Slashdot Mirror
Remote Control for Humans?
FatMacDaddy writes "The SFGate is reporting on a remote control for manipulating humans through electrical stimulation of the inner ear nerves.The author of this article describes his experience with having a "remote control for humans" device used on him. The developers hope to use this with video games and other entertainment, but it might also be used as a weapon to disable people. An interesting read with perhaps some disturbing implications. Better get a second layer on those tinfoil hats!"
I guess it could be used as a weapon... if you could convince everyone to wear the required head-gear all the time...
they're called breasts.
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
That's odd...I always thought remote control humans were impossible. Besides, my voodoo dolls work just fine for the time being.
Microsoft is like...no, it's much worse.
This is old news from a few months back: http://www.forbes.com/business/innovators/2005/08/ 04/technology-remote-control-humans_cx_lh_0804remo tehuman.html
Obligatory Family Guy quote follows:
Stewie: Good day, shopkeep.
Chris: Good day shopkeep, I require a hand-operated buzzsaw capable of cutting through a human sternum.
Shopkeep: What?
Chris: It's for a school project, I'm some sort of student sent here for... oh blast what the devil do they study? uh... Latin class.
Shopkeep: Uhh, sorry kid, I can't sell power tools to minors.
Chris: Now look here you gore-bellied codpiece. Allow me to purchase the provisions I demand or I'll form your blue collar into a red one and-
Who the deuce are you? No I don't have any spare change. Where the hell would I keep it? In my diaper? Get out of here you hobo. Oh bloody hell, is this thing still on?
"An interesting read with perhaps some disturbing implications." I'll say - what if you lose it?
I hate the one hundred and twenty character limit for signatures with an all-enveloping, all-destroying, incredible pass
In the hands of an evil genius ... image a nation state of automatons, wait a minute ...
Wives had had this for their husbands for years now.
Sounds a little too much like, http://www.hackcanada.com/homegrown/wetware/ to me. However, its not so much remote, you have to be sitting right in front of the device, literally wearing it. But it opens your eyes to the implications.
- Aetheral Research -
Back in my day we used to use remote controles on cars.
That episode of Star Trek where those aliens steal Spock's brain. Scotty rigs up a remote control for Spock's body and they all beam down to the planet to search for it. Just goes to show you that all important modern tech was first shown on Star Trek.
Imagine the implications of this with the adult entertainment industry!
Now that's entertainment!
Does it have a volume control? Can you calobrate it to my girlfriend? How soon can you get it to me? and here's all my money!
serenity now!
"Better get a second layer on those tinfoil hats!"
Or just don't put on the headgear that controls you.
Either way, I'm not going to work at any job that requires me to wear this remote control, unless it's wireless. Wearing headgear all day with a wire attached would probably give me a sore neck by causing restricted head movements.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I, for one, welcome our new inner-ear remote-control overlords.
A mute button for the folks would have been handy when I was a teenager...I'd be a much better guitar player today...
Previously reported on slashdot too.
In a sense all humans have always been "remote controlled": biologically and socio-culturally.
These "remote controls" are actually extremely sophisticated.
I wonder who holds the patent on them.
I mean just wait till the BSDM community gets hold of this!
Firstly, why would a Telco be developing this technology? It doesn't appear to further their business.
Then it dawned on me. With Avian Flu concerns, sending packets via that method is dangerous RFC 1149. Obviously if the Telco's controlled humans, they could deliver packets with them via a maximum of 6 hops (six degrees of separation).
I for one welcome our new communication specification. Long live IPviaH.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Sony had something similar, but not as capable, as this a year or so back. And it's still vaporware, unless "They're working out bugs."
Forget the second tinfoil layer, people. Be content in the fact that until you willingly strap a device to your head, you're safe.
Ignore the fact that I'm drunk right now, but I will *NEVER* put one of these things on my head. I'll stick with "subliminal messages thru sneaky frames included in films.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Consider the effects of a gun at your back, or even the slave driver's whip :-/
Scientific American had a very interesting article on the history of this sort of thing. Unfortunately, you probably have to pay for that article if you don't already subscribe.
I would like a remote control for dogs so I wouldn't have to bother walking them every morning. Or more like autopilot.
"The developers hope to use this with video games and other entertainment, but it might also be used as a weapon to disable people."
Well, no crap...hackers would have a field day with this.
28:06:42:12 - That is when the world will end...
Daaaamn, and here I thought I was simply drunk and listening to headphones...
You mean that's NOT Corrosion of Conformity in my head?!
How about implanting a thin mesh of titanium wire under the skin to protect you. It'd be better if it were a superconductor though. Get sent to the electric chair? No problem!
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
in order to weaponize this system, you'd have to figure out how to attatch electrodes behind the lobes of someone's ears at range -- and i challenge anyone to figure out how to do THAT. As it stands, vestibular stim is a cool new idea on how to improve balance control in risky environments (high iron construction workers faced with strong winds?), or the elderly and people with some form of vestibular impairment. I know of at least once case of essentially permanent dizziness, in which the patient suffered an accident that took out half of the vestibular system, so he is only getting feedback from one side of his body.
As a student at one of the big universities where balance control and vestibular control is studied -- let me be the first to say that all of this is HIGHLY alpha. At best, it's proof-of-concept only. I wouldn't be worried about being "remote controlled" -- but hey, add this to a VR sim and things might get better than the crappy sim software/hardware that we've had since the mid90's -- or do some of the stuff i mentioned above.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
Women have used a similar technique to control men for thousands of years, but they don't focus on the ears.
We should get the whole 'local control' thing down first.
---
Aria Giovanni for President!
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Add multiple restraining straps that can only be removed by a key, fingerprint, iris scan combo. Voila you can now recieve defense funding. With that funding find a way to insert it in a person and control them remotely through satellite broadcasts no matter where they are. Then add a self-discruct/kill this person NOW command. Now market this as an upper and get lots of people to implant it in themselves. Bam world-domination!
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
So buggy games all of a sudden become deadly. Fun!
They say they want apple to implement this into ipod? Good idea. Put it on shuffle and shuffle out into rush hour traffic. Woot!
Go ahead mod my karma bad, just remember what karma is fuckers!!!!!!!!!
My question is this. Will it run on my boss?
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Ever had a commercial jingle that you just couldn't get out of your head? Ouch.
> Escape from Witch Mountain....
Don't you mean "The People" by Zena Henderson ?
Does anybody read anymore ?
...in the silhouette iPod ads. 'Course the shipping earpods have that feature turned off. Most of those people are Quickie Mart clerks with no dancing skills at all.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_control http://www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol10pg
Seriously, I know these are all the rage these days, with the brain-controlling overlords which I, for one do not welcome.
I'm selling a set of 2!!! earplugs for your ears, at only 159.00 INCLUDING shipping.
You better stock up on these, or else the overlords will get you.
GET THEM NOW before its too late!
... /me builds tinfoil earmuffs...
In deep space 9 with a dead uh.. founder guy thingie.
I like star trek for their original plots.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
From what the article said, it only affects balance, i.e., you walk to the right because the electrical stimulation inside your ear makes you feel as though your balance is off. I s'pose that by wearing t3h headgear, someone could make you walk off a cliff... or stamp an embarrassing message into the sand.... or make you fall down.
Don't use headphones from strangers! :-D
DATABASE WOW WOW
This was demoed at Siggraph in Los Angeles in the Emerging Technologies booth. It really appeared it worked, people wearing it stumbled around like they were drunk, but could really be made to stumble in a desired direction. I did not get to try it, there was a very long line. But surely there is somebody reading Slashdot who did.
Didn't try it because of the really long line. It was probably the coolest thing in the Emerging Technologies area. Anyway...basically it can make you drift left or right while walking by messing with your sense of balance ( inner ear ). People were dramatically affected at first but many people were able to compensate after only a few seconds. While cool, it is hardly as dramatic as the article would suggest.
Yeah, I parsed this thing as "Remote Control [designed] for Humans." I was thinking "Great! Finally I can program that VCR."
Sadly, it's just another tool for turning excess humans into golems. Sigh.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Get my wife to clean the house?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
=D
mund freud.
Actually, wouldn't that be a minimum of 6 hops? Each router needs to guess the best next-hop, and that really opens the door to an inadvertent looping function in the protocol - how could we address this?
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
finally, this will actually work!
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Please take the time to consider these and other reasons to treat alluminum foil as a reasonable, effective form of alternative preventitive medicine for everyone's mental well-being.
-apt
"medieval students were no less manic-depressive, riot-prone, or financially indignant than their modern counterparts"
It's called "television" and it's a potent control tool for governments.
i do not think that plasma/ionized air conductive methods will work, for a couple of reasons. One, the method itself is extremeley new -- so applying it to an equally new application (vestibular balance modification) is unlikely simply because both technologies aren't developed enough. Second is the issue of precision. a charge imbalance must be applied across the head to affect balance -- and it must be done in locations that are close enough to vestibular neurons to transmit this imbalance to them. There are only two places to do that -- that bony lump right behind your ear. It would be very, very difficult to build a tracking system capable of independendly locking on, and tracking, two very small targets on a moving body. The math behind that, and the computational power needed, is stunningly high for such a "simple" task.
Additionally, your idea of a "remote control field" simply doesn't hold water, again based on the fact that the charge imbalance targeting MUST be so precise. Simply setting up some kind of field of charge (which ain't gonna happen in air, by the way) won't work.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
You just need to fashon a tinfoil had that has those very attractive ear flaps.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
"Yeah, I parsed this thing as "Remote Control [designed] for Humans." I was thinking "Great! Finally I can program that VCR."
Sadly, it's just another tool for turning excess humans into golems. Sigh."
Only on Slashdot would people think an easier to program VCR is cooler than turning humans into golems.
"Derp de derp."
... you'd have to figure out how to attatch electrodes behind the lobes of someone's ears ...
Duh! Everyone knows in the 23rd century The Law regulators are installed at birth.
Shh.
Given that "tinfoil" is really aluminium, it will conduct electricity. If I'm understanding this correctly, won't putting a "second layer on the tinfoil hat" have...ummm...an undesirable outcome? Now, if you were to ground the hat, you might have something. Perhaps if you made sure that you were always standing in a puddle of saltwater?
As for getting people to wear the "required headware", outfit it so that it will just shove a big mac or a krispy kreme in their mouth at the push of a button. That'll get about 90% of the overweight American population to willingly don the thing, no matter what else it does to them.
2 rather cynical cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Whaddya mean, "anymore"?? I read that mumbledy-decades ago. Both books, in fact.
Zenna Henderson page: http://www.adherents.com/lit/bk_Zenna.html
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What would be even more insidious is the idea of some kind of intelligence amplified so greatly verses your own that you could be just going about your merry way doing every thing of your own free will but in a human imperceivable way completely controlled by said super-intelligence.
See the Empire Ship entry on Orion's Arm for a snippet that refers to the idea.
That kind of remote control would really suck.
Shh.
There is a disease where people lose the ability to use their inner ears for balance (Menier's disease).
I would expect that people who had it for a period of time would be more or less immune to these weapons, being in the state you describe so constantly that their brain eventually adjusts (though the guy I knew with this ailment wore heavy boots to provide other sources of balance feedback)...
Who knows, maybe there will be a new job market for those with Menier's Disease...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This is not as new...it was presented in this year's SIGGRAPH, in the Emerging Technologies section. There we could try it out, and we actually remotely controlled our friends, and it really works - they told you to walk straight wearing this special device, and then someone else would control what path you'd actually take with a remote control.
Remote control allows for more efficiently slavery.
Hmmm, this sounds more like the droud from Larry Niven's Tales of Gil the ARM than anything else. Is this going to produce a generation of current addicts?
Research done at MIT shows that tinfoil hats actually amplify government mind control beams. Because they are not fully enclosed, they actually end up acting as a sort of antenna. Yes, that's right: Wearing a tinfoil hat is exactly what the shadow government wants you to do!
I'm upgrading to lead foil.
I did get an interesting effect from it: due to the high resistance of my skin I have to turn the device WAY up to get any response and during the strongest pulses, I saw flashes of light that were not present outside of my optic nerve(it wasn't arcing in other words).
Anyway, as I read the article, it's less about remote control humans and more about being able to affect what they are feeling which is scary but with this version they'd have to sneak up on you and covertly put these things on your skull...with good electrode contact..and probably lube to prevent burning. If it does use the same technology as what I have then you need to know that there are 3 different ways(at least) that we sense motion and the inner ear is only one. The other two are visual and the type of feeling you get in your joints when you accelerate on, say, a bus; this is aka proprioceptive I think. If they didn't have something that would give you a slightly harder time to keep your balance(we used the Tempurpedic(tm) memory foam because it shifts acording to the weight and temperature. Without this, you don't feel any shift in your joints so if your visual environment didn't move either, you'd mostly discard the signal. It's because of the "rule" of 'virtual reality': you have to fool 2 of the 3 ways we sense motion for the brain to accept it as real. And despite all this, with a slight amount of concentration, you can see through the illusion. Maybe what they have is different..I'll have to research to find out now.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Usually Star Trek, even the original show is not cheesy. Hard sci-fi it ain't but they usually don't give the impression they think their viewers are idiots.
But "Spock's Brain" is definitely some stinky cheese. Aside from Star Trek V, and the next gen episode where everyone devolves into creatures which, mostly they didn't actually evolve from (so bad I have never looked back to learn the name of the episode).
Actually, I try to predict the byline on Slashdot stories and I think this is definitely from the missed opportunity department...
-- John.
I saw this some time ago (august 5) on Engadget. That story also linked to a movie of a remote controlled girl.
Enjoy.
Most anyone (here (I'd hope)) can build a working galvanic vestibulator in their home for under $5. It's just a 0.1hz~70hz squarewave sinking ~20 milliamps of current through your neck. You can easily do that with a 555 in astable mode (R1=2kOhm,R2=26kOhm,C=.1uF--it'll have a frequency of about 27hz and a duty cycle near %50), a 9v battery or two, some pennies, cotton, and a bit of saltwater. Place the ghetto electrodes beind your ears. Play with the frequency in the above range by using knob potentiometers. I've found ~15-30hz to be best.
Even more fun can be had with a cheap Atmel ATtiny2313 8bit microcontroller (or PIC if you're that type). They cost about ~$2 each but you can sample them from large manufacturers for free (I've sampled 9 ATtiny2313 for free now). They can be programmed right from the serial port in simple (you can ignore the LEDs, but hey leave them in and you have a persistance of vision toy too), or slightly less simple manners.
If you just want to test the effect out then just the 9vs, a few pennies, some cotton, salt water, and a little wire will do. Simply series the batteries and make electrodes out of the materials previously mentioned, warm water works best. Apply the electrodes to your mastoid proccesses and you'll feel the 'acceleration'...and a bit of stinging, but not too bad. (It'd be best if you had a soldering iron, but you could go without if really needed.)
The developers hope to use this with video games and other entertainment
Did anybody ever play ''Syndacate wars''?
42.
That device must be lagging
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Obligatory (mutilated) Futurama:
Leela: "Didn't you have remote controls in the 20th century?"
Fry: "Well sure, but not for humans! Only for tv and radio...and stereos...and DVD Players. And for air conditioning, blinds, and toy cars, and Robosapiens, and banana label machines, and Nintendo. But not for humans! No sirree."
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Who's laughing now? [Tick... tick... tick...]
You must think in Russian.
"...through electrical stimulation of the inner ear nerves." Sounds just like my cochlear implant - does that mean I should start wearing a lot of stealth black now?
Whats so disturbing about being able to put people off balance (which
is all it really is)? You can do that now with various forms of gas
or if you really want to control a crowd , you can use bullets. If
I had the choice between some inner ear stimulation and a bullet in
my chest or breathing in some form of nerve gas I know which I'd
choose!
No, of course you won't do this out of your own free will.
But once you get arrested for something you've never heard of (probably whistling a copyrighted tune), the cops will put this thing on your head and place you in a cell.
See, knowing that torture is now legal in the USA, they're well aware that you'd *seriously* try to get away - and using this thing, you'll docily do exactly as you're told.
Have fun living in the USA, home of the free. I won't.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Hmmm "Remote control humans through ear device for entertaining results..." Just sounds kind of funny when you say it outloud.
Just as long as no-one uses this technology to make me do something gross, like eat a tarantula (a la Red Dwarf...)
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Dilbert (thinking): A collar... well, at least it's not a leash.
PHB: Oh, and you'll have to wear this 10-foot extension cord at all times too.
Ok, probably only roughly similar to the original dialogue... trying to summon it from misty memory.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I have a friend who is absolutely convinced that there are people outside their house every night using microwaves to brainwash them. Now there's TWO stories on slashdot at once that could be easily manipulated to "support" their claims. My friend's house is going to be completely covered in tin foil. Thanks alot Slashdot
Except the way that this works it with messing with the inner-ear balance. As I understand it, most sophisticated interrogation involves disorientation of the subject more than it does pain. Putting the person through 8 hours of feeling like they're whirling at high speed might work, particularly if coupled with other techniques.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Ah, just use a beer scooter like the rest of us.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Don't worry, I'm sure Batman can foil any would be evildoers.
stick one of those bad boys on a feline or raticus (latin) and send him into the field equiped with a spycam. they can also be used to detonate mines... remotely.
Marques Johansson
They're called women.
... must. kill. pap. schmear. *clicking sound of gun with no ammo*
We already know Jean Chretien excersizes mind control over us Canadians; and I've been told ... the rest of the world!!!
Pssst: Why do you think Canada didn't participate in the Iraq war? Because we fought from afar using our minds.. Silly Humans. :)
The beatings will continue until Morale Improves!
Tin hats are so yesterday. As any true conspiracy buff knows, the latest and greatest fashion trend requires accessorization. Now, it's not just the hats, but foil earmuffs that are all the rage!
All of this is a brutal plot by the foil industry to double their sales to conspiracy nuts, who are about a third of their customer base.
While I realize this device cannot turn a person into a robot, I wonder if it could be used to completly paralyze prisoners during transportation, or implanted so that they could be paralyzed durring a riot. I am assuming if you give a constant signle a person would adapt rather quickly(I have not RTFA) so you may need to alter the signle(from left to right or something).
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
With that said, there was a company in the mid to late 1990's which tried to build a development market with a beta-test vestibular stimulator device, meant to be used with a VR HMD system, in order to help avoid or minimize simulator sickness by using such a system to simulate movement. IIRC, the device was a head mounted system that fit over your head, and had electrodes behind the ears (like the parent describes) and ones on your forehead (can't remember if it was one or two - placed in the center or to the sides just inside of the temples, respectively). They had beta-test units, and for something like $300.00 you could order a unit, plus an API for Windows (DirectX) that allowed you to control the device to simulate motion. It was said to work very well, but they became a casualty of the .COM bubble (and the VR hype bubble, too).
Also know that these such vestibular stimulators have been used by the medical profession to treat and study such things as vertigo and such. These medical devices are probably similar in scope to the crude (though likely working!) device described by the parent. They are said to cause nausea, diziness, a sense of motion, etc - a very interesting thing to think about.
Bandwidth - I would be very interested to hear more from you and your experiments...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Time for the tinfoil ski-mask!
quit hittin' yourself... quit hittin' yourself! *smack, smack, smack* lol
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
I fail to see how this electronic contraption can be better than my design which attaches to the barrel of a .357 magnum and allows you to control humans with simple, easy to learn, voice commands.
(I think that's an obligatory Strong Sad quote... Anyway)
/. reader, to recognize a dupe... I'm so proud!
*deep breath*
Didn't Slashdot already cover this story within the past few months? I know I have read about this in the recent months. Some dude with a remote control can make people swerve as they walk.
I feel like I have finally arrived as a
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com