When man meets metal: rise of the transhumans | Hacker News Reader

When man meets metal: rise of the transhumans

theguardian.com

57 pointselsewhen36 comments

As usual, most of the examples here are more performance art than transhumanism, plus a submarine article for Eyeborg, which is somewhere between performance art and a Google Glass -eye.

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I wonder who we can consider the first transhumanist.

Farming is in my mind the original hacking. Some clever ancient fellows who thought, "what if we can rig up our own food supply? Get some Aurochs (cows) to hang out long enough, maybe grow some food for them."

Success breeds inventory, inventory breeds writing. The rest is literally history.

The first body-hacking is the guy that was able to drink non-human milk and process lactose, 10,000 years ago near modern day Turkey. Maybe it was his mother or father hacking the food supply at first. In any case so successful was this guy that his genes spread like wildfire.

These to me seem amazing, game changing feats in human development. Who's the real transhumanist here? The person who can drink cows milk, or the person who put a magnet in their finger? It just feels so very quaint. Putting a magnet under your finger isn't even as impressive as the first guy to make a wrist-watch, something so amazing that it became ubiquitous enough to the point where we've forgotten to even think about it.

I like the idea of transhumanism. If I had billions to fall back on I'd start a prosthetics company in a (synthetic) heartbeat. But I think we've stalled here, by and large, if we're still writing articles about "magnets and LED lights inserted under the skin."

> a bionic arm, laser lit, and with phone-charging ports and a personal drone attachment.

This is the prosthetic equivalent of a sneaker with flashing lights in the heels.

I like the idea of extended cognition; we're all already fairly well into transhumanism, as long as we've got access to the internet with all the knowledge it contains.

Of course, that's a fragile thing. It's easy to understand why people hoard physical media full of .pdfs and Wikipedia dumps and stuff.

Anyways, I think what'll really get people's attention is something that makes it easy for them to do, physically, what you do in code every day; automate tedious tasks. It'll probably take awhile for a good and easy-to-reproduce/distribute interface to crop up, though.

Everyone is always trying to find problems and sell solutions, but I think what you really want to sell is an easy way to find solutions to a wide range of as-yet-undisclosed problems.

The metal stuff is just wetware. We'll get robot arms when the Biology side of things catches up, those sloppy unpredictable little... well, cyborgs might just take longer than other large technological shifts.

You'll never get "robot arms" or be a cyborg, why? Because there is no need for that.

Machines can already to most things you would want super strong arms for.

If your arm is destroyed in an accident, a robot arm could be an easier-to-obtain alternative, at least until re-growing of limbs is a trivial procedure.

You might get a prosthetic that's robotic, but you're not going to have some kind of "Ironman" capabilities.

Specialized machines can, but it's amazing how configurable an arm with 5 2- or 3-jointed fingers can be. Without us even being able to change the fingers! I sure wouldn't complain if I could simply unscrew a hand to swap betweeen fleshy test probes, 1mm probes and grippers for fine detail, a variety of rotary tool attachments, etc.

Or an arm to swap between different ranges of force; sometimes a gentle embrace is more appropriate than the sort of construction appendage that would break down a concrete wall and idly toss its pieces into a waiting truck over a lunch break.

I guess what we'll really need are spine implants...

Lactose is processed by human babies; the skill is lost with age. it’s unlikely you could trace the mutation back to one person.

Humans have high lactase at birth but it was a mutation in a lactase-production allele that permanently jammed it "on" for some part of the population.

> it’s unlikely you could trace the mutation back to one person.

But that's how allele mutations work, mostly. Unless you think genetic drift could cause it in a lot of people in a very short period, which AFAIK is considered unlikely. Instead a lot of baby-making was involved.

From The evolution of lactase persistence in Europe. A synthesis of archaeological and genetic evidence:

> LP [lactase persistence] is an autosomal dominant trait (Enattah et al., 2002). Lactase production is genetically determined by a single gene, LCT, located on chromosome 2

> using long-range haplotype conservation (Bersaglieri et al., 2004) and variation in closely linked microsatellites (Coelho et al., 2005), the 13,910*T variant has been estimated to be between 2188 and 20,650 years old and between 7450 and 12,300 years old, respectively.

> This dramatic change of LP frequency in a relatively short time span cannot be explained by genetic drift alone; very strong natural selection needs to be invoked.

http://www.uni-mainz.de/FB/Biologie/Anthropologie/MolA/Downl...

Do note that the article there discusses different mechanisms for lactose persistence occurring in different populations (quite explicit in 5.3).

Big picture I think you are onto something as these examples feel more like gimmicks than actually useful, sophisticated technologies that will push the bounds of humanity. However, we have to start somewhere and "here" is just as good as any place.

One thing I think a lot of people dismiss is varying cultures. There is a _LOT_ of cultural baggage relating to the rejection or adoption of transhumanism... especially juxtaposed with religion, for example.

I remember hearing from my brother as a kid about body-modders who could feel magnetic fields and punching it into Google in disbelief. That had to be 10 years ago, and I agree I'd expected something more by now. Deus Ex Human Revolution was set in 2027, that's only ten years off now! I don't think that seemed as completely impossible when it came out.

> That had to be 10 years ago

It probably was: Quinn Norton's Wired article about getting this inplant was in 20017 [1].

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2006/06/a-sixth-sense-for-a-wired-worl...

the guy that was able to drink non-human milk and process lactose

Could you go further back? To the guy who first figured out you could cook meat?

This was a crucial development.

Cooking meat makes it more nutritionally available for our omnivorous digestive system. Effectively pre-digesting it in a way other animals can't match.

Being able to do this gave us the additional calories, and protein we needed to get the edge over other animal competitors.

Fire is the epitome of technology, the inventor the first frankenstein, the first dystopia: good servant, poor master.

Or maybe slaves were the first technology?

I wonder to what extent "modern humans" evolved as a result of earlier species controlling fire.

do you think "modern humans" could have been possible without it?

The early hominid who invented the baby sling was the first transhumanist; after that we co-evolved with our technology (we wouldn't have been able to develop our large and especially plastic brains at birth, with our corresponding especially long maturation periods, if we couldn't carry our children in slings).

I met Neil Harbisson in Brighton in September this year when he gave a stunning talk at the Reasons conference. He's a true visionary, who really pushes the envelope.

Not only does he perceive colours as single notes but assemblages of colours become chords. So, faces for instance to him don't necessarily look pretty but they sound good (he specifically mentioned Prince Charles, who apparently sounds very pleasant ...). He also dresses in chords that fit the occasion and showed a picture of a particularly gaudy dress he apparently wore at a funeral because it sounds like C minor.

This certainly has mostly artistic value for now but it truly expands the way we perceive and make sense of the world.

OK, but what about pacemakers?

I keep thinking that the magnet in the finger would be a fun thing to try out. Something that is pretty safe and reversible. Am I crazy?

Maybe a little. I've always wanted to try it out too. One of the really cool things about it is that it imparts a sort of sense of magnetic fields. If you have a magnet implanted in your finger, you can feel it vibrating in response to AC currents.

Unfortunately the magnets can break and spill out of their plastic encasement. One of the reasons I haven't tried it out yet.

I wear a Pavlok wearable with a magnetic milanese strap, and it has a really cool ability to make me feel metallicized obejcts and AC with high current. Like a first step to an implant.

IDK. Start with a ring with a magnet on it?

Or gloves with magnets in the fingertips?

The trick is that when the magnet vibrates, it stimulates the same nerve endings that are picking up the vibration of your fingerprint ridges rubbing over something. After a little integration period, the sensation is similar to a very light touch running over the fingertip. I don't know if a ring would produce the same sensation.

Yes. Most people who have done the magnet in the finger rate the experience as "meh, wouldn't do again."

I quite enjoy the experience.

Why do you say that? I have several friends who found it a great thing, though as people they are definitely outliers, and I haven't asked them again in a couple of years.

There was an article on HN some months back where hey followed up with one of the main body mod professional to do this work. He reported that most of his business now is people requesting them taken out, and that new installs have precipitously declined. It then went on to interview many people that had such a modification and what they felt about it.

I'm also fascinated by this, so I did some research. Here's a pastebin with the most important links I found : https://pastebin.com/XPcbrANV (the description of the links are in french but the webpages are in english).

Right up until you can't get into your hotel room 'cause you've wiped your swipe-card.

Been there :/ I'm not sure what it is, but it seems like hotel keycards are quite low quality devices, because it doesn't happen with credit cards.

Credit-card is imprinted once for all time; a hotel room key may be imprinted at any time, for each time a guest needs a new key. Presumably the "Read Only" vs "Read/Write" nature of these usecases confers a particular amount of robustness on the former.

Be sure to tell your doctor if you get an MRI

I've had one for the past four years now. I'm an active climber and sailor, and never once has it interfered in my day to day life. The benefits include being able to sort of feel your way around the equipotential lines of an alternating magnetic field. The worst thing that has happened to me was about two weeks into having the implant, I brought my finger to close to a strong magnet used in a menu to stick it to the wall. The magnet in my finger(which is shaped like a small tic-tac) did a 180 under my skin. Ouch.

i once thought of implanting a magnets to keep my glasses on.

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