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Human Blood For Electrical Power
burner writes "A Japanese research team has developed a fuel cell that runs on blood without using toxic substances, opening the way for use in artificial hearts and other organs. The biological fuel cell uses glucose with a non-toxic substance used to draw electrons from glucose. So where should I have my laptop power port installed?"
Sheesh Apple wants $100.00 for an iBook battery, but that's cheap compared to tapping a vein.
On the other hand, I suppose you can replace your blood for less, and in less time.
We're totally bound to see Vampire robots!
-FweE-
What about a man's blood?
BENDER: Kill all humans.
human != man.
From reading the article, it seems like the substance used to draw electrons from glucose is a catalyst-type substance, therefore not depleting in the reaction and these could be useful for years without maintenance.
;)
If the substance was a reactant, Ghost in the shell -type high level maintenance would be taking it's first steps.
If the voltage was higher, AIs independent, energy resources low and Asimov's laws of robotics not in use, we could even see some Matrix-style battery usage
All 'where can I hook up my laptop', 'vampire, and 'matrix' jokes aside, this is really an amazing invention. If such a device was implantable, it could self-power a blood glucose monitoring device. Blood glucose too high? Run more blood through the fuel cell and burn up some glucose.
I would have worked that into something more poetic.
Perhaps
"Which is easier to carry? A spare battery for your apple, or a spare apple for a battery"
Why go to the gym? You don't just burn calories. You strengthen your muscles and help the cardiovascular system. I suppose the second one would be taken care of by this plug, because the heart doesn't care where the blood is going, only that it's going and needs to be replentished. But other muscles would not benefit at all from this. But the problem is even deeper than this. A significant drain on blood energy would seriously fuck with your body. Would you release endorphines from this? Would your body know to get out of breath? Would your heart rate increase? I dunno... it could be dangerous.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Looks like slaughterhouses could make a killing (pun not intended) out of this.
Everyone should just buy a hummer.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
I've heard that in the original script, that was originally the rationale for the machines creating the Matrix... to use our brains as a distributed information processing network. They decided the concept was too complex for audiences to understand, so it was scrapped in favor of the machines using us for electricity (which makes very little sense, as others have pointed out.)
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
Once upon a time, long, long ago, a neurologist said (approx) "We only know what 20% of the brain is used for." A reporter translated this into "We only use 20% of our brain".
Think of this the next time you read a news story.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
But the movie took it from the POV of the liberated humans. Without a good relationship with the robot overminds, they couldn't know that the possibility exists that the robots built the matrix for the survival of the human race, that the machines were acting as a child might when a parent has violent schizophrenia.