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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."
I have a friend who was in a near fatal auto accident several months ago (not her fault, btw). She is now paralyzed from the chest down and has only limited control of her hands. Before the accident, she was one of the best competitive video game players that I've ever had the pleasure to know. Now, almost 6 months after the accident, she can play turn-based games OK, but does not have the fine control for the fast action FP type games. It would be so wonderful if something like this could give that ability back to her.
Phoenix
So far I rely on pen and paper to remember everything... I mean seriously, I have a lot of trauma in my past and the way my brain dealt with it was to just become so forgetful that I can barely remember what I did the week before.
I'd really like some safe, secure way to "back my brain up" as it were, besides filling albums with photos to job my memory.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
"Turning Thought Into Action"
That's the CyberKinetics catch-phrase.
CyberKinetics, the company mentioned in the article, has implanted chips into monkeys that enable them to play video games using brain waves alone.
Not only is this a miracle for paralyzed people, but I predict that brain waves will be able to control bionic arms and legs. It's only a matter of biofeedback learning and a chip capable of measuring ten or so distinct brainwave patterns.
Perhaps it was 1984? But as I remember it, the Party had never been able to develop a technique to discover what another human being was thinking. The inside of the human mind remained untouchable; it was the last sanctuary from their totalitarianism. Hence their reliance on propaganda and torture as cruder methods of mind control...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
What happens when it isn't just simple chips that can be interfaced with simple nerves, but instead we're interfacing entire systems with major sensory I/O?
If I'm able to translate and store information hot off my optic nerve, and translate and store vibrations picked up in my ear canal, could I be charged as a "Thief" or a "Pirate" for sampling a CD in a store or watching a movie in a theater, and "remembering" it with augmentation?
Gargoyle Steve Mann had some well-documented troubles in a similar vein - getting his equipment stripped and thrashed at airports, getting hassled at places with no-camera policies. But when, inevitably, the equipment becomes so small and flexible it can't be detected without other equipment when implanted or integrated into clothes or flesh, what will be done? When an organic camera - a pair of real human eyes - is used, what is the legality of 'no taping' or 'no camera' laws? Etc.
I would get a chip, in fact, I hope and pray I can get one before I die. I'm still quite young, so I might see the day.
The killer application will, as always, be sex and games. Who wouldn't want to experience fully immersive games and "recreational" programs so real you'd have to build some sort of system into it distinguish it from "reality". And mimicing reality is only the beginning, it's the unreal possibilities I want to experience in full lucidity with all my senses.
One problem is, would you dare be an early adaptor? What if when Version 2.0 of said brain interface comes around you can't upgrade because the damage is done to the wetware. As new, better, versions would be installed in young people, we'd label older persons with their now defunct chips obsolete. Perhaps it's just an extension of age discrimination and not much worse than what we have now, still, it makes one think.
Of course, I wonder if someone is working on a socket to which bone and skin will graft. If you can get tissue to seal around the housing for the wires, it would make it even easier for people with the implant to live normally.
When augmentation becomes common, society will shape itself around it. When the automobile was new a man was required to walk in front of it with a red flag to warn other people. While it might sound like a urban legend, I assure you it's true. It was because the horse carriage manufacturers lobbied to get the so called "Red Flag Act" passed to protect their interests. Said act was in effect between 1865 and 1896.
There will come a day when augmentation, brain interfaces, will be common and not having them would be like removing a part of your person. Before that there will be a lot of legislation and zealotry. It is IMO however completely inevitable.
How many words per minute could I type if I didn't actually have to move my fingers?
To say nothing of having an imbeded PDA in my head reminding me of appointments I'm missing.
What I *really* want is image recognition tied into my vision so I can instantly remember the name anyone I've ever seen before.
Wired 10.09: Vision Quest
"A half century of artificial-sight research has succeeded. And now this blind man can see."
The patient lost his sight to accidents. By inserting brain implants and connecting them to cameras he can 'see' well enough to drive again. The dataflow direction is reversed but the implementation is the same.
This technology is interesting, but as long as it is reliant on sticking spiked electrodes into your brain to reach neurons, it's not going to be that useful. If/when nano-tech develops to the point where it can be used to effectively interface with large volumes of neurons, with minimal intrusion into the physical brain, then we might see some cool/frightening stuff happening.
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.
I wouldn't get too excited yet. No one, and I mean no one, has anything close to a satisfactory microelectrode implant for neural recording that works more than two years in monkeys. Most of them are largely defunct within a few months. The Cyberkinetics implants are among the better choices out there, they can achieve some recording out to a year. They may, as is, do a lot to help certain patient populations for their limited durations. The patients are all making sacrifices at this point - I hope none of them think they will derive any benefit from these implants in a year. Their sacrifice may help others like them in the future.
Once trapped patients and quadrapelegics are helped, and stable long-term recordings become more common, they could progress outside the patients. Probably 10 or 15 years from now, but only if things go well. And there are a LOT of ways things can go badly. It is quite a brave attempt by John Donoghue and his colleagues.
Not to argue your entire post, but I would like to point out some things you said in the following paragraph, because I think that although you've read the Bible and are being (rightly) critical, you've missed the point of the verse.
As far as I know, so far noone's asking you to accept some particular government to get a simple medical implant.
Ah if life were that simple! You're right, nobody explicitly does such things, but implicitly, the consent is given. At the risk of ending this thread (!) nobody voted for hitler to kill 6 million jews either, yet the implicit consent was given by society. The verse warns that it's under this environment that the mark is given.
Noone asked that you change religions to get any other surgery, you know.
Again, not explicitly. But what if the path society is following starts to contradict your religion? It may mean nothing to you or me to participate in a capitalist "winner take all" society, but what does it mean to someone that feels that this isn't the right path? One could always move, but remember that the in Revalation the government is global.
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.
Of course not, but try living without a credit card... or how about a bank account... these are enormous amounts of control in the hands of the very few.
The sky isn't falling, but until we get our act together, technology will give plenty to us, all the while taking plenty away.