Slashdot Mirror
Warwick Gets a Few More Wires
teamhasnoi writes "CNN reports that a British university professor has been fitted with cyborg technology. (100 wires embedded in his wrist) This apparently enables his nervous system to be linked to a computer, encoding movements like wiggling fingers and feelings like shock and pain, and recorded for the first time. Is this the end of VCR+? Or the beginning of an (unholy) marriage of man and machine?" Warwick has been doing this for five years now.
R
Wired Article by Warwick is Here. It looks like his 1998 plans are coming to fruition.
"I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change. I will tell you why."
Check out The Register's coverage of Warwick. This guy is a publicity hound, with little (if anything) to show that justifies all this hype.
Despite the fact that some of you feel The Reg. to be unnecessarily sarcastic or (tongue and cheek) sensationalistic, I think they've hit it spot on with their take on Prof. Warwick. He seems to be pretty much into it for the 'look-at-me-I'm-original' factor, but he doesn't seem to have much scientific credibility when it comes right down to it. Here is a good Reg. analysis from 2000, after his the big story in Wired came out about him: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/29/9250.html.
His attempts to become a cyborg from what I understand consisted of little more than putting a chip in his body which would open a door as he walked towards it. How is this that different from: having the chip in your pocket, sticking it to your arm with some sort of patch, etc. My roommate's cat has a chip implanted in her to find her in the case of her running away. Is she a cyborg kitty??
As far as this new venture is concerned, Warwick seems to have the idea that using this kind of technology to help paralyzed is his idea, or has never been done. Think again, Professor Warwick (I really this is somewhat different but seems to be essentially the same idea, stimulating nerves to create movement in people struggling with paralysis...my point is merely that Warwick is not the brilliant loner on the revolutionary fronts of scientific acheivement that he makes himself out to be...there are people doing real science all over who don't need the gratification of being in the media--this is a non-story).
Check out this link for further information: http://www.kevinwarwick.org.uk/.
"Put forward in fiction, these ideas can be quite interesting, but to see these ideas put forward by someone who's supposed to be a serious theorist...."
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
I worked in the lab which built the door-opening, PC-booting stuff at Reading. What we didn't tell the countless media hacks was that he had the implant removed after a few weeks, and that a Smart Card in his back pocket was exactly what was opening the doors ;o)
He was/is, however, very competent at teaching Control Theory. He had me understanding Nyquist in a few weeks, which is saying something. Unfortunately, as I graduated, he seemed to have laid claim to work done by other people in the department, causing several good staff to leave.
It is a pity that Cybernetics is reduced by Warwick to robotic gizmos, when it should really be known as a meta-science or scientific philosophy. Its applicability is far beyond robots and just the technological, to business models, large-scale human behaviour, meteorology, etc., etc.