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Engineered Enhancers Closer Than You Think
Roland Piquepaille writes "Happy 2035! Thirty years from now, we'll use bionic eyes giving us 'zoom vision' for faster reactions. Nanobots injected in our bloodstream will complement our immune system. Artificial muscles built with electroactive polymers will help us to be stronger and faster. So you think it's science fiction? Not at all. You'll see that some people are so convinced that this kind of human enhancements will happen that they predict than in a few decades, all sporting events 'will be split up to accommodate enhanced and unenhanced athletes.'"
This article doesn't link to Roland's website! WAKE UP!
Mod parent -1 Troll
I can go down to the local crystal shop as well and find people that are convinced the unicorns and fey folk are coming back - this doesn't make it any less fictitious.
Sadly, in this world, wishing don't make it so.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
I wish I could mod this +10,000 - Says what needed to be said.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
His name is the link to his website, suckassssssssss.
There was the Wired article and Slashdot articles about the Wired article talking about a gentleman who has used a system set up by William Dobelle. This system uses a grid of electrodes on the surface of the cortex that generates phosphenes or perceptual points of light. What is not accomplished here is any real correlation with the points of light and the grid of stimulating electrodes. Furthermore, the phosphenes are not consistent among many other problems and potential problems with the Dobelle system. Also, it should be noted that William Dobelle was not granted permission to use this system in the United States and thus had to move to Portugal where he has these systems implanted in patients and he has not been entirely honest with his patients and what they can expect from these systems. Finally, the approach with surface mount electrodes requires significantly higher current to stimulate the cortex (think complications of epilepsy, and his patients have experienced seizures) than with other systems like Richard Normann's system which uses an implantable electrode array.
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Would you care to define how you are using the term "dimension" here? Has string theory revealed that turtles see in seven dimensions?
No, read up on image math. There is an extensive literature with respect to color vision and color perception. I seem to remember a pretty good website talking about image math and mathematical dimensionality with respect to a great program NIH Image, nee Image J.
Specifically with respect to turtles, they have a number of completely separate image processing channels over and above primate vision whereas we (humans) are limited to three separate channels with one channel piggybacking upon another channel. In fact, one way turtles do this is by placing little oil droplets on the end of their photoreceptors that function as additional spectral filters.
You're either way, way, way beyond me or you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
No offense intended, but I do suspect the former.
Again, what's your point? Human eyes are a subset of the set of every eye's capability? No kidding.
Human eyes are not a subset of every eyes capability. There are eyes for instance that are organized very differently from ours. For example, take a look at the morphology of the octopus eye. Very interesting and effective design and excellent optics, but the octopus retina in completely inverted with respect to the mammalian retina.
I'm also disturbed by your claim that other eyes have been evolving for "longer"....
Well, go back and look at a timeline of evolution. There are organisms whose lineage is much older than the human lineage. Also around the Jurassic period, there was a point at which the common mammalian ancestor went underground and mammalians "lost" their eyes. When they developed again, they did so by co-opting certain visual circuitry and piggybacking the rod pathway on top of the cone pathway. Thus, human eyes (retinas) are evolutionarily "younger" than other retinas in for example zebrafish or amphibians like the salamander or turtle. (did you also know that those organisms can fix their retinas when damaged even though they are more complex than ours?).
which is that improvements aren't free once your reach (near) optimality.
Again, you are making the assumption that human eyes have been optimized to the best they can possibly be. That is an error of thinking because while some things are truly impressive, they are not completely optimal.
This is assuming you don't throw the whole thing out and start anew with inorganic technology, which can probably be made vastly superior with work
Actually, biological photoreceptors are capable of responding to a single photon of light. This is something that inorganic technologies have so far not been able to duplicate without a not insignificant array of hardware that takes up much more space and arguably is not as sensitive or precise as biological photoreceptors.
I hear this line a lot, usually supported by "look, there's this one thing that a dolphin can do as well as a human", completely ignoring the fact that we do much, much, much more than "one thing" well.
You are thinking from truly a egocentric (human centric) viewpoint and not a scientific standpoint. There are capabilities that other organisms have that we are just learning about. Dolphins ability to process information in ultrasound, map their world and even see through things using ultrasound. Elephants communicating in infrasound is another thing that comes to mind.
Humans aren't the best at everything universally, but there is nothing on this planet that even comes close for general purpose cognition.
Use specific language and you will make more sense. Say something like "humans are capable of logical thought and applying reason and strategy to problem solving to greater degree than other known organisms" and I will agree.
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1) Augmented memory. No more forgetting names or passwords. Though it does add some real interesting issues for DRM (can you force me to forget a movie after remembering it X times)
I find choline and piracetam works remarkably well for this purpose. At higher dosages, I find my memory can be enhanced to the point of being photographic; furthermore, it leaves my mind unnaturally limber and quick. The effects remind me of what I like best about dextroamphetamine (or even low dose methamphetamine), minus the body load, addiction potential, and obvious "speedy" effect.
It's classed as a nootropic drug, and fits the bill perfectly.