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World's First Cybernetic Athlete To Compete
Tufriast writes "The world's first mechanically augmented athlete, Oscar Pistorius, will now compete against unaugmented peers on behalf of South Africa. He'll be running in the 400m and 4x400m relay at the World Athletics 2011 Championships. Pistorius, a double leg amputee, has had special leg blades crafted for him that allow him to compete against his peers. He's fought hard to prove they provide no advantage, and according to IAAF they do not. This should be a very interesting race to watch. His nickname: The Blade Runner."
Augmented from his previous state of having no lower legs to having blades.
Since the article doesn't have a picture of this legs, I went looking for a picture and found it here. Its also an article about the 2008 decision to not allow him to compete in the Olympics back then. I wonder whats changed?
Idiot. He's a double amputee. Of course the blades augment him. The question is not whether they give him an advantage over his unbladed self, but over other runners with legs and no blades.
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He's fought hard to prove they provide no advantage, and according to IAAF they do not.
I will admit the sentence is terrible but you hardly need to that offensive because of it.
I'm a South African. He has been competing against able-bodied athletes for ages now. It's not news. A discussion on Slashdot as to whether the blades are an unfair advantage over other athletes will be much more interesting.
Can these by called cybernetic if there is no obviously controlling feedback loop in the device? I am not saying that they have to be powered, just that they communicate back to the human in a significant way.
Me,
BSc Hons Human Cybernetics
...runners with natural ankles and feet.
I admire the guy's tenacity (double amputee at 11 months and still played rugby growing up) but I recall seeing him competing a few years ago in Europe (some track meet in Rome iirc) and he was no where near the fitness level of the other atheletes and yet was qualifying for heats (in other words - he was 'heavy' at the time.)
Now unless this is an unfortunate coincidence between the potentially fastest human ever having his legs amputated as a baby, it is an unfair advantage. The IAAF, contrary to the OP's assertion, claim that it provides him a clear and obvious advantage mechanically and say they have the data to back it up...
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If he wins a lot then he will be declared as having an unfair advantage, and if he loses (or just average) he will be declared as having no advantage.
I've never understood the nigh-jesuitical levels of logic chopping(with not infrequent descent into mere hand-waving) that go on surrounding "fair" and "unfair" advantages in high level sports.
You've got a tiny number of heavily selected freaks of nature, endowed by various quirks of heredity with highly atypical phenotypes, augmented by years or decades of carefully designed training, controlled diet, etc. whose handlers cry out every time somebody has the temerity to shoot a little synthetic testosterone instead of just expressing freakish amounts of it naturally "Oh, no! We have to set a good example for the kids! Professional athletes are just regular folks who get a good night's rest and eat their wheaties!". Similar things come up with, say, hemoglobin concentrations: Does your blood contain more iron than most steel alloys because your ancestors were the spacesuit people who live at 50,000 feet above sea level? No problem, come right in! Does your blood contain more iron than most steel alloys because your doctor has been extracting and re-injecting it? Banhammer!
As the article seems to be missing a picture, you can find one here - http://olympics.scmp.com/Images/UploadImages/20080517/20080517143425.jpg Also Wiki has some interesting information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius
...runners with natural ankles and feet.
Considering that many oxygen-consuming muscles are no longer there, I would think that alone should indicate an advantage.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
I will ruin the basis of athletics where the best human (on the day) wins. If he was to win there will always be the debate on whether or not is its an advantage.
It also raises the financial entry barrier instead of needing to a find a sponsor for maybe upto $10000 for shoes (they will find you if your any good). It will bring in discussion of a tech race or whether improvements on the current blades are advantage or not.
This is why we have the disabled Olympics for people with various augmentations can compete against one another, he belongs there. If they start posting competition times then hold an event for both.
...is back!
No, the question is whether it gives him an advantage over his unaugmented and unamputated self. If you can design the prosthetics to any level of performance, up to and including superior performance to your competitors, It doesn't really make it "more fair" to choose 80th percentile or 90th percentile or 50th percentile level performance. It's not really a contest at that point, but a demo.
Really, what they should do is offer a separate category of competition: "open" and "natural". In the "open" contests any competitor should be able to use any contraption they choose (including nothing), as long as there is no stored energy at the start of the competition and/or no net change in energy at the end of the competition.
This rule would take care of the problem where a jetpack full of rocket fuel would change the very nature of a road race, but spring-feet even though they need to be compressed somewhat at the start might be acceptable.
In fact, we've already got machine augmented races using just those sort of rules: NASCAR and speed skating both follow the above model.
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This reminds me of an assignment I was given in high school English class: the book we were to study that year was Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms". Prior to starting the book, the teacher asked that we write an essay outlining our expectations of the book, based solely on the title. Well, I had no idea what the hell the book would be about - all I could come up with was a future in which superior, articficial limbs became widely available, and once a person's growth stopped, they'd have their natural limbs hacked off and replaced with the better artificial limbs in a ceremony called, "A Farewell to Arms!" The teacher gave me an "A+", but looked at me funny the rest of the year...
The mass alone is an advantage. One of the IAAF scientists stated that he has a 30% mechanical advantage in lifting his legs during a run.
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I will be competing in the 400m and 4x400m relay using my specially crafted Chevy Cavalier. It's a manual transmission, so the engine computer won't give me an unfair advantage.
I for one welcome our new cybernetic..... peers?
Collector's Edition
advantage.. cyberman.
for fuck sakes, they're just carbon fiber, they arent robotic, and being maimed by a tractor certainly wasnt a fucking "augmentation". the fact is that I can probably outrun most people reading this, as they are fat, and I am not.
the best prosthetics designed for such things (like this guys), will give back somewhere about 80% of a normal foots energy in a stride, according to marketing literature, real life is less.
the poster above me thinks the special olympians are all augmented, they should all stay where "they belong". Nope, cant compete with all the doped up muscleheads. What a douchebag.
I was told I was not allowed to compete, or take part in things my whole childhood, especially at things I'm good at. The excuse was usually some bullshit about how "our insurance wont cover it", but I always felt the truth was people just couldnt stand to see their kids lose to a cripple. At anything. I'm talking the fucking chess club in middle school. No joke. Somehow an amputee playing chess after hours was an unacceptable risk (when he checkmated the teachers prodigee genius son in 6 moves and made him cry)
Haters gonna hate. I'm still better than you at most things.
That, and perhaps the fact that he's no threat - his personal best on any distance (100m, 200m, 400m) is about 2 seconds behind the World Record.
He might have been sandbagging it all this time. Can you imagine the splash if he actually wins?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
You're being naive. First of all he is human, so technically if he bests other humans, then he is by definition "best human". But you are probably implying "best physically unaugmented human", which probably excludes doping too, etc. But you have to look at it this way: except doping and attaching carbon-fiber prosthetic to yourself, there's a myriad of ways to augment yourself and still get qualified for Olympics. Drinking funny drinks, eating funny food which contain numerous "good" doping drugs that the commitee doesn't (and cannot) disallow, exercising so much that it blurs the definition of "human" - in short, modern athletes are no more human than they are products of if not breeding then definitely "growing" where they live by strict diets and discipline. Heck, they avoid sex before the races. Is that average human to you? It's worlds apart from an average human. My point is, you should take it very easy on "human" definition.
I say I don't care whether it's fair or not, precisely because Olympics today is like football - athletes are bought and sold, managers manage, an entire industry that deals with "augmenting" athletes legally has been established. If Oscar wins, he actually makes the world a more interesting place to live, which is what counts. He will be studied further, conclusions will be drawn from facts and not hypothesis, we will know more about our bodies. Other non-augmented athletes will try to beat him, just like man has tried to outrun beast back in the day - didn't stop him because beast was different from man.
Bottomline: fair fight is actually very boring thing in the long ron, it tastes like water. You don't want to only drink water, you want some excitement in it. You want a temporary shift of power and balance. Oscar gives us an excitement, even to his fellow athletes. And at the end of the day, he fights himself. While we watch. Don't you love a good show?
really ought to go more mainstream with this idea, let them do whatever they want, prosthetics, drugs, whatever, make it more like F1.
The previous decision, where they claimed that he have an advantage, was based on estimations that: - His blades provides around 90% of energy returned, while as - Human leg provides around 60% of energy return (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUoIQ-KeZ1A around 13:10) I'm completely blank concerning the athletics and world-rank sports competitions, but I got several questions: How athlete's shoes could affect this energy return figures? What types of shoes were tested with this 60% energy return? What prevents athletes from using different types of shoes that provide higher energy return?
Just like how Lance Armstrong had a 50% testicle mass advantage. Unfair!
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Few of us, these days, can survive without mechanical augmentation. Every day, I wear shoes, drive a car, use a smartphone, and wear a coat so that I don't freeze to death. In the case of warm clothing, I literally could not survive without these mechanical augmentations. I also literally depend upon complex social systems such as the banking system for my survival. I appreciate the fact that this individual has had a part of his body replaced, rather than simply adding external functionality such as shoes, but it is basically a variation on the same thing.
Just look to Lance Armstrong. Testicular cancer.... has to take testosterone to supplement. He keeps winning "everything" and claims no advantage over people who aren't taking testosterone.
The only thing that could break this cycle and prove there is no advantage would be for him to lose.
The 'Science of Sport' blog wrote about this in 2009 : http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/11/oscar-pistorius-gets-10-second.html Back then, two scientists hired to look at the case found that the artificial limbs would take 10 or more seconds off his 400 meter time. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/smu-opa111709.php
If these are allowed, and it turns out they do in fact provide a significant advantage over biological legs, coaches will start putting pressure on professional runners to amputate their legs and have blades fitted in the interest of their careers.
cokane.com
Screw the regular olympics. I want to see a games where nothing is off limits. If you want to have your legs replaced with giant springs, go right ahead. And you could save a bit of weight by having your skull lightened or replaced with a carbon fibre shell. The brain requires quite a bit of energy to run... i'm sure there are bits that could be removed that are surplus to requirements for an elite athlete.
One heart? I'm sure more blood could be pumped with two hearts, and maybe an extra lung to oxygenate that blood. Room in the abdomen could be made by removing everything else and then filling the blood with nutrients and cleaning it with machines before and after the race.
Steroids? Everyone's doing them anyway... lets see how far we can grow those muscles and shrink those testicles.
Then some genetic engineering once we get the hang of it. I think this idea was played out in Red Dwarf (or was it THHGTTG?) - genetically engineered soccer was over when one of the teams fielded a goalie who was just a great big rectangle of flesh the size of the goal, thus preventing the other team from ever being able to score.
Offset by the resultant missing testosterone? ;)
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If other athletes man up and instead of taking steroids start having their legs amputated then we'll know there's an advantage.
Cybernetics is a very particular term whose true meaning is far removed from its popular meaning. The technical meaning of the term describes a system in terms of its sensors, feedback mechanisms, the interaction of autonomous actors, failure modes in complex systems, etc. The popular meaning is simply anything vaguely having to do with robotics and humans, and generally conflated with cyborg. By either meaning of the term, though, I don't think it really applies in this case.
Pistorius' running prostheses are, essentially, arches of carbon fiber with rubber and track spikes at the "feet". They are fancy prostheses, but they are purely mechanical; no moving parts, even. There are no electronics, no control systems, no software. What is more, they are not even permanent attachments to his body (i.e., osseointegrated). He straps them on for training and racing, and the rest of the time wears conventional prostheses or nothing.
It is worth noting that an advanced prosthetic hand has more going for it: motors, feedback mechanisms to the user, muscle sensors providing inputs, control electronics and software. But I'm not sure that most people would look at such a person and say, "Yes, this person is a cybernetic organism," even in the popular meaning of the term. Such people are no more cybernetic (in the popular sense) than the person constantly punching away at their iPhone. There is a degree to which this artificial electromechanical computing device augments the user and allows them to interact with the world in ways they could not otherwise, but I think that we need a more stringent definition - a higher bar - otherwise the word started losing meaning the moment proto-humans picked up a bone and used it as a tool.
Bottomline: fair fight is actually very boring thing in the long run, it tastes like water.
Most Olympic sports are dead boring but we only watch them once every for years. No one watches athletics for entertainment.
I think the line is generally drawn where the athlete is being harmed. In my opinion the main reason performance enchanting drugs are illegal is people will be forced to permanent harm them selves or risk their lives to compete. Seriously I'm sure you can find some would take the drugs to peak for four years and then die at the end (bloody shit sport to watch or support). If that’s negative you will still find people overdosing or having heart attacks or something. If the blades are better the sport becomes restricted to people with double amputated feat or people willing to cut them off. Where do you stop here i'm fairly sure in the next 200 years will will have a "terminator" if we stick a human brain inside it and it wins is that good for athletics and in the mean time the blades will get better.
I say I don't care whether it's fair or not, precisely because Olympics today is like football - athletes are bought and sold, managers manage, an entire industry that deals with "augmenting" athletes legally has been established.
Bolt still beats Gay.
Athletes are under enormous amounts of pressure to win. For the Olympics, this is doubly true. Many have sacrificed a normal life for that single shot at winning a gold medal. There's also the unspoken carrot dangling in front of them: "Win a medal, get rich from endorsement contracts."
Is it any wonder that they start taking all sorts of performance-enhancing drugs, some with serious life-long consequences, just for that one chance at winning?
Now let's say that allowing artificial limbs into competition is allowed. I'd be willing to bet that someone would deliberately have their legs replaced.
It'd probably look like this:
There would be a news report of a tragic accident. A promising athlete, cut down just as they're about to hit their prime. They were running alongside a train track, but then tripped in front of the train. Both legs lost. It's a tragedy!
But wait! In an inspiring story, new artificial legs are fitted, allowing them to compete. And what a story! They triumph and win!
I don't think I'm alone in that I want to see the absolute limits of what a human can do. I don't really care about "cheating" (using unconventional or banned methods of gaining an advantage) as I want to see what's possible. The (few) undoped high class sportsmen are going to ruin their bodies as well, this kind of force just does that to the body eventually, but why not open up the regulations? Make an "ultimate" category so that people can stop pretending to not dope. I don't know of any sport without doping, so why pretend?
Give Pistorius hydraulically operated turbolegs and let him use horse steroids, I STILL want to see how fast he goes. Exactly because he goes above what I thought possible. No legs, and competes in running? I'd call that impressive. Competing against people WITH LEGS? Holy crap. Now, get him better legs, i want to see the hundred meters done in 8 seconds!
Something tells me he would be considerably slower without them.
After bringing us the fastest female 800m (Caster Semenya) who isn't female, South Africa is bringing us the fastest 400m runner....without legs?
What happens if I have a solar panel on my back? What about if someone fires a 2GW laser at it?
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Springs are not legs. Hence, he should not compete against athletes with legs.
There should be another class for athletes like him.
Perhaps also an open class, that allows any enhancements once can think of: drugs, surgery, doping, springs... game on.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
He does need to be offensive, because it's the only way he can get attention.
See, he is augmented by Slashdot.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well he was born with congenital absence of the fibula in both legs. His unamputated self wouldn't be much of a runner. So you'd have to compare his blades to what his legs would be like with different DNA. So you might was well compare them to legs in general, which is (probably) what they have done.
When are we just going to get it over with and create 'unlimited' class competitions for athletics? Augmented or replaced limbs, oxygen doping, performance enhancing drugs, go nuts. Professionals do as much as they can get away with while they can get away with it anyway, let's regulate and expand it.
--- Do you believe in the day?
Over 100 posts and not a single Deus Ex or Gattaca reference?
I would think [URL="http://www.anandtech.com"]Purity First[/URL] would have something to say about this Blade Runner.
Now anyone with a black friend is going to have to hear "I could beat you in a race with 1 leg".
We've flattered ourselves for millenia. But why can't evolution produce more effective structures in the human anatomy that can't be so easily bested by an engineered design this simple? Imagine what life would be like for human beings if we were born with organs, musculature, etc. with that level of effectiveness. You could kick someone in the nuts with one of those and it would really hurt.
That reminds me of another little trick I think many athletes and organizations have been trying to utilize for years. Decreased atmospheric pressure (training & sleeping). I don't know how effective its been determined to be but I remember playing in a university gym in my high school days that you had difficulty opening the doors to get in and out of because of an array of industrial fans that were sucking the air out of the building to decrease the atmospheric pressure just a bit. And I've seen "Pods" where athletes can sleep that are supposed to simulate the atmospheric pressure at higher elevations. All of this of course is meant to increase ones blood count for improved endurance.
They do not give him an advantage over someone with two legs, however they are a significant step up from someone with no legs.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Aimee Mullins was controversial for competing in NCAA Division 1 track events using Cheetah Blades. There was a terrific article in Wired on her and the controversy, but I cannot find it (in English, at least.)
fghfzhzfz
> No one watches athletics for entertainment.
Really? Are you sure? Absolutely positively certain without doubt?
> Bolt still beats Gay.
To a degree - yes, I haven't said the good old human factor doesn't apply. But the two probably are on different diets etc, which make much difference inside their bodies and minds, as their bodies approach "max Q", so to speak. It's not the biggest factor, but especially in sports, the decisive factor doesn't have to be the biggest one, it just needs to make all the difference during those seconds or minutes you perform. My original argument cab be re-told as: atheles are like cars these days, it's the driver that matters, but also the kind of fuel that the car runs on, the engine oil, and various other fluids and solids that affect performance.
moron. you were doing good right up until your last sentence. What happened? ADD?
Only I can judge you.
He has an enhancement in his pants?
How do springs bolted on to the ends of his legs make him "cybernetic"? They're not wired into his nervous system.
Also, the headline missed off the rather important qualifier of "...at the Olympic Games." In case no-one had noticed, there is a rather large event held every four years specifically for the disabled and "cybernetic."
Also, not the first amputee at the Olympics either.
prodigee -> prodigy
check-mate. Eat that bitter dude.
I don't see a problem with him competing as long as the legs he uses aren't providing him with extra power. As long as he's only using his own power to propel him I think that he's doing it great.
It is today a disadvantage enough in society to have a handicap. And it's hardly likely that extreme runners will chop off their legs just to be able to compete better.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
why can't evolution produce more effective structures in the human anatomy that can't be so easily bested by an engineered design this simple? Imagine what life would be like for human beings if we were born with organs, musculature, etc. with that level of effectiveness.
The natural parts are generalist organic parts that work in the wide variety of situations humans find themselves in, have their entire blueprint in a speck of DNA, match the size scale of the rest of the as it changes, and heal injuries to themselves automatically.
The artificial legs? Those are specialist limbs specifically for running and horrible at anything else. You can't walk around on those with a bag of groceries, you can't handle anything but artificially flat terrain, you can't climb up or down hills or trees on them (possibly not even stairs), you're crap at standing still or crouching on them, and so on. Since he lost his natural legs as a baby, he's needed entire different sets many times over his life so far.
wtf? Is there no protection from idiot-bots posting on slashdot? Or is this a secret code message kicking off the revolution?
Only I can judge you.
All the talk about his augmented legs, and not one photo in that article of said legs. That's WAY too PC when the augmentations themselves are the story.
I8-D
I don't see a problem with him competing as long as the legs he uses aren't providing him with extra power. As long as he's only using his own power to propel him I think that he's doing it great.
It is today a disadvantage enough in society to have a handicap. And it's hardly likely that extreme runners will chop off their legs just to be able to compete better.
Roller blades and bicycles provide no extra power either.
and the fact that its hardly likely that "extreme runners" will chop off their legs to be able to compete better is an argument AGAINST allowing any kind of mechanical assistance.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
There's only one way to find out, and that's by experimental means. Strap that panel to your back, I'll gladly fire that laser.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
whoosh
I don't get your whoosh either. You probably have a THC enhanced brain, I don't, my loss I guess.
Only I can judge you.
It's called slowness!
That doesn't give me the right to strap on roller skates to make up for my genetic difference between me and a world class runner. I have no problem with him competing, but there is no way he should be able to attach springs to himself so that he's faster. Wouldn't that mean that all the other athletes could also attach mechanical advantages to themselves as well? Maybe they should allow bicycles in the marathon, too...
You're being naive. First of all he is human, so technically if he bests other humans, then he is by definition "best human".
And if I'm "augmented" with wheels and a ridiculously fast motor, and beat them because I'm travelling 150km/h, would I not also be the best human?
Time to surgically attach myself to a motorcycle and win the olympics!
Human hip bones are often shoddy pieces of work; replacements could be created / evolved that break less easily by lacking that weird narrow neck in the femur at the ball joint at the hip bone for example. The bones that people complain about getting broken- knees, hips, coccyx, jawbone, etc. tend to be the ones that are a little screwed up by design. And of course testicles appear to be the product of a total disaster. There is an enzyme in them somewhere that denatures at body temperature, so instead of coming up with a better enzyme or a process that doesn't use it, we need to hold the organs in big bags of skin that hang outside the body, and that protect themselves by producing copious amounts of dull pain to put us in agony when messed with. This was the solution that evolution came up with. It could definitely have come up with a better one.
They were not declared an advantage because he isn't fast enough to beat top runners. If he was breaking records the debate would be different. Whether they allow him to run faster than he would have been able to with both his natural legs is another story.
If only you could run where I've run with your feet. I've crossed the rings of Uranus, set records for speed in the Orion nebula.
I'll bet your teacher is still telling that story.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
....and would like to subscribe to your sports channel.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Entertainment requires amusement which for the majority of athletic sports is non existent compared to regular television. Yes there are some athletics (apologies if this is incorrect usage) that if watched only on the Olympics can be entertaining. Yes i guess the first hour of an athletic you watch ever you could amazed and thus entertained but i don’t think the suspense in athletics is the kind that amuses.
Everyone who is any good has access to similar diet advice. And unless Bolt lies though his teeth (he just does not seem the guy to do it) his diet and training are nothing special.
My original argument cab be re-told as: athletes are like cars these days, it's the driver that matters, but also the kind of fuel that the car runs on, the engine oil, and various other fluids and solids that affect performance.
This is of course true for all (modern) sport just to different degrees. That's part of the sport that athlete is expected to have the best conditioning available to win if some have more available than others is just part of the sport. Yet we can still all believe it comes down to the man and his main coach if we want to.
Anyway these were just (far too) concise and generalized rebuttals you are arguing with. If you want to argue with the second paragraph that would be far more interesting.
I was was also born with an inability to compete at the world class level in running. How about we let me bring a bicycle to even things up a bit. I promise to make sure the bike doesn't make me any faster than a typical world class runner...
Kidding aside, when you start allowing mechanical assistance into a sport, you have to provide some justification for what you allow and what you exclude, and that justification needs to be something you can consistently apply. You don't want to accidentally turn track into the tour de france, or biathlon into live-action battlezone because you weren't careful in defining what your sport really is.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!