Engineered Enhancers Closer Than You Think

Roland Piquepaille writes "Happy 2035! Thirty years from now, we'll use bionic eyes giving us 'zoom vision' for faster reactions. Nanobots injected in our bloodstream will complement our immune system. Artificial muscles built with electroactive polymers will help us to be stronger and faster. So you think it's science fiction? Not at all. You'll see that some people are so convinced that this kind of human enhancements will happen that they predict than in a few decades, all sporting events 'will be split up to accommodate enhanced and unenhanced athletes.'"

30 years ago

[odano]

30 years ago they said in 30 years we would all be driving flying cars and would have the moon colonized, so I'm not sure how much I can trust predictions like these.

Although it is easy to say with the speed technology is moving things like this will be invented, I am sure there are some giant problems that will need to be solved first, and unless we get lucky I dont think these new technologies will be available in my lifetime.

STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot editors, WAKE UP [slashdot.org]! Stop posting everything Roland submits, please!

I hate Slashdot so much......

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like Jerry Springer for geeks. Please kill me.

The real question....

[TrumpetPower!]

In thirty years, will Roland Piquepaille still be spamming Slashdot?

Cheers,

b&

It's not a bug, it's a feature

[GuyMannDude]

As an interesting aside, I have said this before on Slashdot, but human eyes are pretty pathetic in terms of their sophistication. Birds, fish and many reptiles have much more sophisticated retinas that perceive what we would term a multi-spectral visual world. A visual scene much richer that the simple three-space world we currently see.

Evolution gives organisms the tools they need to survive, not necessarily what those organsims might put down on their wish lists. The ability to sense the world in such detail is much more important to the survival of those creatures than it is for human beings. This is a feature, not a bug. Since this is slashdot, I'm going to assume that you are very familiar with the epsiode in Star Trek where Kirk outmaneuvers aliens with vastly superior intellect and technology. How does he do it? In order to operate the Enterprise, these creatures had to fit themselves into human bodies which have senses that are much more hightened than those of their normal form. Kirk simply overloads their senses to the point that they can't think straight. Just yesterday we had an article here on slashdot about how people are having trouble dealing with the flood of new information available to them. Be thankful that our eyes are more limited than those of birds, fish, and their ilk. Our brains are already having trouble keeping up with the world around us. The day we start seeing in the IR and UV parts of the spectrum, that'll be all the more for us to process on a second-by-second basis.

Good luck with the research. I'm gratified to know that at least someone thinks that this technology should be used first to assist those who are disabled and then used to give super-powers to the rich. All too often medical research caters to stupid things like baldness cures instead of focusing on cures of cancer and Alzheimer's.

GMD

"science" + "fiction"

[Scrameustache]

Thirty years from now, we'll use bionic eyes [...] science fiction? Not at all.

When you're making predictions about the future, hypothetical applications of current scientific research, you are making science fiction!

Re:Almost a reality

[phoenix.bam!]

I doubt that this will be possible without a major reworking of your brain. I am no psych major but I recall that your mind's eye is all you can see, which is the same as your regular eyes. Picture a building in your mind, now have it move towards you, the top of the building will be too tall for you to see and disappear out the top of the cavas that is your imagination, and to include the top of the building you will have to zoom out. And all of this is just in your brain and has nothing to do with your eyes.

ignorance of underlying biology

[lukesl]

I feel like I see articles like this all the time, and the underlying current is one of thinking that there are all these engineering breakthroughs that will make things that operate better than the native biological system. Engineers often tend to think this way, not unlike the carpenter who thinks the moon is made of wood. As a biologist, I may be somewhat guilty of the opposite bias, but the truth of the matter is that engineers have seldom been able to make materials and machines that operate as well as their biological counterparts. For example, artificial joints and teeth are all vastly inferior to their biological counterparts, and they will be for a while yet.

My point is that human enhancement will occur, but this article grossly underestimates the role molecular biology will have in the near future. For example, to make soldiers with more endurance, you could try replacing their blood with an artificial substitute, or you could give them recombinant erythropoeitin to increase their red blood cell count. The EPO injections are trivial (ask professional bicyclists), but after years and years of research, we still don't have an acceptable artificial blood substitute.

As far as artificial muscles go...that is just ridiculous. To think that in 30 years we will be implanting stuff like that into peoples' bodies. We will be growing muscle tissue in vats and implanting long before we deal with artifical stuff. However, first we will be using relatively simple methods to locally control muscle growth (like small molecule inhibitors of receptors for hormones that inhibit muscle growth, etc.) That alone will be huge.

I think the real lack of conceptual understanding has to do with the evolutionary perspective. Basically, humans are incredibly good at doing things that humans have to do in the wild, and the only easy enhancements that we can make are "enhancements" that actually decrease our fitness from the hunter-gatherer perspective. For example, stronger muscles require a huge food intake, so they're selected against. In this day and age, that's easy to get around, with steroids or other technologies. It's easy to increase endurance with EPO injections, but there are obvious problems (e.g. death) associated with that as well. People seem to think that it will be as easy to improve cognitive abilities or immune system function, but that's just wrong. Our brains and immune systems already operate pretty much at their optimum, and claims that we could simply inject "nanobots" that improve the function of either are ridiculously ignorant.

Here's another prediction

[Alceste]

In thirty years slashdot will still be enamored with poorly researched, jargon infused, poorly written future-bation.

Re:Almost a reality

[lukesl]

I think that research is interesting in the short term, but ultimately what we want is the ability to regenerate a normal retina. And in the end, I think the retinal regeneration technology will win out over the artificial retina technology.

Re:We won't have a choice

[oGMo]

Before too long, there will be hostile (or just poorly designed and self-replicating) nanobots that will kill us when they get into our bodies.

I dunno. I don't see a big difference between this and a biological weapon, except that biological agents are cheaper and easier to develop. Why bother with nanotechnology when a simple plague will do? Or for the individual, just a well-placed bullet?

Re:Medical needs

[Jerf]

Birds, fish and many reptiles have much more sophisticated retinas that perceive what we would term a multi-spectral visual world.

We'd call it "multispectrum" because we don't see there. But we see "multispectrum" too... otherwise what do you call red, green, and blue? The curves for those receptors don't completely overlap.

Of course human eyes aren't a proper superset of every eye's capability in the world. There isn't room in one eye for that, and if you did jam it all in you'd be bitching about our crappy resolution! But they are quite good for what they do, and the brain behind them is unsurpassed, if you consider seeing not just as raw pixel collection but as understanding the world. Nobody else has a visual system that can read.

Artificial eyes will be cool but it's going to be hard to jam any more info down the optic nerve and through the visual system that we already are unless we do a full brain replacement.

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Paradise Pete]

the sensory overload of modern life is precisely what causes vision loss.

It is? Is there evidence of that, or are you just guessing?

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Xuther]

Not true, there are examples of him going to sickbay because using the VISOR gives him headaches, he had to be trained to interpret what the colors and patterns meant, and that takes a lot of time and effort. He was one of a handful of people who could successfully use it.

Re:Huh?

[Gyan]

Having better training facilities is not the same as being altered by drugs or especially engineering.

And what's the specified "natural growth vector" for a human? There is none. Ultimately, all change is biological. Only a distinction between socially acceptable vectors of change and unacceptable vectors.

Re:ignorance of underlying biology

[MiLK_MD]

Decrease in fitness is relative to the enviroment. An organism that my be fit in one niche may be completely unsuited to survive in another. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution; they are simply well suited to living in temperate climates on a planet with Earthlike qualities. Would humans survive "as is" on Mars? No. Humans for example do not have protective fur to walk with aplomb unassisted in arctic enviroments nor large lung capacities and high oxygen carrying capacities to plumb the depths of the ocean. I like to think of enhancements as adjuncts or logical extensions of adaptive responses. Enhancements would provide humans with the ability to explore heretofore difficult or unreachable places. And what is so ridiculous about artificial muscles? Human muscle has a finite upper bound with regards to strength vs. mass ratio. Certainly not the strongest nor most efficient stuff around. Could we not replace human muscle with a more efficient compound? (Some of my research deals with exactly this issue.) Stronger muscles do not necessarily imply greater energy intake: that can be achieved by increasing efficency, of which the human muscle is not a perfect example (think exothermia). And to state that our bodies already operate at their optimum, again there is the caveat that optimum is dependent on the environment and the task at hand. Enhancement in regards to recall/attention ability for example, is not only possible, but present (methylphenidate for example has been shown to increase cognitive function for "normal" people). Certainly there is room for "improvement." And there is also the issue of helping those that are diseased or disabled with respect to the norm. In this case can one not redefine enhancement as "repair?" As an aside, where is the differentiation between "nanobots" and "molecular biology." Targeted molecules, receptor specific proteins, cell mediated hormones..."nanobots!" they are simply points on a continuum.

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature

[PsiPsiStar]

I'm not sure that strain is the same as overload. We didn't evolve to spend all our time reading and staring at computer screens, true. But we lose certain abilities as we age because we age and not because we wouldn't rather have those abilities.

And 'vision loss' is too general to be described so generally. We may strain our eyes staring at things close to the screen and thus become nearsighted, but problems like floaters, macular degeneration, etc. are not caused by sensory overload.

The point the parent made is valid. Humans see in three (or in the case of tetrachromats, four) channels of color. Some animals see in as many as 16.

Evolution is adaptive. It does enough to let us get by, but if there isn't much selective pressure to develop an ability (and the capacity to reach it in small steps) evolution just isn't going to improve us. Bacteria which are only exposed to 70 degree temperatures will die if exposed to sudden temperature chages. Bacteria routinely exposed to temperature changes will be able to endure them. Animals which don't require good vision to survive won't get it.

Re:Evidence that this will happen includes...

[Zibblsnrt]

thus pushes the question, what will be normal then?

20/20 vision.

It's not an absolute system of measurement, but it's one relative to the general populace. If, at some underermined point in the future, just about everyone's got their eyes redone so that they have 20/10 vision by our standards, they'd have 20/20 by their own because the average person would see clearly, at 20 feet, just what any other average person would see at 20 feet.

-PS

Re:Kurzweil foresaw this.

[Zibblsnrt]

Personally, I find this vision disturbing, and am personally against add-ons that don't 'repair' the human body. I'm by no means religious, but there has to be some pride in using what was given to you by luck of the draw to the best of your abilities.

Pfft, you were born into a developed country with twentieth-century medical technology. You're way past using what was given to you by the luck of the draw to the best of your abilities.

Incidentally, if you are in favor of using what was given to you by random chance, then why aren't you against modifications which repair the human body?

I've never understood the idea that the form homo sapiens has had since it first evolved is somehow sacrosanct. It isn't. It's even less so in a technological society. Our bodies aren't special at all, if anything they're kind of mediocre. The mind is what's important, and people aren't going to be less human because they have better reflexes, or vision, or panimmunity, or whatever-else-have-you. Yet I keep hearing claims that they are, or that if they aren't it's bad anyway, and I've yet to hear a reason that doesn't come down to "it's just wrong, alright?"

-PS

Re:We won't have a choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Atomic scale infective /destructive machines - they're called viruses.

The antidote is a machine called an antibody.

The current technology is all wet because it's easier to provide for its energy needs that way.

Thank you

[Julian Morrison]

What you just saw was a typical example of the "romantic primitivism" meme. Blame any unexplained problem on the sin of thinking and its byproduct, technology. All that manmade stuff is icky and polluting and makes people squint and go blind, because it's not "natural".

Slapping such idiocy down in the name of real science is doing the world a favour.

Re:Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Bed buddies??

[daniil]

Oh, for fuck's sake. Did you really have to do this? Did you even bother to check the link in the article blurb, or did you just see Roland's name and fired away? I think you didn't even rtfa, because had you read it, you'd have noticed that this time, he actually linked to the original fucking article, not his own blog. You just ended up being the silly little boy that cried wolf. Tee-hee.

Re:Medical needs

[tsa]

Exactly. All these predictions are just a load of crap designed to get attention. I hate this stuff. Remember that in the '60s we would have nuclear fusion power plants within ten years? I'm still waiting, just as I'm waiting for my affordable fuel-cell powered car (which has been coming 'within ten years' for the last 100 years or so). I didn't RTFA, now you know why.

I remember in the 1970's

[mormop]

The BBC program Tomorrows World came out with the classic line By the year 2000 computers will make the use of paper obsolete. This one is only really matched by the idea that in the 21st century, machines will be doing all the work and we'll have much more leisure time.

Re:I remember in the 1970's

[Directrix1]

Computers are starting to do all the work, with the exception being the available cheap labor (which in the US are: Mexicans [Local Labor], Indians [IT], Chinese [Manufacturing], and South Africans [Call Centers]). But unfortunately the only we that have much more leisure time are the business owners, as the rest of us are clamoring for a job, or pulling our hair out worrying that our position will be the next one deprecated for the next cheap outsourcers. In a way I'm glad the value of the American dollar is dropping. Makes us normal people more economically viable.

More critical than eyes, are Kidneys

[garroo]

Many many people die from Renal failure every year, and many die from Dialysis related infection and disease.

I whole-heartedly support this... as do many others who live from one kidney or have failing kidneys.

Some day I suspect we'll have very cybernetic humans running about, with the main competition being between the "hardware based" people and the "bio-engineered" people, looking for better/faster ways to fix it.

Check out the work being done in this area, here:

http://www.med.umich.edu/intmed/humes/

And a recent story about testing of it, here:

http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.asp?d oc ID=522180