I hacked my body for a future that never came
theverge.com
theverge.com
To repost a slightly tounge-incheek description of features your "standard model" has:
1. Supports a very large number of individual movements and articulations
2. Meets certain weight-restrictions (overall system must be near-buoyant in water)
3 Supports a wide variety of automatic self-repair techniques, many of which can occur without ceasing operation
4. Is entirely produced and usually maintained by unskilled (unconscious?) labor from common raw materials
5. Contains a comprehensive suite of sensors
6. Not too brittle, flexes to store and release mechanical energy from certain impacts
7. Selectively reinforces itself when strain is detected
8. Has areas for the storage of long-term energy reserves, which double as an impact cushion
9. Houses small fabricators to replenish some of its own operating fluids
10. Subsystems for thermal management (evaporative cooling, automatic micro-activation)
Another serious downside is fragility. Sure it can self repair. But it's very slow and only works for minor damage. Id prefer to just swap out the broken part and fix it quickly.
And the whole fluid system is connected, so if a single part breaks it can drain the whole system. Not to mention the whole pain thing. It can't even extreme temperatures or environments at all.
Do you live someplace without weather, because I sure don't.
>A less optimized brain
Who said anything about less optimized? Energy conservation was the dominating constraint for evolution. The brain has to run on only 10 watts of power, which is tiny. Remove that constraint and its likely the brain could be much more powerful. Comparisons to completely different classes of animal with completely different types of brains is irrelevant. Within primates, species with more energy consuming brains are more intelligent, with humans at the top.
Also the brain uses very slow and inefficient chemical reactions to send signals, compared to transistors.
>Body parts that must be purchased when damaged instead of self repairing.
Healthcare is by far one of the greatest expenses of the modern world. I'll take just purchasing a new robot arm, assuming cyborg insurance doesn't cover it.
>You want to disable your ability to sense noxious stimuli.
If you mean pain, hell yes. I'll take an alert "you've been damaged!" over excruciating pain any day.
>And a compartmentalized fluid system
That doesn't sound so bad at all. In fact a robot body probably doesn't require fluids at all if power is distributed electrically. Even simple emergency shutoff valves could fix the fluid system. A simple cut shouldn't be enough to kill you.
Reminds me of the P-51 radiator. One tiny leak, the slightest battle damage, and the engine was toast. I have to admire the badass mofo's that flew them over long stretches of the Pacific. The P-48 (air cooled) would keep running with a lot of engine damage.
My truck sprung a leak in the heater hose last week (the fan belt ground a hole in it), and I was able to limp it the mile home before all the coolant was gone and the engine melted, but it wouldn't have gone any further.
In reality, there are plenty of opportunities for true augmentation. F.ex. a friend was discussing the pacemaker his mother recently had implanted after an episode of tachycardia. Fairly small, continuously monitors vitals & syncs to communicate with base station (which can contact physician if needed), internal battery. And works in conjunction with the existing biological heart!
Why not focus on actually augmenting our already-amazing bodies?
But only one of his arms was bionic. It would have just ripped the other hand off. Similarly, his running at superspeed would have just shattered his spine.
I.e. you can't increase the power of the engine without increasing the strength of the drive train.
>> would have just ripped the other hand off.
I imagine some of the best augmentation tech is going to be about diagnostic data and about coaxing/training our bodies away from maladaptive states. Consider already-existing stuff like insulin pumps or anti-seizure implants. Extend that to dealing with obesity, panic attacks, allergies...
It's engineering. Get the low hanging fruit first.
In the example of the pacemaker, it would be like techies 50 years ago talking about how cool a computer controlled pacemaker would be, while they implant a 12AT7 dual triode vacuum tube in their belly doing roughly nothing.
Yes, it's depressing we don't have artificial limbs that are superior to biological ones.
But, it's amazing and inspiration that we do have micro pacemakers and blood monitors and portable defibrillators today!
IOW, don't blind oneself to the future forest because the actual trees aren't the species you were expecting.
https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not-to-...
That presupposes one lives in a certain part of the world. There are substantial reaches of the planet where even with commercial shipping access, letting your body heal itself would be faster.
Energy is abundant only in certain areas of the world. As a species, many of us still face malnutrition.
I don't understand how you came to that number for agriculture though. Growing crops like corn consumes very little energy relative to the amount of food produced. Transportation and processing requires a bit more, but I can't see how it adds up to anywhere near that much.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
Growing organic food on a healthy soil, will give you a certain amount of yield. Using fertilisers and modern techniques on that soil will give you a tremendous temporary boost. But most such techniques kill the soil in the process, and you eventually run out of natural fertilisers.
Using fertilisers and modern techniques on dead soil will have yields similar to organic food on a healthy soil. The only real advantage at this point is the reduced human labour required (organic food is more labour intensive overall).
Of course, organic food on dead soil will be crap.
We can stop relying on fertilisers, if we have a healthy soil. Fortunately, there are techniques to resurrect dead soils (basically have some wood rot on that soil), and some other things. It takes about 2-3 years, though, and generalising those technique will definitely require more farmers.
Well, it does. Even EPA says it's about one quarter of the CO2 emissions.
Good luck paying for energy equivalent to ten times your food budget, and the time taken to charge.
In terms of stored energy per kilogram, regular old fat kicks the ass of any consumer battery tech.
Suppose that your augmentations rely on battery-fed electricity, and you eat 2,000 kcal per day for your bio-bits, and charge 18,000 kcal each night for your mech-bits...
In that scenario, you'd need to carry around an extra 120 kilograms of lithium-ion batteries to cover your daily activity, which probably won't involve much jumping.
I'd say meat is one of the biggest global-warming drivers. That's why I referred to "blind calories", as in, calories and you don't care where they came from.
getting 24kWh out of a wall and into a portable something in less time than a person spends eating in a day, though, would require some serious cabling.
Another example is it costs about $1 per watt-year where I live, and people completely freak out about using old desktop computers that draw 100 watts (aka $100/yr) and suggest the usual greenwashing solutions of spending hundreds of dollars on exotic new hardware that will pay for itself in only 50-100 years (of course its realistic lifespan is more like 5 years tops ...). 2400 watts continuous draw means $2400 per year to the electric company, roughly, aside from demand for air conditioning from all those sweaty heads. Most people are very poor in our current pyramid so this would likely be an issue only for 1%er types.
I would find it more interesting in terms of reducing total death rate to be able to drop burn rate to 10 watts or so and genetically engineer some photosynthesis in to skin. So in a famine you seem to exist by doing little more than sleep while sunbathing, not entirely unlike an elderly housecat. Or in the winter even without photosynthesis, turn the dial down to hibernate levels.
Odd that solitary animals like bears seem to hibernate pretty well but supposedly (note, supposedly...) hyper social hyper extroverted humans don't hibernate although a tribe structure would seem to enormously benefit... Probably some pre-conception is wrong or there's something about higher human consciousness that doesn't tolerate dreamworld for 23 hours per week.
The "infrastructure costs" for making that possible will probably outweigh any benefit, unless you also genetically engineer people to be immobile brains connected to bat-wing-like collection surfaces.
Even with energy-conversion inefficiencies, it makes much more sense to construct/build something big and immobile that indirectly collects that energy which we can then tap.
If everyone did that, we might run out of energy....
I'd glaaaadly take a 10% brainpower upgrade that required 100% extra energy, though. I can afford the extra 500 kCal per day of food intake. My understanding is that most first-worlders like their food enough that they'd take a 0% improvement in trade for being able to eat another 500kCal per day of food without weight gain.
I mean, all that assumes that a "10x stronger brain" actually results in a useful performance upgrade. That part is pure fantasy speculation.
BrainHub. Additional brain processing and storage for $25/mo for your team of 5. Free for public memories.
If not complete military-grade win, it would be nice tradeoff anyway. Alternatives are: placing new heavy brain in abdomen (because stock digestion can't produce so much power by design), or replacing back, coxal and leg bones with carbon variants with embedded batteries, which should be far more expensive than subscription to low-latency BH channel for additional $1000/mo SLA per team. Also consider servicing and failure costs for businesses depending on 5*10x brainpower teams, and reduced labour market.
I think you'd be more likely to get an arithmetic co-processor to start, wire neurons in such a way up to a small circuit that you get precise mathematical intuitions based on it. Being incredible at math from birth would likely change your life indescribably.
I would take the 10% upgrade also, but if everyone did...well...it could become a problem. As food isn't transformed into energy uniformly, obesity could still be a problem.
12. Comes in many different shades of skin color, individualized just right for your body.
13. Full compatibility with other body parts, e.g.immune system lung heart
While I don't disagree with your level of skepticism necessarily, I'd like to take this moment to make a point --
this kind of negative sentiment seems so characteristic of HN lately toward anything new and difficult, in spite of the fact that this is a community generally aimed toward entrepreneurial, forward-looking, highly-technical types.
Instead of such a short stop "it would be expensive, so why bother, it won't happen for a long, long time" sort of sentiment, why does't the community make more pointed suggestions about flaws. Simply and vaguely saying "the economics look bad to me" generates only sentiment, and no real knowledge to be shared. I can be guilty of it, too, but usually because of emotional response and not a technical criticism. This sounds like a technical criticism with no reasoning.
On top of that, "era" is a really vague term. I mean, it might not be perfect, but try $300 on: https://www.engadget.com/2015/03/23/this-300-cybernetic-arm-...
I don't think it's as far and distant as you think.
Both of these ideas are currently in the basic research stage and far from becoming mainstream, so they are just looking in a different direction that is still "forward".
I agree that the lack of reasons for the economic differences is disappointing, though.
Personally, I believe we will use whatever solution makes sense in a given context. If you need a cosmetic replacement for you lost ear, you get appropriately shaped connective tissue colonized with fresh cells, so that it looks like the real thing. If you need something to restore your lost hearing, you get a cochlear implant.
I actually agree with you -- and personally I'd prefer having natural tissue replacement as a more ready and viable solution, I guess I really approached a response the wrong way. Rather than saying they weren't forward looking, I think I meant the vision espoused was too limited?
I do think we're closer to cybernetic/bionic options, though (as referenced in my original comment as an example).
I'll be honest, all this biomod stuff looks like LARP to me. Just look at the article, this person literally got a magnet installed so they could play-act at being in a lesser Neil Stevenson novel, while, as noted in these comments, the actual science is nowhere near delivering the advancements that were promised. It turns out not all problems can be solved with a little Javascript.
Maybe that makes me a cynic, fair enough, but all this valley hype is exhausting.
These scientifically conservative organizations are great for not letting terrible things happen to people, but not at all geared towards radical innovation. Viz the medical community just starting to realize that systemic outcome-tracking might be beneficial towards informing what procedures are more effective in the real world.
My thoughts are:
The market for a useful cybernetic limb is extremely small, despite the amount of media attention this kind of thing gets. It would be limited to injured soldiers, the very small number of civilians that lose limbs, and the even smaller number of biohackers that would consider voluntarily replacing a limb. Each prosthetic limb would need to be custom built to size constraints and other characteristics of the amputated limb. Think about how much effort it took to create a good consumer experience for a smartphone where the market size is essentially the entire population on the planet and there are massive economies of scale.
The other factor is that even the limb prosthetics we have today require a significant amount of ongoing support to resize and adjust to the user. You can appreciate therefore that a highly sophisticated and customised synthetic limb would require very thorough ongoing follow up and maintenance for the lifetime of the user, and this incurs a significant cost.
Another factor is competing technology - growing organs extra-corporeally benefits from a much broader scope and therefore larger market, and possibly even easier engineering hurdles. Also, it is likely that there will be robots which you can ask to pick up your coffee cup etc long before a useful prosthetic limb. This isn't as good as having your own arm, but the engineering hurdles are much easier and the market for robotics is obviously massive.
I would suggest therefore that in the next 30 years, a useful prosthetic limb, with acceptable latency, strength and durability is probably not possible for less than several hundred thousand dollars initial cost, and perhaps that much again for life long maintenance. I also doubt that the potential market is big enough for someone to invest enough to turn it into a really good consumer product, including setting up supply chain and maintenance systems.
Personally, I'd love to have to have natural regrowth as a more viable option (though I also like the idea of cybernetic enhancement). For example, I have soft teeth and have had an issue maintaining their health without dental work my whole life. If anybody could ever make that such a non-issue as I might be able to have my dentin and enamel regrown, I'd be soooo happy.
Although
Also, no one picks locks unless they don't want it known they were there or don't want to pay for another lock. So ... just use your weapon.
BTW the current models often fail practically at #3 getting a repair would often be easier, instead of a long road to recovery ;)
> [C]onsider that you are an enormous colony of vicious nanomachines, shaped by millions of years of fighting and cooperating with other varieties for survival.
> Your mobile swarm contains thousands of tools for finding, neutralizing, disassembling and anything useful it comes in contact with... including techniques for identifying and destroying possible intruders. Now, those tools aren't perfect -- and everybody else has their own tricks -- but the fact that you're around means you're competitively equipped and you're at least somebody's else's nightmare. All the really bad players were eaten long ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i881n/e...
But this kind of problem is more serious and discouraging when you think about aging. You know cells in each organ are going to mutate, get protein aggregation, fibrosis, and so on. Instead of trying to figure out something to do about each of those things individually at the molecular level, it might seem simpler to just replace organs periodically. Every 20 years, just get a new heart, etc.
Nontrivial and risky, of course, but perhaps less so than the even less-developed alternatives. But as TFA points out, surgery is hard on the body, and the body likes to reject transplants, be they biological or mechanical. Integrating vasculature is hard, integrating nerves is REALLY hard.
So in short, I think even if these particular applications are frivolous, hopefully people who are doing this will help push forward knowledge on the general question of "how do you add/replace/integrate body parts safely and robustly". They are truly pioneers, in all senses of the term -- they're pushing forward the frontier at great personal risk.
In the mean time, there's also some work that can be done on the the anti-aging front by picking very simple mutations that cause delayed aging phenotypes (skip to "longevity" section): http://diyhpl.us/wiki/genetic-modifications/
As you probably know, NIA does not consider aging a disease, just a risk factor for other diseases. So we cannot possibly test anything remotely risky in humans for the treatment of aging, and that certainly includes both transplants and gene therapy. We have to backdoor our way in via stuff like Alzheimer's, dementia, sarcopenia, etc, and it seems unlikely that most gene therapy interventions that target aging per se would have enough efficacy on that kind of disease to justify the risk. They are too advanced already.
Even so, this is the kind of thing I think about while driving to work, frustrated at the slow pace that occurs while working within the system :)
I am inclined to agree that the problems with transplantation, both biological and mechanical, are mostly solvable though. I think the kinks will have to be worked out in other fields where prosthetics, surgery, and gene therapy have a better perceived risk/reward ratio than aging.
Some very high-level background on where this is coming from: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/hplusroadmap/ (we hang out mostly on IRC and would love to hear your project ideas).
Much more modest in scope, this is one of our recent projects: https://blog.kitmatic.com/2017/06/28/electroporation-is-now-...
In general, I love meeting with the non-academic side of this work. I met de Grey and some of his associates at last year's AAA meeting. The relationship is complicated, as you know.
I see the value in both types of research -- people working outside the system don't have to worry about IRBs, paper-writing, etc, and can take risks we can't. OTOH, there are a lot of very smart people on the inside who are working on "things that matter". For example, Jim Kirkland and senolytics. They have access to expertise, funding, samples, and personnel that the non-academic community cannot realistically match. Although the entrance of Calico et al is a new quantity and it will be interesting to see how that turns out.
As a very short summary of my focus, I came into the field, read a lot of papers, and came to the conclusion "no one knows what causes aging". So my focus is on bioinformatics systems to process a lot of data and help me figure out what direction should be most fruitful to focus on. I work with wet-lab people but don't do it myself.
I hope the new generation of academic aging researchers will reach out more to the non-academic side more, though. I plan to do so.
I laughed it off, I thought he was pulling a fast one on me. At the time I was intentionally reading about 10 papers/day ( http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/longevity/ not all of them on longevity, of course). I told him my personal target, and he basically said nope, other people are reading at most a few papers per month.
I don't really think the academic system is working :-). Biology is crazy complex, there's just no way for anyone to get enough context if they are just grazing around.
That is very true. Nowadays, a good day for me is 3. We're too busy writing papers, writing grants, writing code, answering e-mails, filling out forms, or whatever. But I work at an institute that does a lot besides aging. I don't get the impression this is specific to the aging field.
But on the other hand, the truth is that most papers do not have very much relevant information in them. There are millions of papers published per year. Aging is so interdisciplinary it would be foolish to think that if you just read J. Gerontology (now "GeroScience" lol, that was done to suck up to Felippe Sierra), Aging Cell, and a few others, you'll be caught up.
That's why I went to the data. Even IF a human could read them all, most of the interesting data nowadays is high-throughput and is analyzed in the most shallow way within the text. The real beef is deposited in GEO or SRA.
I am inclined to think that biology works in a way that is not very comprehensible to the human mind. For example, when humans design a system, it's modular, and you try to minimize the number of interdependencies between modules.
In biology, it seems almost everything affects everything else, to the point that if someone publishes a paper saying "X upregulates Y", I find it almost irrelevant; they have, assuming everything was done correctly, characterized one edge in a very highly connected network. Probably the "X upregulates Y" is contextual as well.
I don't know the solution to all this. I just wanted to do this as a career, and as a graduate student we very clearly learned that there are certain lines we need to color within if we wanted to be paid to do research.
.... Eliezer leaned back in his chair. "Mr. Musk, what can I do for you?". The two engaged in a blissful staredown as their eyes locked. After several overbearing teary-eyed moments, Elon replied with a simple request. "World peace." And thus began a long, unproductive partnership between Big Yud and Peter Thiel-- I mean, Elon Musk -- a partnership focused not on the practical realities of actually building relevant transhumanist technology, but rather a venture focused on theories of world peace-- er, I mean, friendliness-- and writing fanfic instead of executing on important engineering/lab skills to achieve technological goals.
This story continued here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXARrMadTKk
More seriously... Some projects don't really require that much funding to happen. Often you can use specialized knowledge to forego otherwise hugely expensive efforts. It mostly starts with skill and knowledge, not money. As an example, trying out random CRISPR-Cas9 projects can actually be really cheap, less than $5k/project if the projects are structured just right. The trick is to pick projects that happen to be within budget and interesting enough to everyone involved. And if there needs to be a larger budget, sometimes the project is interesting enough to attract outsider funding.
If you can perform all these tasks with your smartphone cheaper and without invasive surgery, you can't really call it an augmentation or upgrade. Frankly, if implantable magnets and NFC/RFID chips are the full extent of the contributions of the biohacking community, then the community completely lacks imagination and creativity.
We can use radio waves to measure heart rate and breathing and use that data to measure a person's emotional state. It would be interesting to see someone hack together an internal sensor that does this and have it attached to implantable led's, so your body could "glow" particular colors based on your emotional state. Or use electronic ink tattoos to make an animated gif on your body.
Just copying the same two uninspired trends isn't what I would call hacking.
Don't let the grinders get in the way of progress :-) There are many at-home genetic engineering folks that don't proselytize implants every n seconds: https://groups.google.com/group/diybio
The downside to this other community is that the general public has an overbearing fascination with bioluminescence (sigh): http://www.the-odin.com/gene-engineering-kits/
There's also this BioHacker Space in SF that seems to have interesting meetups: http://biocurious.org/projects/
Although it's not auto-biohacking, some group created yeast that produces thc, allowing for marijuana infused beer
We actually do have promising 'batteries' for this sort of application as of 2017, though; lithium hybrid supercapacitors. They're roughly an order of magnitude worse than Li-Po batteries today, in energy density and cost. But the advantages over LiPos are a higher ~10C charge/discharge rate, no thermal runaway "Galaxy S7" issues, and a maximum charge retention rate on the order of 80-95% after 10,000 cycles should let them last decades at least. A very compact 100F/24mAh module is available today at 1.8-2.7V from Murata, and I think Taiyo-Yuden has offerings too.
I think we're still making progress. Anyone buying one of those magnets knew they were buying into an alpha version of a product; it's not like we asked the FDA to approve things first.
And I think to myself, what a ridiculous world.
> My earlier internet research suggested you could secure it with tape during a scan, but this confidence was apparently misplaced.
I'd hate to know what else he has confidence in.
But isn't it altogether nicer when comments focus on the interesting parts rather than quibbling over the trivial?
If the patient isn't able to answer or is unsure it gets a little complicated based on the risk factors, how soon the image is needed, etc.. Sometimes screening imaging of the orbits (eyes) is done if there is a history of metal working or a CT head/orbits (bullet fragments in brain = no bueno), chest X-ray if you can't get documentation on a pacemaker, and so on.
Source: I have a bunch of body jewelery and been through a bunch of metal detectors and never set any off.
But people do use metal detectors to reliably find bottle caps, jewelry, coins, etc, under several inches of sand and soil.
I quit subscribing to Popular Mechanics and the like many years ago because they were always so hyped with the next big breakthrough that never happened. It was science fiction (which I do love to read, but not when it is proclaimed as reality).
People buy into these cults and do bizarre things like this all the time, people want so badly to believe the comic books.
The narcissism of man is on full display with things like this. Do you realize just how little we understand about anything? Any field of science, medicine, exploration, psychology, philosophy. All whose pillars of truth are overturned regularly. I wonder why people are so stupid as to believe the next thing the surgeon general recommends them to eat or not eat, just to have that completely changes 5 years later. People basing their child rearing on psychologists whose studies cannot be reproduces almost 90% of the time.
Here is my philosophy. Wither you believe in creation or evolution, look back to learn how our bodies should stay healthy. The things we should eat and not eat. The exercise we should do. Look back before man started screwing things up (I'm talking hunter gatherers here). Use common sense when taking care of the planet. Look how interdependent everything is and don't screw that up.
Use your head, don't listen to someone else's hype. They are just trying to make a buck or gain power and influence.
Cellphones, LASIK, and Air Jordans are just part of the fabric of everyday reality now. We've seen their benefits but also their drawbacks. As they became widespread consumer products and services, not just experiments in a lab someplace, thwy lost their sheen and became the new normal.
But we still live in wonderful times, even if we choose not to see it.
Alternatively: nanites like in DX1 and DX2.
The better wearable devices get, the less sense it makes to permanently modify your body. Things like exoskeletons, smart glasses, and external brain-computer interfaces are safer and much easier to upgrade than their implanted counterparts. Plus, you can take them off in inappropriate situations: you won’t get stuck trying to swim with a metal limb, for example, or wearing a permanent version of Google Glass to a laid-back dive bar.
I really think wearables make vastly more sense for enhancing ourselves than this kind of body modification.
My 'ring' answer for magnet in finger was just an example of a counterpoint in such a debate between these two transhumanism approaches. I of course approve smart glasses, rings, bracelets, wearables, exoskeletons, etc. over implants, surgeries and metal bones (Wolverine from X-Men excluded ;). Of course nanites easily trump wearables but they are way too far into the future at this point I'd think.
On the other hand, I'd much rather have a North Paw anklet (https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/) than that implanted compass. I love the idea of using technology to augment my body and mind, but that doesn't necessarily require implantation.
On the third (cybernetic) hand, I totally understand the almost fetishistic excitement for full-on cyborgization. If I had to have a limb amputated, that would suck a lot, but getting to customize and show off a prosthetic would be a real silver lining for me. If I could electively replace a healthy hand or arm with a mechanical one that was categorically equal or superior, I would consider it. But I'd never accept a loss of real function just to look cool.
I think wireless power induction should be one of the minimum requirements.
Also this is another related community: https://groups.google.com/group/diybio
> He stared through the glass at a flat lozenge of vatgrown flesh that lay on a carved pedestal of imitation jade. ... it was tattooed with a luminous digital display wired to a subcutaneous chip. Why bother with the surgery, he found himself thinking, while sweat coursed down his ribs, when you could just carry the thing around in your pocket?
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7969066/?reload=true
Abstract: A wireless system-on-chip with integrated antenna, power harvesting and biosensors is presented that is small enough, 200µm x 200µm x 100µm, to allow painless injection. Small device size is enabled by: a 13µm x 20µm 1nA current reference; optical clock recovery; low voltage inverting dc-dc to enable use of higher quantum efficiency diodes; on-chip resonant 2.4GHz antenna; and array scanning reader. In-vivo power and data transfer is demonstrated and linear glucose concentration recordings reported.
Edit - PDF copy of paper: http://www.travisdeyle.com/publications/pdf/2017_rfic_implan...
Any small sensor that does anything interesting for me? Requirements: For prosthetic learning it must react fast and the signal should change with muscle/body movement.
How I wire the signal to my body is antoher issue, but first show me an interesting sensor. Best I can come up with is remote temperature sensing, still booring.
Our body is pretty good at all the relevant stuff of our physical world :). And in the digital the interesting stuff is high-level or can be automated or removed.
Also, flaky sensors too. My mother recently had a couple of episodes of BPPV[1], and in the process I found that a lot of people have it at some point in their lives. A friend of ours had vertigo for almost a month(!) and was absolutely incapacitated.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benign_paroxysmal_positional_v...
Flaky sensors is something else, when a sense breaks down it makes very much sense to replace it.
Though it did for a while get me interested in senses we lose because we don't have words for them. Color identification along cultures/languages being the easiest to actually prove.
She couldn't attract metal objects with the magnet anymore.
"Bottle caps refused to leave the ground, and finally, stopped responding altogether."
If you're using those molecules to think or move, wouldn't it be nice to have a sort of tachometer?
The harder you're breathing, the more oxygen and food energy you're consuming, and the more Carbon Dioxide(CO2) is building up in your blood. That CO2 then has to be exhaled and Oxygen has to be inhaled. This is a continuous cycle and your heart rate is only a proxy for it.
Even if it were useful, you can already feel your heart beat if you are concentrating on it. Even if you lacked this ability you can feel, at least, changes in your heart rate. Even if you couldn't do either of those things you could just wear a heart rate monitor, they are cheap and readily available and have no side effects.
You can upgrade your current arm by eating better and going to the gym. If that isn't enough to get the visually striking look you are after, tattoos and the right clothes can help.
I can't believe there are nutcases in the world ready to embrace becoming a Borg. This is bizarre.
Yes, at the moment it's not plausible to upgrade one's arm. In the future it will become plausible, though, and the upgrade will at some point be much better than what you can do at a gym. In fact, you can only get a stronger arm at the gym (or an arm with more endurance), but a bionic arm can be much better.
I have had reason to become somewhat familiar with what happens to the body when organs are transplanted with natural organs from other people and when metal pins are used to repair damaged parts and so forth. None of it is anywhere near as good as keeping your own parts functional and healthy to begin with. It all comes with serious complications, and I think people vastly underestimate just how bad it really is. I think it is far worse than people think.
So, I don't see it.
And metal will still have its place. Most people are quite tolerant to titanium, and there's been some advances lately in hydrophobic coatings for implants that keep them from interacting with your blood. I think it's unlikely to be a primary component, though, because it's heavy and expensive and its primary advantage--strength--is useless if the body it's attached to gives out first.
But I have difficulty imagining it will ever not be crazy to be willing to lop off a perfectly healthy arm to "upgrade" it. That was what I was reacting to. It isn't like I am decrying the evils of cochlear implants here.
Then say that and be done with it. Don't cloud the issue with misdirection about metal poisoning.
That is exactly what I said in my first comment. And then a bunch of people piled on to have a cow about that statement. And the longer this discussion has gone on, the weirder it has gotten in terms of people trying to put words in my mouth and claim intent that isn't there.
You could just give it a rest yourself. It takes two to make for good discussion. Both people need to be engaging in good faith. It only takes one to undermine that process.
I don't think we are "just getting started here."
Also, my understanding is that Edgar Caycee, a psychic, was the first person to suggest that a nail or screw be used to hold a bone in place so it could mend when it was failing to do so. I find it ironic that this has been so widely embraced by conventional medicine. It was suggested by a guy in a trance and we ran with it and now when you try to point out that it leads to metal poisoning, failures, infections, well, I'm somehow the one not being scientific enough or something.
Eight months ago I broke my ankle in four places. Today, I can walk with only a minor limp because a surgeon stuck the shattered fragments back together with a load of titanium. Maybe there's a risk of metal poisoning in my future, but I think we can all agree that it's better than a near-certainty of never walking unassisted again.
Want a stronger arm: get nanites programmed right that will aid the body in the natural strengthening process: helping repair the fibers, removing carbon dioxide and lactic acid, carrying in more oxygen and nutrients, etc.
In Deus Ex it actually went through mechs (who ended up being despised and ostracized) first to nanites then with nanites being more powerful (thus making mechs also obsolete) and seamless (you couldn't tell who had nanites in him just by looking).
Your comment is stronger without this.
It was really cool. He's done a few videos on it, including putting it in and taking it out.
It's like people who fetishize about getting amputated.
Of course if that does happen and you successfully treat it, I imagine you aren't impaired in any way going forward, but that is entirely thanks to antibiotics.
Includes such deep insights as:
• Stitching a cellphone into your arm maybe isn't the future
• Replacing body parts for fun doesn't make sense yet
• biohacking is in decline because Trump was elected
You know, I don't often say this, but the general populace was right on this one.