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 »

The Disabled Wage War Against the Wheelchair and Begin Test-Piloting Transhumanism

 AI, Artificial Intelligence, Brain, CareBots, Cybernetics, Exoskeleton, Human Augmentation, Military Robotics, Neurology, Prosthetics, Robot, Technology, Technology & Disability, Transhuman, Transhumanism, Transhumanism Test Pilots, We're Already Cyborgs Already  Comments Off
Jan 102012
 

Burn it Down
This lovely young woman is doing her part to destroy the wheelchair industry. And she’s a hero. Practical, admirable, and necessary, movements such as ADA and other anti-discriminatory legislation were essential for their time, but we should all be happy when technology renders them irrelevant.

As I’ve said before, the technology that is the wheelchair has helped millions, but its time is finished – and the time of the wearable robot exoskeleton is approaching. Unless you build wheelchairs or access ramps or any other specialized wheelchair-centric equipment, you’ve gotta agree that a mobility revolution for the disabled is long overdue (and if you do build such equipment, it’s time to diversify, yo).

This post is really an update; this exact system came up here last May, then Berkeley Bionics (now renamed Ekso Bionics – a real lateral marketing move, I think) was just testing their prototype wheelchair killer. Now the device is moving through medical trials and appears to be fast-tracking to the market. These guys know what they’re doing – they’ve been at it since 2005, and their tech is also being used in Lockheed’s HULC exoskeleton.

The Physically Disabled as Transhuman Pioneers Continue reading »

Hey Grandpa, Ask Northern Africa about how Social Media is Ruining Our Brains, K?

 Aging Society, Anthrobotic Originals, Facebook, Human Augmentation, Internet, Neurology, Prosthetics, Technology, Technology & Politics, Twitter  Comments Off
Dec 152011
 

Seriously?  Okay, here’s this:

¡Achtung!
Before I even got past the headline of the link in my email, immediately I wondered who put this thing together or funded it. When I saw it was some company/organization called Assisted Living Today, which apparently does exactly what it sounds like, I thought I’d missed April 1st in December or something (full infographic after the jump).

GeriatricHub.com?
Am I Not Seeing the Irony?
Or… Something?
This is apparently an exclusive to SingularityHub.com, which is confusing. Is the respected tech site getting AARP funding or somesuch? If this is a joke that I’m just not getting? Well then, here’s my admission of thickness: I don’t get it. Seems to me a technology-focused forum such as that would have at least made fun of this a little bit.

Can’t quite get my head around the connection here…
Super-Tech Website is ≠ Assisted Living Curmudgeons, right?

Technological Conservatism is Not Logic Understand
Don’t get me wrong, no one should be made fun of for presenting a given view – unless there’s a stink in the execution or logic. And okay, I’m trying to be nice… but this infographic is a pretty large POS propped up with a whole lotta “could” and “might” and “some claim” and blatant correlation-without-causality leaps of logic. Not to mention the fact that the bulk of the report’s causal factors are based on phenomenon/products/services that didn’t even exist five years ago!
I scoff at they.

The Screaming Subtext
Now, I dig on a good infographic as much as the next dork, but this one should be called
“How the Elderly Don’t Really Understand Modern Communication.“ Continue reading »

A Human Soul: Gift from Spooky Father Figure Above, or Just a Complex Recursive Pattern?

 AI, Artificial Intelligence, Brain, Consciousness, Medical Technology, Neurology, Technology, Transhuman, Transhumanism  Comments Off
Dec 072011
 

The Sum or The Pieces or The Product
Well, here’s the pandering, patronizing sentence where,
like a good journalist, I state the screaming obvious:
AI & NBI researchers, transhumanists, philosophers, and of course neurologists have grappled with questions of the nature of the soul, consciousness, and their representative patterns in human brain activity and whether or not they can be reverse engineered, and what the hell are we, and why are we here, and does it even mean anything?

See – despite my bizarre sentence structure, I did use the word “grappled!” And I’ve never even studied journalism!

Connectome
There’s a book coming out in February: Connectome, by Sebastian Seung. It’s asking the classic questions, but more so as an overview of contemporary biological/neurological science that, more so than philosophy or religion, pushes forward our understanding of the sloppy grey thinking organ in our skulls. SciAm has pre-review up, and ANTHROBOTIC recommends – have a look – add to wish list!

And who knows, man… Are we monumentally arrogant to even wonder if we are anything other than an inevitability of chemistry and physics? [author shrugs] We’ve been asking ourselves this stuff for like, you know, ever. Probably because it’s the best question like, you know, ever.

[REVIEW VIA SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN]

BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS POST:
“Connectome”
by Sebastian Seung
Support the site – buy at Anthrobotic’s Amazon Affiliate store!


Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens: Profound Philosophical Quandary! Ish…

 Anthrobotic Originals, Brain, Consciousness, Cybernetics, Future Already Very Pending, Human Augmentation, Neurology, Prosthetics, Technology, Technology & Work, Telepresence, Transhumanism, We're Already Cyborgs Already  Comments Off
Nov 252011
 

My Eyeballs Rule. But…
I’ve always known that my superior vision makes me better than most people (of course), but as the years go by and these lenses improve, I’m kinda looking forward to the decline of my, to use the medical definition, “Awesomer Than Perfect” vision.
(This point of hubris might chafe, but I don’t care – I’m incompetent in almost every area of human endeavor, but when it comes to seeing stuff and skipping rocks, I’m World Class Champion League. I shouldn’t even be allowed near WordPress, really – unless it’s for like, you know, looking or throwing rocks at it. You work with what you got, son!)

You Won’t Need a Phone or PC
A research lab at the University of Washington is continuing to advance data-centric contact lenses for us to someday get data from – theoretically cybernetic prosthetics providing an augmented/virtual reality overlay of the world around us. It’s a rather profound concept – both practically speaking and for the simple and timeless philosophical question of:
“What the Hell is Reality, Yo?”

Looking Out From My Skull
Skip forward lots of years – but not too many – and a simple contact lens with high-res capability could theoretically replace almost every screen you find yourself looking at on a day-to-day basis. Continue reading »

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