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U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies
plaastik writes "The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"
Sadly, nothing sparks innovation and technology like war and disasters.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
When does someone stop being human [...] What of the soul?
Perhaps you can first provide a concrete, evidence-based definition of what a soul is, then we can have an intelligent discussion about whatever it is.
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Futurist Ray Kurzweil talks in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines about these exact notions. He seems to think that consciousness itself is a sort of soul, and once humans are entirely machine--which he thinks is coming fairly soon--we will still be "human".
Ghost in the Shell takes a good look at the issued involved with cyberizaion of people.
Doctor, will I be able to play the violin after this operation?
Yes. I expect so.
That's amazing. I couldn't play at all, before.
1. Why does the same American government that sends soldiers to be permanently mutilated in Iraq refuse to allow the full range of stem cell research that could, one day, re-grow the limbs torn apart by pointless, wasteful war? Why should we condemn the mutilated soldiers to a life of crappy prosthetics?
2. More fundamentally, why does the American government send soldiers off to sacrifice their lives in Iraq when most Americans, including American politicians, refuse to make any sacrifice for the sake of that war? No one is sacrificing. Only the soldiers are sacrificing -- their lives.
Question #2 is particularly damning. When the average American refuses to support a surcharge on gasoline (to bring its cost to $4.00 per gallon) to pay for the bloody war in Iraq, why the hell should Washington insist that soldiers sacrifice their lives? In World War II, the entire nation sacrificed for the just cause of the war effort. Clearly, we have no just cause in Iraq. Nearly no one supports the Iraq War.
We should count most Republicans in the "no one" category. Most Republicans also refuse to support a surcharge to pay for the war. Their mouth says, "I support the war." However, their wallet says, "I oppose the war." Their wallet tells the truth.
But if you still insist, it is obvious that the soul, if present to begin with, can be only in the head, and only in the brain then. We do not have prosthetic brains yet, so there is nothing to discuss yet. When we get some decent processing capacity, then ask me again :-)
Cyberlimbs, wired reflexes, datajacks and cyberdecks.
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The summary makes it sound like prosthetics fused to the bone and controlled by the nervous impulses are here, but they certainly are not yet. Likewise haven't given superadvanced prosthetics to any wounded soliders yet either. As pointed out by the article, victims of the current war are not getting more advanced than advanced predictive prosthetics like the C-leg, which pretty much represent the latest in production prosthetic technology.
Don't get to excited yet people, prosthetics like the summary imagines are still a long ways off.
"Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands."
Hope they get the programming right on those chips!
Hey doc, sometimes when I'm typing with these artificial hands, I seem to get stuck in a loop! Is it true these are controlled by controlled by controlled by...
Maybe they should also embed a usb socket into the back of the user's head to allow firmware upgrades.
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There is a very funny, insightful, and interesting (and informative too) short SciFi story by Stanislaw Lem on this subject. In it the protagonist (?) — a racing car driver, or something like this — is being sued by the protheses-makers to return the parts, because he defaulted on the payments...
Lem wrote it in Polish, and I read it in Russian, but there is, no doubt a translation available for your preferred language. Look for it. Lem is one of the greatest SciFi authors... Whatever you find (almost) will be worth reading.
Now, in the story even half of the guy's brain is artificial (and has a slight defect, causing him to count everything he sees), which really does make the question asked by the parent meaningful. But we are not there yet, and can not replace the brains, so the answer is rather obvious...
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and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain
Well, looks like the editors need prosthetic brains...
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It can become cheap, once enough people go for it. I'm surprised at how many naysayers are on this forum, possibly conditioned to believe that spiderman villains are villainous because they didn't get their superpowers "naturally".
There may be benefits to complete prosthetic bodies which have capabilities superior to flesh and blood which would make limb regeneration a less preferred alternative.
In the article Jeffrey Morgan notes that students at Brown have pierced noses. Limbs and skins impervious to flame, cold, bullets and infection might be the next big thing in body modification. Also, if you break your leg, you can take it down to the shop and get it fixed while the mechanic loans you a courtesy leg to get around in.
As for concerns to losing your humanity, it's not who you are inside, but what you do that counts.
Finally, is it just me, or does everyone want to strap on a combination of the Hugh Herr Catapult and the german built Powerskip mechanical jumping boot and go street racing?
The soldiers get exciting new limbs instead of the boring old ones they had before.
The Iraqis get killed and get to get their country destroyed.
And we the taxpayers get to piss away a trillion dollars. Did you need that money? You would have just wasted it selfishly on yourself!
I guess the only people who lose are Halliburton because they actually have to do some work. No wonder they mark up all their services 100%, who can blame them? What patriots!
Note to editors, keep your tenses consistent. The headline and abstract use both present and future tense, and without reading the article I can't tell whether these technologies are actually in use now, or will be in the future. It seems like just a few months ago that monkeys were controlling robotic arms with just their brainwaves, has technology advanced so quickly that we can now physically and neurologically integrate electronic machines with people? The article confuses that crucial point.
"U.S. Soldiers Recipients of Newest Prosthetic Technologies
The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"
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It will be interesting to see a study on the brain plasticity of amputees fitted with these new prosthetics, similar to those done on the adult auditory map of hearing impaired patients (e.g. after sudden unilateral hearing loss).
Do the phantom sensations, usually experienced by amputees, disappear after these C-legs have been fitted?
Here's a serious question for idiot leftist /.'ers whose hatred of America and it's current government matches that of idiot right wingers hatred of Islam and yourself:
What are you leftist /.'ers actually doing, apart from complaining and bitching, to make things better?
Seriously, left-leaning ideological /.'ers have turned this place into an anti-american soapbox that mirrors the intense hatred of sites like LGF and FreeRepublic, but I have yet to see any of you do anything about it. Where is the organisation for making things better? Where is the supposed open source community (you know, works in the open) spirit applied to political community?
All I see is bullshit statements like your own with little action.
This place is really beginning to stink.
I lost my left hand, severed below the elbow. I have been keeping an eye on advances prosthetics but thought it would be very difficult for me to control as my hand feels like it's in a fixed position so it would be hard to coordinate the output of my nerves without any feedback. The big advance talked about here is the signal coming back to the brain to make the limb feel like part of the person rather than something just hanging off, which is what prosthetics feel like to me. I have one but I never use it for this reason. Bring on the feedback!
!sig
Gah! Dilemma!
On one hand, you're bringing religion into a discussion about technology. My initial urge is to stare at you blankly until you go away, or yell "keep your religion off of my science", or tell you that if you object you don't have to take part but you shouldn't tell other people how to live, blah blah etc etc. Most likely, I just wouldn't respond at all.
On the other hand, you correctly used "raises the question" instead of incorrectly using "begs the question", for which I want to applaud.
What to do, what to do....
Anyway, your statements were:
When does someone stop being human, once we can replace their body with a machine?
There is an old thought experiment that goes something like this:
"If you could replace a single neuron with a device that responds exactly the same way, would you be less than human? All input to that device is the same, all output is the same, for all the neurons around it, absolutely nothing has changed. Now, imagine that you start replacing every neuron, one by one. After each replacement, for the natural neurons around it, still nothing has changed. When you are finished, you have a functioning brain that continues to process all input exactly the same as before, only now it is mechanical instead of biological. Now is it less than human? If not, at which point did it change into something else?"
It's an interesting problem, and if you are as intelligent as you seem, you can ponder it out without me contaminating your process with my opinions.
Is it just the brain?
Yup. I hope that wasn't a surprise.
What of AI then?
It depends on what you mean when you think of the term "AI". Like so many other terms, it has partially lost its original meaning due to overuse. By the very definition, though, it is artificial. A computer program designed to fool humans is not true intelligence. A computer program that emulates probable human responses is not true intelligence. Ah, but what if, similar to the above thought experiment, we could somehow copy a person's neurological responses... and put that data into a program that would simulate a complete working brain, down to the last neuron. Would =that= be true intelligence? Hmm...
What of the soul?
What of it? If you believe in such things, good for you. However, there has never been any scientific evidence* that such a thing exists or exerts any force over my choices or actions. So, I'm comfortable living my day to day life without such worries. YMMV.
*For those that would respond "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (which is a true statement), I would say "No, but it sure is an =indication= of absence." But as Carl Sagan said, "You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe"
Don't put advice in your sig.
The primary concern of course, in any bio-replacement scheme, is to make the naked robot chicks *totally* hot.