Slashdot Mirror
Body 2.0 — Continuous Monitoring of the Human Body
Singularity Hub has a story about the development of technology that will some day allow for the constant, real-time monitoring of your medical status, and they take a look at current technological advances to that end. Quoting:
"Did you ever stop to think how silly and also how dangerous it is to live our lives with absolutely no monitoring of our body's medical status? Years from now people will look back and find it unbelievable that heart attacks, strokes, hormone imbalances, sugar levels, and hundreds of other bodily vital signs and malfunctions were not being continuously anticipated and monitored by medical implants. ... The huge amounts of data that would be accumulated from hundreds of thousands of continuously monitored people would be nothing short of a revolution for medical research and analysis. This data could be harvested to understand the minute by minute changes in body chemistry that occur in response to medication, stress, infection, and so on. As an example, the daily fluctuations in hormone levels of hundreds of thousands of individuals could be tracked and charted 24/7 to determine a baseline from which abnormalities and patterns could be extracted. The possibilities are enormous."
Heisenberg was specifically talking about being unable measure position and momentum precisely at the same time at the quantum level. For some reason, it has been turned into some meta-physical philosophical concept that I find annoying. Yes. We can measure body temperature without causing people to spontaneously catch on fire. Yes. We can measure the temperature of the Earth without it causing it to explode. No. We can't measure the spin of an electron and know it's exact position at the same time.
Fun game:
Ask your friends what the current stats are on their WoW character. Strength, agility, stamina, intelligence, etc.
Then ask them what their resting heart rate is. (Them, not the character.)