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Hacking Our Five Senses and Building New Ones
ryanguill writes "Wired has an article about expanding your five (maybe six) senses to allow you to sense other things such as direction. It also talks about hijacking other senses to compensate for missing senses, such as using electrodes in your mouth to compensate for lack of eyesight. Another example is a subject wearing a belt with 13 vibrating pads. The pad pointing north would vibrate giving you a sense of direction no matter your orientation: '"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."'"
I chose emf detection. That would be handy.
Smission. I wouldn't want to use taste to compensate for vision. Have you licked a Buick lately? Not as sweet as they were in the 50s.
You never expect irony, do you?
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It also talks about hijacking other senses to compensate for missing senses, such as using electrodes in your mouth to compensate for lack of eyesight.
They used to do it in Guantanamo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine is responsible for the 6th sense, imaginary friends, self replicating machine elves, and telepathy... bitches.
I am pretty sure that the first thought, of the mother and kids in the library, when they saw/heard your pants vibrating, did not involve your enhanced sense of direction.
I built one of the compass belts. You don't need 13 motors. Four is plenty. Of course, you want finer resolution than just the four cardinal directions -- so you have the intensity of the vibration vary. If you make the strength of vibration of the motor vary sinusoidally with the angle, so that when a particular motor is pointing directly north it vibrates at full strength, and when directly south not at all, you'll get a very smooth response. You can easily resolve direction to 10-15 degrees precision with just four motors, and the analog response is less distracting than having motors suddenly turn on and off.
You can also do the analog response without a microprocessor -- the two-axis electronic compass sensors are really two sensors, each sensing the component of the field along their sensitive axis, which gives precisely the sin(theta) response curve you want. The microprocessor gets replaced by a couple op amps, and you cut the motor count dramatically, which saves a fair bit on the cost.
Power required to run the vibrator motors is noticeable. I get about 12-14 hours battery life from 4x NiMH AA cells. The next version will improve that a bit (PWM control instead of linear for the motors); the prototype was designed with circuit simplicity as the primary goal.
I don't have a complete schematic or parts list online; circuit design was done on paper and in my head while soldering it together. You can find a description and pictures here.
It'd be fascinating to see radio waves, overlaid on your normal vision.
Any radio science buffs have ideas of what it would look like?
I'm guessing it'd be a constant semi-transparent haze. But since radio waves are directional, and some are limited by varying altitudes, I'd imagine there must be some gradation you could perceive.
This "five senses" garbage is a favorite example of mine for illustrating how everyone, everywhere, including textbooks, can be obviously mistaken about something 'factual'.
Our sixth sense is accelleration, and the sense organ responsible for this is the semicircular canals in our inner ear. It's how we know where 'down' is, and life would be difficult without this sense. Our seventh sense is proprioception, derived from muscle feedback all over the body.
These qualify as 'senses' because they convert environmental information directly into sensations.
Now, while we're on the subject of ubiquitous factual errors, let's talk about how flat- and symmetric-winged aircraft can fly without any help from the Bernoulli effect.
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Needless to say, I won my bet from the 2nd post!
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In my biological psychology class, we covered 23 distinct senses that provide use with environmental information.
We are entering an age of information awareness. We literally have machines that can now read our minds. We would be remiss to not take advantage of this!
I'm a pilot, and for a long time, I stubbornly stuck to the "old way" of navigation using VOR radio navigation rather than the newer GPS-based systems. Basically, every 50 miles or so, there's a radio beacon that broadcasts a directional radio signal that you can triangulate from. My logic was that virtually all planes have some kind of VOR in them, while perhaps 1/3 of planes have GPS units.
But I recently "bit the bullet" and learned to use the GPS in the newer rental plane at the local airport. I noticed it immediately: what a difference! Last week, I flew to an airport I hadn't landed at before - something that's always just a bit nerve-racking with radio navigation due to the unfamiliarity. Typically, I've made it a habit to fly in direct to the "new" airport 1,000 feet above the local traffic pattern to get my bearings and prepare an approach - adding a fair amount of time circling around and so on.
But with the GPS locating me to within a few feet on a "moving map", I was confidently making calls as to my location and whereabouts, and made a direct base approach right to the numbers on the runway! No hunting, no worries about traffic patterns. Just straight in.
No, I didn't surgically implant the GPS unit, but it's clearly a case of technology using the sense of sight to improve informational awareness. I'm all for it! If I could (safely) have a bluetooth display of my mobile phone surgically implanted into my brain so that I could, at any time, access google maps, etc. it would dramatically change how I interface with the world. Just think of the advantages:
1) I'd never get lost.
2) I'd be able to look up new words and concepts as needed, seamlessly.
3) I'd be able to make use of "dead time" such as while driving/flying. (most of the latter is spent at cruise altitude letting the auto-pilot get you there)
This is the future. We already approximate it with our mobile phones - technology will become ever more intimate as we approach the technology singularity.
Get ready for it! Weeeeeeeh!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"Now, while we're on the subject of ubiquitous factual errors, let's talk about how flat- and symmetric-winged aircraft can fly without any help from the Bernoulli effect."
Heck, yeah. It's nutty and irresponsible how we pump everyone full of the Bernoulli effect with respect to flight. With low power systems, you probably need the Bernoulli effect, but the more power you have, the more we're talking about a sled/surfboard, rather than an airfoil. This is true in old Cesnas, for goodness sake, and they are tiny and light. Still, the wing generally isn't giving you quite enough lift to keep you up when you fly with the nose completely flat. You MUST have some sledding angle against the oncoming airstream to maintain altitude.
It's not just how birds feel. People who spend the majority of their time outdoors, with the ability to see the sun, get the same feeling. Citydwellers have the unfortunate circumstance of generally not being able to judge direction by the location of the sun; people in rural areas don't have this problem.
I grew up in a rural area, but close to the ever-encroaching burbs. I spent most of my time outside (I know, anathema to most slashdotters)... and to this day I subconsciously know what way is north, no matter where I am... as long as I've gotten glimpse of the sun in the morning or night at some time from that location. This is why I never get lost outside (though dealing with indirect roads can make it umm, interesting getting to where I want to go.
If I had some kind of input for direction when inside, I'm pretty sure I'd have a good bump of direction inside as well... but since I don't, I find extensive underground systems annoying (like Grand Central Station in Manhattan).
IOW, the guy who wore the vibrating belt added a different sensory input. Humans already have the capacity for "mapmaking", it's not limited to birds. Ask any orienteer. We just have little reason to exercise it in today's world.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Brother Cavil: "I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!"
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
how much I hate it when people use "subject" as the first part of their post.
I already have extra senses(or extra strong; same thing), and I can tell you they're damn annoying.
I can locate electronics by the extremely annoying ringing/screeching sounds they emit. It was an utter pain finding a clock for beside my bed; I finally settled on one that runs off an AAA battery, and only needs a new battery every couple years. No audible noise coming from it.
I can locate TVs, monitors(CRTs, malfunctioning LCDs), DVD players, and some PSUs and Mobos by the sounds they make. Some devices still make sounds when "off", and others don't. Even some power bricks make annoying sounds. Some cordless phones do too; one actually gave me headaches, but most don't.
(it really is hit or miss, per device rather than per model; device quality really must vary!)
That's one of the reasons that my main computer is an Athlon XP 2400+; it doesn't make any annoying noises... though I suppose the 4000RPM fan is a tad loud. ;) But at least it isn't screeching at me!
Having a sense of direction would be neat, but let me assure you super hearing isn't what it's cracked up to be. It might be acceptable if I was surrounded by the outdoors, but surrounded by electronic gadgets... gah!
Interestingly, it appears to be genetic. My Uncle could hear that "Mosquito teen repellent" noise until 50-55 years old.
I don't like crowds, because I have trouble understanding what people are saying over the background noise. :/