U.S. Military Spending Millions To Make Cyborgs A Reality (cnn.com)

mmell writes: The U.S. military is spending millions on an advanced implant that would allow a human brain to communicate directly with computers. If it succeeds, cyborgs will be a reality. The goal of the proposed implant is to "open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics" according to DARPA's program manager, Phillip Alvelda. In January, DARPA announced it plans to spend up to $62 million on the project, which is part of its Neural Engineering System Design program. The implant would be small -- no larger than one cubic centimeter, or roughly the size of two stacked nickels -- according to DARPA. The implantable device aims to convert neurons in the brain into electronic signals and provide unprecedented "data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world," according to a DARPA statement announcing the new project. DARPA sees the implant as providing a foundation for new therapies that could help people with deficits in sight or hearing by "feeding digital auditory or visual information into the brain." A spokesman for DARPA told CNN that the program is not intended for military applications.
Ordinarily, such a headline might be considered sensationalist reporting and a batch of sci-fi -- except DARPA is involved. I can remember when internetworking computers was a radical concept until DARPA came up with some serious sci-fi style communications protocols to make it all work. With only $62 million budgeted (so far), we can only hope that it'll be a while before they succeed -- but then again, this is DARPA we're talking about.

Comments

Final Interface

[rtb61]

The real problem with the computer chip, human cell interface is that final connection. Getting a connection that will not burn out or contaminate cells or even the simple physics of different densities and how that will disrupt connections from changes in inertial loading. Those chips would need to have near identical densities to the brain tissue they connect to, any electrical exchange would have to be near identical to human electrical change (which tends to be more within the cell with chemical exchange outside of the cell) and chemical exchange would require refuelling the computer chips or attempting to draw that chemical fuel from the body.

Sure computer biological connections can be more easily obtained but they are not sustainable or desirable and their intent only really functions around concepts of torture, forced destructive extraction of data or temporary enslavement (with biologic failure in any extended application).

Reality is, for any longevity it would require the bioengineering of a living organisation planted within the brain that could act as the connection between the human mind and any digital interface. Something that could squirm into the brain, say between the two halves of the brain and wrap itself around the corpus collosum with it's tail attached to the skull providing the digital connection. About the only means be which to create a no destructive connection, apart from say remote quantum connections, in terms of measuring and changing. Far simpler to engineer the symbiote than to attempt a quantum connection of course if you don't care about damaging the individual and your purposes are destructively perverted as expected from the US military, than well, what else would you expect from the US military industrial complex.