The team that brought us the first neurally remote controlled beetle has a new paper out today proposing a huge step forward in brain-computer interfaces. In an article published the arXiv Quantitative Biology archive, Dongjin Seo, Michael Maharbiz, and colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley…
Huge Herr is a cyborg. He has two bionic legs. He does pioneering research into cybernetic technology. But much more importantly, he has some very forward-thinking ideas about this technology, and how our society should deal with it. Read this amazing profile of him in the Wall Street Journal, which includes a lot of…
Say you've just had ACL surgery. Or you're recovering from a bad break. Or, worse, you suffer a stroke, or MS, or spinal or neurological damage. Regaining the power to walk is one of the toughest things you can do, and it may be impossible without a crutch, rail, or physical therapist to lean on. The AlterG Bionic…
When I was little, I found it very hard to get up in the morning. When my mum would come calling me for school, I would conjure up all sorts of imaginary solutions for how I could manage to sleep a little bit longer.
I've argued before that the most profound change from cyborg technology will come not from upgrading our capabilities, but from changing our desires. Our desires form the core of who we are. They are literally why we get up in the morning. And there are many aspects of our desires that we'd like to change, for…
When we think of cyborgs, we tend to think of the images we know from popular culture. But because movies and TV have to be visually entertaining, they tend to depict mainly the kind of cyborg upgrades that just look flashy - humans with robot arms and legs, prosthetics, etc.
Upgrade's adhoc Cyborg-themed linkfest
Dmitry Itskov dreams of immortality. It’s a dream that the Russian multimillionaire is hoping to engineer into reality in a relatively short 32 years with his creation of the “2045 Initiative” – a project devoted to the kind of “life extension technologies” that currently populate science fiction.
By using five microphones, a speaker, and a sophisticated new echolocation algorithm, researchers have successfully built a full 3D image of a cathedral’s insanely complex interior. The same technology could someday allow humans to navigate in total darkness.
We live in a world full of cyborgs, though most of us don't notice it.
Humans are a genetically diverse bunch. Some of us are born with extraordinary perceptual powers — neurological gifts that biologists might eventually be able to provide for the rest of us. But do we really want to have some of these 'superhuman' quirks?
