Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Using Technology to Enhance Humans

Posted by Zonk on from the now-entering-transhuman-space dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "It's a well-known fact that technology can improve our lives. For example, we can reach anyone and anywhere with our cellphones. And people who can't walk after an accident now can have smart prosthesis to help them. But what about designing our children on a computer or having a chip inside our brain to answer our email messages? Are we ready for such a future? In 'Robo-quandary,' the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that many researchers are working on the subject. And as a professor of neuroscience said, "We can grow neurons on silicone plates; we can make the blind see; the deaf hear; we can read minds." So will all we become cyborgs one day?"

3 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. communication by froggero1 · · Score: 1, Troll

    communication is a great thing, don't get me wrong... but who plans on being that important to justify being accesable 24/7 via a brain implant?

    i don't have a mobile phone, and rarely is it the case that someone was trying to get ahold of me and couldn't... people can wait for me to return a message on the answering machine.

    I think the source of this problem that researchers are trying to solve is the impatience that everyone seems to have nowadays...

    --
    ~/.sig: No such file or directory
  2. Goatse! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Guy Opening Anus To Show Everyone

    You know you love it!

  3. Star Trek linked to pedophilia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    This has very little to do with the article, but the L.A. Times recently published an article regarding the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit that focused on their fight against child pornography ("Sifting Clues to an Unsmiling Girl"). They are the law enforcement organization that photoshopped the victims out of child porn photos in order to get the public's assistance in identifying the backgrounds (it worked). In any case, the article had this amazing claim:

    On one wall is a "Star Trek" poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie.

    Wow. All but one in four years. Seemed rather unlikely to me.

    So, I called the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit and spoke to Det. Ian Lamond, who was familiar with the Times article. He claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Of course, even if the figure was given jokingly, shouldn't the Times reporter have clarified something that seems rather odd? Shouldn't her editors have questioned her sources?

    Nevertheless, Det. Lamond does confirm that a majority of those arrested show "at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest." They've arrested well over one hundred people over the past four years and they can gauge this interest in Star Trek by the arrestees' "paraphenalia, books, videotapes and DVDs."

    Det. Constable Warren Bulmer slips on a Klingon sash and shield they confiscated in a recent raid. "It has something to do with a fantasy world where mutants and monsters have power and where the usual rules don't apply," Bulmer reflects. "But beyond that, I can't really explain it."

    I asked Det. Lamond if this wasn't simply a general interest in science fiction and fantasy, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter or similar. Paraphrasing his answer, he said, while there was sometimes other science fiction and fantasy paraphenalia, Star Trek was the most consistent and when he referred to a majority of the arrestees being Star Trek fans, it was Star Trek-specific.