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MIT Prof Predicts the End of Disabilities In Next 50 Years
judgecorp writes "MIT professor Hugh Herr describes how technology can end disability in 50 years — with a big incentive from the need to support injured war veterans. A champion climber, Herr lost both legs below the knee, returned to climbing and designed improved climbing prostheses. From the article: 'Herr believes the work he is doing won’t just have humanitarian benefits. There’s money to be made too. And if there’s a market here, it means more people will receive help. Despite all the horrors and injustices the Iraq and Afghanistan wars spawned, they have helped make the biomechatronics industry a lot more viable. Back in 2007, Herr gave Garth Stewart, a 24-year-old Army veteran who lost his left leg below the knee during the conflict in Iraq, a bionic ankle. It used tendon-like springs and an electric motor to provide support for Stewart.'"
I'm inclined to wonder whether the roboticists will manage to crack their problem before team "you grew the leg once, now grow it again" manages to get their pet stem cells from turning into hideous doom cancer all the time...
I'm also inclined to wonder what the outcome will be if we manage to crack the (highly complex; but comparatively simple) mechanical problem of replacing the function of limbs; but still have a load of people running around with neural problems, whether inborn or caused by concussive damage and the like. Robotics is hard; but it appears to be very nearly a toy problem compared to neurology.
I already have a defective part swapped out. I got a steroid-induced cataract in my left eye, and its lens was replaced with a CrystaLens, which sits on struts and can actually focus. After wearing thick glasses all my life I now need no corrective lenses at all, not even reading glasses -- and I'm 60.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile? You'll BEG to be assimilated.
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