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Implant a Chip in Your Head
vic_1066 writes "Brain chips sound pretty Orwellian, but the tech has come a long way (Soul eating registration required) in the past few years. Not that I'll be signing up anytime soon to get my head sliced open just for kicks, but if I was massively paralyzed this would be welcome news.
If you get a chance, check out Cyberkinetics Inc."
People that accept these will likely believe it will turn them into Jake 2.0. Sadly, it's more likely to turn them into human RFID tags.
There's nothing new there, but, it's just so surprising that there's so little the world can offer to SciFi litterature, but so much SciFi can offer to reality.
My only real question in all of this is where is it headed?(mind the pun there) Are all of us tech geeks going to be required to be able to "jack" into the computer systems we administrate in the near future? Will programmers start designing software that allows us to see the layout of our network graphicly in our heads as we sit semi-concious in chairs? Maybe not, but it is a possibilty.
My curiousity is when will this sort of thing become competitve enough that it will start to be asked for on job applications? When will it get to the point that it is no longer an option but a requirement in order to administer large networks?
This sort of thing is straight out of movies, like Johny Mnemonic even from role playing games like Shadowrun.
If this sort of thing comes to fruition would you have a chip installed in your head?
I know I would.
But I don't know many others that would comprimise their bodies for a career. Would you?
The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
BEware! This is the sign of the beast! The end is near! BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! THE END IS NEAR!!!!
Disclaimer: I'm not particularly religious, but I did make a point to read the bible. (And the Koran, and several others.)
It seems to me like first of all, it clearly speaks of a mark, not of an implant deep inside your body. Second, what it speaks of there, is about accepting the rule of the antichrist and the social/economic structure that comes with it, not about merely getting a medical implant.
As far as I know, so far noone's asking you to accept some particular government to get a simple medical implant. Noone asked that you change religions to get any other surgery, you know. And noone has been so far asked to get a peg-leg to be allowed to conduct business, so, you know, I doubt they'll be required to get an implant against paralysis either.
I.e., relax. When someone starts asking you to sell your soul or give up some rights to get such an implant, _then_ you can start worrying. But until then, relax.
That said, as the old saying goes, "Jesus is OK, but his fanboys piss me off". Ever considered that going crackpot and seeing antichrist conspiracies everywhere might actually do more harm than good towards "saving souls"?
Even skipping over the "would I want to be associated to a group of conspiracy crackpots" question, it still just begs the question: "would I give a damn about being 'saved' by a god who's against getting a simple medical implant?"
Sorry, but I have to question how would such a deity count as 'good'. Requiring people to basically just forego medical help and stay paralyzed, just to prove their faith? Doesn't sound like a benevolent deity to me. In fact, it sounds closer to "lawful evil" than anything else.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why therefore do people submit science stories with a link to NYT when they could just link to the source material? This is the frigging internet. You can do just as much research as the press-release-editing typewriter monkey at NYT can.
For instance, the facts in this story were reported six months ago on ScienceDaily , three months ago on Wired and dozens of other places that could be found in 20-30 seconds on googlage.
In summary, if you don't like NYT's registration, don't link to it. You are advertising for them.
</rant>
I want my brain to be powered by Dual G5's or may some old Dec Aplha cpu's. Yeah !!!
So you want the brain power of a mouse, or maybe a grasshopper?
Dare to dream dude.
Alright so I'm a recovering Geek so maybe my opinions don't count (I used to spend 8-10 hours a day on a computer in some manifestation, now I just use the thing to write essays and listen to music ... at work I read slashdot because I have nothing else to do). I think that the idea of chip implentation holds some ostounding possibilities but I feel it's a Pandora's Box. Where do we stop? What if people decide to stop living their life in reality and choose to just plug in and have fantasies fed straight in to the brain.
... the original meaning comes from Greek theatre and it was actually mask) and it is often difficult to get beyond those masks, which is necessay for a real connection to be made between two individuals. Thus the "plugged-in" notion would create another layer of illusion that we would have to deal with in order to make connections.
The underlying core of being a human being is the ability to make connections with other human beings, thus the next logical question becomes are the connections that could be made "jacked-in" to an artificial reality be considered real. In my estimation it would be "possible" but quite a bit more difficult. As it is we all live behind masks (hence the term persona was adapted from Greek
Another danger that I think exists with these sorts of interface are eluded to by Phillip K. Dick in some of his speeches and philosophical panderings; Dick asserts that at birth we are not "human beings" rather we exist as entities that have the potential to become so. He goes on to argue that due to the advances that are occuring within the computer world that our definition of who exactly can be a "human being" will need to be redifined. In essence Dick is attempting to assert the idea that we could have human-robots and robotic-humans. In other words, artificially created entities could attain personhood while homo sapiens could degenerate in to cold machines that are not human anymore.
Those criticsm being said, I think the technology has some amazing potential. I just don't plan to be having anyone or anything jacked in to my cranium, I enjoy my insanity and would like to keep it to myself thank you very much!
"Brain chips sound pretty Orwellian"
/. Is there some reason the science can't stand on its own and requires fearmongering to make it worthy?
Such phrasing is apparently all it takes to get something like this into
"First clinical trials planned for 2004."
They don't even know if it'll work. And if it does, these things are no more Orwellian than a joystick. RTFA and then act like you did, and stop submitting/releasing ScienceFUD. If you need a fix of Brain Eating Monsters, go turn on SciFi Channel or something.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B