Transhumanism Test Pilots: Fly-by-Tongue

 Aging Society, Brain, Cybernetics, Exoskeleton, Human Augmentation, Medical Technology, Neurology, Prosthetics, Technology, Technology & Disability, Transhuman, Transhumanism, Transhumanism Test Pilots, We're Already Cyborgs Already  Comments Off
Feb 292012
 

Something New
Hmmm… I think Transhumanism Test Pilots should be become a regular thing around here – a new section to go with Terminal Anachronism and Japanese Technology from the Future Friday.

I like to keep an eye on transformative technologies for disabled humans – also known, to me anyway, as the Transhumanism Test Pilots! They’re transtastic.
(I can spit out bad taglines all day)

Because The Thing is This:
Much of the technology being developed to assist or augment the lives of the disabled kinda overlaps or pushes subtly into human 2.0/transhumanist/rebuild the animal territory. Otherwise stated, the somewhat primitive yet practically necessary prosthetics and human augmentation implements of today could easily evolve into the voluntary upgrades of tomorrow.

And here’s a very good example of the human body used as input device:

Least or Most Dorky Retainer Ever - Depends.

The Tongue Drive System
While unimaginatively named, this new human-machine interface is everything long of awesome. Basically the relative orientation of a magnet on the tongue, which one assumes is not a piercing, originates a signal from the fancy retainer actuating a connected device/vehicle/zombie personal assistant to execute a preprogrammed action.

It’s totally cool.
Have a read of the original article.

[ARTICLE VIA CNET]

DARPA’s James Cameron Mashup: Unsurprising, but Existentially Bananas

 AI, Anthrobotic Originals, Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Cybernetics, DARPA, Exoskeleton, Future Already Very Pending, Human Augmentation, Military Robotics, NBI, Neurology, Prosthetics, Robot, Technology, Transhuman, Transhumanism, WarBots  Comments Off
Feb 212012
 

Remote-Controlled Humanoid WarBots
So DARPA got some so-called Avatar robot money in next year’s budget. This is interesting news that slips neatly into anthrobotic.com’s WarBot thread, but for those who follow the WarBot-machine-drone-non-directly-human-remote-watching/killing/delivering field of technology, it’s hardly a revelation. Becasue Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, K-MAX, Sentinel, Packbot.
And more:
Drone aircraft and other remotely controlled vehicles in our unmanned arsenal already function as primitive avatars, so obviously this is a logical next step. But, as with most things DARPA, it begins an interesting discussion.

First, a question I haven’t quite figured out is:
Where’s the line between robot and R/C car or plane or whatever? Some consider our various military drones to be robots, but we wouldn’t really consider this here to be a robot:
Other than size and munitions and relocating to Nevada in order to play with it, isn’t a Predator drone essentially the same thing? Which is a robot and why? I don’t know, man!

What about an automated parking garage? Aren’t those kind of like building-sized robots lugging cars up and down and to and fro? Shouldn’t a gigantic semi-autonomous robot have geeks like me all kindsa dorktastically excited?
They don’t. Well, maybe me a little bit.

The thing is, there’s a kind of animal vanity at work here. I think in order for us to call something a robot, we want it to be at least vaguely modeled after something that is actually living. Or has lived. Because I’ve seen a robot T-Rex before, and it was unquestionably a robot.

Red = Pissed Off.

Continue reading »

Yes, Yes My Lower Jaw is 3D Laser-Printed Titanium. No, I’m Not From the Future.

 Cybernetics, Future Already Very Pending, Human Augmentation, Medical Technology, Multimedia, Prosthetics, Technology, Transhuman, Transhumanism, We're Already Cyborgs Already  Comments Off
Feb 072012
 

Wow.
Low on time here, so gotta forgo my standard verbosity and just sit back and be impressed by this technology – it’s truly amazing across so many disciplines.

If you dig on such things, have a look at my last post – I went on at great (painful) length about emergent cyborg culture/developments, etc.

For now I’ll just extend congratulations and huge props to developers, surgeons, and the recipient.

[ARTICLE VIA 3DERS - AS IN, ...ERS - THOSE WHO DO STUFF]
[ANOTHER ARTICLE FROM FORBES - ALEX KNAPP]

Where the Human Ends & the Machine Begins: Getting Unclearer…

 Aging Society, AI, Anthrobotic Originals, Artificial Intelligence, Brain, Consciousness, Cybernetics, Exoskeleton, Future Already Very Pending, Human Augmentation, Kurzweil, Medical Technology, Prosthetics, Technology, The Beginning is Near, Transhuman, Transhumanism, Transhumanism Test Pilots, We're Already Cyborgs Already  4 Responses »
Feb 032012
 

Cyborg Stuff
There’s an interesting piece over at NYT – The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg.
I’m not entirely sure what the dilemma is, but cyborg stuff is no small deal here at Anthrobotic, so it merits some consideration. Here are a few thoughts to roll the ball:

What are the Boundaries of my Physical Parts?
Okay, so I’ve got my guts, and my bones, and my connective tissues – like most people, that’s what I refer to as my physical “self,” the physical Me.

But… then I’ve got a few fillings and a few non-biological implants. Are those things any less Me? Are they just add-ons? What about the various bacteria and teeny-tiny bugs that at all times live in/on my body? Are those Me, too? As part of a whole bacterial culture, individual components pass and new are born – and at a molecular and sub-molecular level, nearly every cell in my body does essentially the same thing.

So my physical body, my Me, seems to be a bizarre combo platter of the co-dependent fauna, the implants (cyborg?), my body’s dead-cell accumulations of hair & finger/toenails, and transient molecules following a recursive pattern that results in my distinctly human biological structure, i.e., all my bones and squishy parts. In sum, these components make up my essential physicality, my manifestation, my both internalized and projected physical reference point for the world around me.

Well, I guess the thing is this: every living human is in a symbiotic relationship with the millions of other organisms contained by our bodies, and by definition many of us are already cyborgs (Dick Cheney, Stephen Hawking, Me). As such, what we routinely conceptualize as our discrete physical “self” isn’t nearly as cut and dried as we might think. Or quite necessarily, not think. Too much thinking about this would result in psychosis and/or a PhD in biological philosophy or losing one’s religion or something.

Technology’s helping us further explore and understand these ideas, but the catch is that it’s also totally complicating the issue.

Because What about the Boundaries of my Personhood?
Where is my Personality, or Soul, or Whatever? Continue reading »

Technology Will Eradicate Barbarians & Drum Circles and Fix Everything

 Consciousness, Cybernetics, Energy Technology, Future Already Very Pending, Genomics, Human Augmentation, Internet, Kurzweil, Medical Technology, Prosthetics, Pure Science, Robot, Space Technology, Super Computer, Technology, Technology & Art, Technology & Education, Technology & Labor, Technology & Politics, Technology & Travel, Technology & Work, Technology Law, The Beginning is Near, Transhumanism  Comments Off
Jan 262012
 

The Dumbest of the Species
The two most holistically primitive varieties of anti-technology people are:
#1. Hardcore Religious Zealots
and
#2. Hippies
Regarding technology’s fundamental role in human civilization’s, ummm… existence, these two groups are far and away the most confused and contradictory. If that sounds discriminatory and judgmental, well that’s because it’s meant to be. What other sets of humans have been more consistently incorrect and backward about nearly everything their philosophies project onto society?

While what hippies and religious zealots stand for is dumb as hell, and they’ve done exactly nothing positive for the world they live in, mentioning them does make for a fabulous segue into today’s Anthrobotic Book Recommendation! Continue reading »

IPv6 on June 6: The Internets Get HUGE.

 Anthrobotic Originals, DARPA, Future Already Very Pending, Human Augmentation, Internet, Super Computer, Technology, The Beginning is Near  Comments Off
Jan 232012
 

Instead, 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456!
That’s a lot of potential IPs, man. June 6th, 2012 is the date IPv6 goes live, or whatever ICANN calls flipping this particular switch. The current number is around 4.3 billion. So, suffice it to say, that number up there is going to like, you know, make it a helluva lot more.

How Long Until More?
My personal rule when purchasing electronics is to never get just enough to meet my needs. Instead, it behooves me to purchase about 120-130% of my intended usage capacity.  Do I necessarily need a MacBook Pro when an Amateur would fill my immediate needs? Negative. But chances are I will come to need it.  I WILL.

That’s why I bought a 6 GB MP3 player in the summer of 2000.

There was no way I could possibly really seriously practically use all that storage.
Knowhattamean?

So yeah, IPv6 is a great leap forward. But something tells me that even a 39-digit number might eventually seem as quaint as 4.3 billion does now. I mean come on, let’s be realistic – nanobots are going to need IP addresses, too.

So Yeah, June 6th
I do a lot of blah blah blah here about theoretical technology and the big bright future, so I think my 6 regular readers will appreciate some news about a technological advance in something tangible, extant, really real and happening now!

[ARTICLE VIA ENGADGET]
[IMAGE: THE OPTE PROJECT]

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