget it was way back in the 70's. Oh yea, he only cost $6 million, what a deal.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
I'd have to say that a cyborg is someone who:
A) Has electronic body parts, like an arm, foot, heart, whatever
B) (Most importantly) Can control their electonic parts with their brain and no other means. That means you can move your robotic fingers just like you would move your real fingers, by thinking about it.
Reading that article gives me the creeps. I'd just as soon keep my biological tissues cooked and edible and my machines cold and inorganic. Using rat brains to run Seti? ewww
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$ chown -R us:us yourbase
...that cyborgs are useless until they have positronic brains, can make vast quantities of black coffee, debug thier own kernels and give blowjobs.
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bash: help: Don't be so weak.
I have to agree. Testing on humans is definately the way to go. It'll finally solve the problem of human overpopulation.
><)))*>
In the beginning there was darkness... or was there light... no, there was darkness. Anyway, then Man came on the scene and verily did he create a great spacefaring empire and unto him... you know I'm almost positive there was darkness in the beginning.
--The Book of Endurium (from Starflight by Binary Systems)
Can you imagine how many doughnuts a cyborg cop could eat? There'd be none left for the rest of us!
Cyborgs already exist in the world. Look at people with pacemakers or prostetic limbs. These are examples of flesh being merged with technology. I'm all for it just as long as no-one fucks with my brain. ;o)
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, "I never repeat myself."
"If the researchers pasted a bunch of bacteria on a chip, the microcircuitry could detect the luminescence and send a signal to a remote display." If they made a chip small enough to interface with a single bacterium, wouldn't you have a nano-bot?
Eels today, humans tomorrow.
A half-human creature with the body of a machine is a sort of "unholy Grail" for the left, because such a creature would have the intellect of a human being without the soul. It would be a "born" sociopath, lacking the inborn moral sense that sets humanity apart from the animals.
Such an "entity" would be invaluable in enforcing totalitarian laws. It would have none of what the leftists snidely call "human weakness" -- what those of us still proud to be human call "mercy" or "justice", or even (dare I engage in crimethink?!) "fear of God".
The Clintons and Janet Reno must be rubbing their hands in glee. Some crude "version 1.0" of their new "enforcers" may even be ready in time for their next attempt to seize power.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
As frightening as this prospect is, it may allow us some glimpse of what it really DOES take to give an organism true sentience, and weather [sic] or not a 'soul' is inherint [sic] in that.
I'll forgive your spelling, because you've so shrewdly zeroed in on the most important point here: "Science" hasn't yet accounted for intelligence. They haven't explained what it is, nor how it works, nor where it came from -- and they've most certainly given up on even asking "why?"
Don't get me wrong: Science is fine for engineering and suchlike. Science has provided us with many valuable conveniences and useful machines. I'll never deny the worth of what they've done. Nevertheless, I won't be such a fool as to put some clever tinkerers in charge of my destiny. They have their place, but it's got nothing to do with any of the big questions facing us as a nation, nor as individuals. Only religion can take on the real issues, the ones that require faith, an open mind, and honest recognition of the fact of God's unmistakable Hand in His own Creation. Clever mechanical tricks won't cut it.
Let the engineers do engineering, let the thinkers think, and let the rulers rule. This is how it must be.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
These experiments envision a range of applications -- using bacteria attached to computer chips to map pollutants, insects as part of sensors to detect land mines, chemical weapons and narcotics, and rodent brains to help identify new medicines.
So that's how we got Viagra.
Figures.
What if the soul of the eel lives on within the machine? Imagine if, years into its career as a successful land-mine detector, it begins to recover its chemically erased memories of how it was captured by humans in the open sea.
Imagine the flashbacks as the eel remembers its surgery, waking up on a hospital bed under the glaring white lights and lab masks, helpless, unable to scream as it is fitted into the chest of a metal monster....
The eel will have its revenge, tonight, 7/10 central...
He will simply: extract a human brain and brain-stem, place them in the neccessary liquid(they need to survive long), CONNECT THE NERVES NECCESSARY TO CONTROL A SEMI-FUNCTIONAL EAR AND 5 TOGGLE-BUTTONS(FINGER-NERVES)ATTACHED TO TONE-GENERATING-DEVICES, THEN WATCH AS THE BRAIN CREATES MUSIC.
====EINSTEIN'S BRAIN STILL EXISTS IN A JAR(PORTIONS OF IT)====
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