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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.
Captain Cyborg shoots down from the skys and enters the realm of bullshit...yet again! And what happens? the entire mainstream media decides he's obviously an expert in his field and listens!!!
Do they know the rest of the Cybernectics profession cringes with embarrassment every time Captain Cyborg appears on the back of a cereal packet???
We all know that little kids in Japan already have Sony Playstations grafted into their bodies.
Button sensors in fingertips, a video pipeline into the optic nerves, etc.
It's a big secret, but we all know they are doing it. The reason Sony can't provide a 1000x performance increase to the PS3 is because of the limitations of the human nervous system, not because of some silly thing like computing limitations. You just wait for umbilical attachments for kids so they can work in parallell.
"Mommy, Billy jumped off the couch after a dragon and hurt my belly button!"
I can just imagine the lawsuits.
We are Sony. You must be assimilated. Do not buy XBox, Do not buy Gamecube. Wait for PS3k
-Scott
Boy, did that movie suck?
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Warwick also hopes to wire himself up to a ultrasonic sensor, used by robots to navigate around objects, to give himself a bat-like sixth sense.
Hmm.. I've heard that when somebody loses one sense (sight, hearing, etc) the other senses grow stronger to compensate. So the obvious question is: Would this work the other way around? If you add a 'sixth sense' would the strength of your five basic senses be diminished? Would they become 'lazy'?
air and light and time and space
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.
From the register article:
"But wait, where there's a sponsor, there's a commercial opportunity. Tumbleweed, a specialist in secure communications, is providing the technology "vital to ensure the safe transmission of our nervous system signals via the internet," Captain Cyborg says"
They say they want to send "feelings" over the web.
I can't wait until they start sending out emotional spam. I haven't really bought into any of the "enlarge your penis" emails. But if they carry with them a great sense of inadequacy...
who knows?
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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/.