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Technology

Warwick Gets a Few More Wires 235

Posted by michael from the tired-of-reading-cyborg-submissions dept.
teamhasnoi writes "CNN reports that a British university professor has been fitted with cyborg technology. (100 wires embedded in his wrist) This apparently enables his nervous system to be linked to a computer, encoding movements like wiggling fingers and feelings like shock and pain, and recorded for the first time. Is this the end of VCR+? Or the beginning of an (unholy) marriage of man and machine?" Warwick has been doing this for five years now.
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Warwick Gets a Few More Wires More

Warwick Gets a Few More Wires

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  • neuromancer (Score:2, Interesting)

    by I Want GNU! ( 556631 )
    Has anyone here read Neuromancer? It was the first book of the Cyberpunk genere, and it preceded Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.

    Anyway, in this book, one of the main focuses is how they are fitting the characters with wires and chips and such, and they set it up so that one of the characters is acting like a video camera and another one is set up in such as way that he can see and feel and hear everything she experiences.
    • That's like asking if anyone has ever used Linux on Slashdot.
    • he can see and feel and hear everything she experiences.

      He most certainly does.

    • Re:neuromancer (Score:3, Interesting)

      by McBeth ( 1724 )
      Neuromancer is definitely _not_ the first book in the Cyberpunk Genre. While Gibson did coin the phrase, several books had been written before Neuromancer. A book that everyone would agree as being cyberpunk, and pre Neuromancer, is "True Names" by Vernor Vinge. It was published in 1981, three years before Neuromancer.

      If you want to define cyberpunk by the themes in the books more than the physical act of flying around in computers with your mind, people like Alfred Bester, Roger Zelazny, and Philip K. Dick are definitely precursor-cyberpunk. Hell you could make a good case for Plato and Descartes.

      If Vernor Vinge weren't such an _okay_ writer, and a pompous buffoon, I'd be more willing to give him the title.
      • That is indeed interesting, but most people refer to it as the book that defined the genere. I agree though, there are books with large themes that were similar and that preceded it. Let's not forget the movie Blade Runner (as I'm sure no one will), which could probably be called cyberpunk for it has many similar elements.
        • Bladerunner is based on the book
          "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"
          by Philip K. Dick
          published 1968

          Read "True Names" and come back to me and tell me if the book is just a "theme" or really a precursor to Gibson.
      • Gaa, I can't believe I forgot about

        Simulacrum 3
        by David somethingorother

        it was published early '60s

        and
        Shockwave Runner
        by John Brunner (sp?)
        I don't remember when it was published, but Vinge mentions it as an inspiration for his story
      • Lets not forget John Brunner's Shockwave Rider, 1975.
      • And Gibson *isn't* a pompous buffoon?

        If I have to hear his childhood described as 'southern gothic' one more time, I'm going to claim the title for *myself*, dammit.
    • If you want to tie in Kevin Warwick's work to a particular work of fiction, you would be better off starting with Robert Llewellyn's (yes, that one of Red Dwarf and Scrapheap Challenge fame) book Brother Nature which actually has an acknowledgment in the front to the effect that...

      "I have to thank Professor Kevin Warwick at the Cybernetics Department of Reading University. He was very generous with his knowledge during the research period of this book. Professor Warwick is the first human being to insert an active computer chip into his body, directly connected to his central nervous system. Proof that this story is not science fiction."

      Two things which spring to mind when comparing this book with Prof Warwick's self aggrandising waffle are that...

      • A person whose only previous experience in cybernetics involved wearing a rubber mask in a BBC TV comedy show seems to have a far greater technical grasp on the subject that our erstwhile Prof.
      • The novel is by definition and admission a work of fiction.

  • Wow... (Score:4, Funny)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:40PM (#3209085) Journal
    Right now, I'm wondering how we can use this to grow the appropriate meat chunks based on a user's input...
  • Better not try to fly from Newfoundland to Toronto, if he knows what's good for him.
  • Scary... [slashdot.org]
    What happens when your batteries run out?!?

  • Marriage (Score:3, Funny)

    by FissileDog ( 567773 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:43PM (#3209112)
    "...Or the beginning of an (unholy) marriage of man and machine?"
    I still can't marry a boyfriend (man and man).
    Get your priorities right.

  • Captain Cyborg Strikes Again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:43PM (#3209114)
    Captain Cyborg shoots down from the skys and enters the realm of bullshit...yet again! And what happens? the entire mainstream media decides he's obviously an expert in his field and listens!!!

    Do they know the rest of the Cybernectics profession cringes with embarrassment every time Captain Cyborg appears on the back of a cereal packet???
  • I can't help but feel like this kind of technology errodes a person's "essence". I wonder what the chemical reaction between the electrodes and his nervous system will do to him in the long run?

  • Old News (Score:5, Funny)

    by viper21 ( 16860 ) <scott@@@iqfoundry...com> on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:44PM (#3209120) Homepage
    We all know that little kids in Japan already have Sony Playstations grafted into their bodies.

    Button sensors in fingertips, a video pipeline into the optic nerves, etc.

    It's a big secret, but we all know they are doing it. The reason Sony can't provide a 1000x performance increase to the PS3 is because of the limitations of the human nervous system, not because of some silly thing like computing limitations. You just wait for umbilical attachments for kids so they can work in parallell.

    "Mommy, Billy jumped off the couch after a dragon and hurt my belly button!"

    I can just imagine the lawsuits.

    We are Sony. You must be assimilated. Do not buy XBox, Do not buy Gamecube. Wait for PS3k

    -Scott

    Boy, did that movie suck? [thatmoviesucked.com]
    • Maybe that's what sony means with the biotech stuff. No need to engineer hardware, just turn the kids
      into biological computers. ;-)
      • Maybe that's what sony means with the biotech stuff. No need to engineer hardware, just turn the kids
        into biological computers. ;-)

        I'm afraid thats exactly what they mean, They already have devices that will shock you when you get hit, and we know you can project images on the retina. Just strap a Geoforce to your ass and you're there.

        /me shudders

  • R
    Wired Article by Warwick is Here [wired.com]. It looks like his 1998 plans are coming to fruition.

    "I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change. I will tell you why."
    • I was looking for that same article, I remember reading it when it came out, thinking this guy was somewhere inbetween a complete wackjob and visionary. There is also an older article in wired that touches on the same issues

      http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/

      In the desire to be wired story

      Doggies have bad breath, even after you give them a tic-tac. Amy-age 9

  • 'Batlike 6th sense' (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:44PM (#3209125) Homepage Journal
    Warwick also hopes to wire himself up to a ultrasonic sensor, used by robots to navigate around objects, to give himself a bat-like sixth sense.

    Hmm.. I've heard that when somebody loses one sense (sight, hearing, etc) the other senses grow stronger to compensate. So the obvious question is: Would this work the other way around? If you add a 'sixth sense' would the strength of your five basic senses be diminished? Would they become 'lazy'?
    • That is a very interesting thought. I hope he looks at this kind of thing in his research.
    • If you add a 'sixth sense' would the strength of your five basic senses be diminished? Would they become 'lazy'?

      Oh that's no problem: you just graft in a cybernetic replacement for that sense. Of course, one of your other senses would then become lazy. So you'd have to replace that, which would lead to another sense becoming lazy...

      Oooo, upgrade spiral. Warwick's gonna end up looking like Tetsuo (The Iron Man).

    • It would never really work like a true sense. Your brain specializes large chunks of itself to deal with the various senses, and just adding in some new input without having that chunk of brain matter to process it isn't going to do much.

      As an example of something similar, consider cases where sight has been restored to individuals who have been blind since birth, or at least for a considerable amount of time. They never gain sight in the way "normal" people regard it. An example of this can be found in "An Anthropologist on Mars", in the study of Virgil.

      • Re:'Batlike 6th sense' (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Puk ( 80503 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @03:15PM (#3209296)
        Your brain specializes large chunks of itself to deal with the various senses, and just adding in some new input without having that chunk of brain matter to process it isn't going to do much.

        But that leads to an interesting thought. While what you say is largely true once you are an adult, your brains starts largely unprogrammed with how to process optical and auditory input. It learns what is effective and how to decode the outside world's input into useful internal information. I assume most of this learning is done when young, but I bet some of it continues later on. So if you inserted this information into the brain, eventually it should train itself to use it as just another sense/input -- probably faster if you are younger.

        This, of course, leads to a debate on who it would be moral to test it on, and I'm not sure there are any good answers to that. I certainly don't have any.

        On a related note, I remember watching a presentation at school on a comparison between the basic structures of a image using some sort of network (sadly, I forget the details) trained on raw images and the basic structures used by vision-related groups of neurons. They were amazingly similar. No, this didn't fool me into thinking we have any clue how the brain works. :)

        -Puk
        • Yes, but if you get a sense returned as an adult, the chances for the neural paths to develop are greatly reduced. Witness traumatic brain injury in children ( age 9 or so) compared to same scale of injury in adults. Considering that a treatment for children for severe seizures is removing a brain hemisphere, you'd never do that to an adult.
    • Well if you take the Canadian airport "fiasco" with the other cyborg from a few days back as evidence, it seems that, yes, normal senses do become weaker by having this "crutch" (since the guy then needed to be wheeled into the plane and has since been having trouble functioning normally... could be the shock as well though).

      mark
      • The attentive reader will have noted that the loss of perception is from switching from a 2D world (teh glasses) to the everyday 3D world. It threw off his depth perception.
    • Warwick also hopes to wire himself up to a ultrasonic sensor, used by robots to navigate around objects, to give himself a bat-like sixth sense.

      The strangest thing about this statement is that bat's only have 5 senses, just like humans. Echolocation is just an ingenius use of hearing.

      • Echolocation has been credited as being a sixth sense by many biologists.

        The reason is that there is ping sent to get the pong. Seen by many as a use of two senses evolving into another extra sense.

        If I'm a human who uses his 5 senses together in a new way [Zen students have done this for years] some may also argue that I've created a sixth sense. The trick isn't using thought or conscious behavior, the trick is having that sense go on it's own. [like bats... the bat isn't thinking: "ill send the ping and the pong blah blah..." He just does it]

        So you are right, but Carl Sagan himself [Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors] said that echolocation is another sense.

        • Re:'Batlike 6th sense' (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Uberminky ( 122220 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @10:13PM (#3211327) Homepage
          a human who uses his 5 senses together in a new way
          I don't know anything about bats. But what you say sounds a lot like something I've been thinking about lately. It's incredibly common, but we probably don't think about it much: subconsciously combining our senses to create new "senses". Here's a great example: wetness. You don't have any wetness sensors. But if you stick your hand in a box and brush it up against something that's wet, you know it's wet. How? Your "cold" sensors (or temperature, or whatever) fire, your tactile sensors register certain patterns, your hairs are matted down (more tactile feedback).. and you infer subconsciously that your hand is wet. You could be wrong (just like you can be mistaken in your judgements of the sources of sounds, etc), but odds are you correct. If you rub your fingers together and they catch, slip, and vibrate in a certain way, and your muscle feedback says there's a certain resistance signature, you're probably wet. You can't help but feel it: it's a new sense.

          Sorry for going a bit off-topic. Seems kinda interesting to me anyway...

          • As humans we can be disciplined to a certain point of extra-sensory perception.

            Have you ever seen a movie where a kung fu master [which would really need to be trained in the ways of Buddha, not just a fighting style of course] gets up and somehow knows that someone is coming to the door.

            It's not that he's only enhanced his hearing, this would be impossible. You couldn't understand the things he is thinking about... subconsciously of course. He has quieted his mind and doesn't instantly confirm and deny - he is subconscious. Movements in wind, a rattle of the floor or earth also provide a gentle push needed to see what others can't.

            Consiously he set out to do these things, but if he is a good student he will let his body open up to the world around him and absorb the things you speak of.

            But what you are speaking of is more on the topic of what may already be in our DNA. We know that chickens see a silhouette of a hawk and react. Our upper brains [and maybe their lower] have put together that feeling of wetness and the such. Though not consiously, but maybe through our evolutionary ancestors. Our senses are growing and what is to say that another will not?

            Although this type of idea is good for people who are currently sick, where does it leave us in the evolutionary ladder if certain genetic traits aren't selected for?

            Ending suffering is good, but somewhere I want to see a balance where the strong will survive. I know that it's a grave thing I mention.

            I myself someone who suffers from a, believed, genetic mental disease. If is likely in my DNA where this started and I in no way want to be selected against as do many others. We as humans enjoy the right to repair and procreate although we may be in a sad way disadvantaged.

            Will we turn into a species which is deformed and dependant on machine to survive? Will computers or wiring be required to survive? Who will have won?
    • Bats don't have any 6th sense...they're blind. Their ultrasonic radar replaces their normal vision.

      Considering the plethora of ultrasonic emissions in the environment, wouldn't an attempt to tap into it (for a human anyway...) lead to a nasty sensory overload? I can imagine him switching it on and being instantly immobilized by sensory shock. Robots can do this because they can be programmed. To 'program' a human brain to be able to understand ultrasonic sensory information would probably take an evolutionary change.
    • You're not going to get more cortex just by getting more input. The parts of your brain that would go to processing this input would no longer be available for their original tasks. So it's not so much them getting 'lazy' as getting less of your processing power.

      Of course, getting existing brain structures to re-specialialize in order to deal with this input is probably very difficult in an adult. Fortunately, we have depth perception already, so we at least have structures for the processed data.
  • It would seem that this technology can only be used to gather information going on in this guy's nervous system. Is it possible to provide stimulus using a chip like this, or would modification be required?
  • I cannot wait till I can jack in to my computer!!

    I hope this also helps in prothetics and other medical uses, but the jacking in and computing at the speed of thought is what grabs me the most.
  • When he implanted something that made doors open for him in the building he works in.
  • ... only it's been there for almost 12 hours. :)

    Oh yes, plus their usual sarcasm (as the story isn't stupid/embarassing enough)
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/2 4536.html

  • I hope he doesnt leave the country alot ..
    otherwise he may have to get involved in a scandolous lawsuit .. and make major bucks once the airport security guys insist on pulling the wires out of his arm.

    and stealing his sunglasses.

    But back on topic .. i have to say this is neat .. especially how this technology could lead to 'filtering' nerve impulses through a processor for things like 'MS' or maybe parkensons.

    or another posibility (off the cuff) allowing people with severe burns or severd nerves to regain tactile feeling in their hands (even if its simulated)
  • twisted and e-vil

  • 2 hr operation (Score:3, Funny)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) <bittercode@gmail> on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:46PM (#3209140) Homepage Journal
    His claim that a 2 hr operation proves this is not a publicity stunt does not carry a lot of weight w/me.

    The girls at most any local strip club have been through more surgery than that- and it has nothing to do w/noble intentions.

    .

  • electric circuts? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:46PM (#3209147) Homepage Journal
    as i understand it, pain/heat/cold sensory input is sent through the nerve endings as chemical/electrical pulses. wouldn't this sort of electrode "paralyze" his hand, removing him of all feeling, or at the very least; give him that "oh shit my arm went all tingly when i fell asleep on it again" feeling? i know the latter has to do with lack of blood-flow, but it seems like his sense of touch will be at a serious disadvantage.

    on a second thought; do you have "upstream" nerve channels (hand to brain), and "downstream" (brain to foot) nerve channels? or do they just use the same neural pathways?

    this is good for "terapalegics" (3 limbs missing?), but might this have any applications for scroleosis, or MS? (my friend was recently diagnosed, and a co-worker just had back surgery, i know not much more about the disease)
  • Anyone else reminded of the movie Brainstorm [imdb.com]? This soulds like the step in the right (?) direction.
    • awesome movie. Yes, that's exactly what popped into my head upon first glance. Of course, it was my daily after school fare for a couple of years in the mid-80's. but then I got to thinking that this taking the "easy" way to achieving that goal.

      as for not being able to feel the bat-like 6th sense, I can totally wrap my mind around "feeling" a wall that is six feet away from me in total darkness, if this device provides some sort of stimulus based on ultrasound. Of course, the thought of feeling pressure against my skin from something I'm not touching would probably drive me nuts after a day or so. I'd rather have implanted bluetooth paired up with a system that reacts to my thoughts first. Home automation meets Firefox!

      Talk about freaking out a date when you bring her home!
  • The story is also available in slight more irreverent style here [theregus.com] at the The Register. [theregus.com]

    In related news, a Candadian cyborg has fallen prey [theregus.com] to stricter airline security checks...

  • CATS (Score:2, Funny)

    by Chiasmus_ ( 171285 )
    I was kind of hoping that the first cyborg would have a borg-like eyepiece and very tall grey hair, so he could greet humanity with the phrase "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN !!"

    Instead, the first cyborg greets humanity with "I am not a quack! This is real science! No, it's not a publicity stunt! We might actually learn something from this!"

    What a let down.
    • Actually, we've been working on such an idea and the picture is linked below.

      HERE [slashdot.org]

      Anyways.. where did this picture originate? I can't find any info on it.
  • According to the article:
    "It is possible that the procedure could lead to a medical breakthrough for people paralysed by spinal cord damage, such as Superman actor Christopher Reeve"

    With cyborg implants connected to radio trancievers, I wonder how long it will be before the police will actually be able to make you "Freeze! Stop right there! Don't move or I'll shoot!"?

    Think about it...pretty scary.
  • for human computer interfaceing, there is a more direct method for gathering movement information: These guys at Brown University [washingtonpost.com] have gotten this information from a monkey by monitoring very few neurons directly in the brain(I as few as 20). Looks like the monkey are always going to be one step ahead of us:)
  • when he went through customs [slashdot.org].

    A very zealous customs/police officer could make life a bit painful for Warwick
  • " Is this the end of VCR+? "

    Mr Jones. It has come to our attention that you are using our SunBan glasses while having cybernetic eye implants. Under the terms of the DMCA we ask that you cease and desist this action immediately.

  • Cool, sure, but (Score:2, Insightful)

    by penguindung ( 562216 )
    You know while all of this type of cybernetic stuff is kind've cool, I have to believe that $715,000 on a few gadgets is a bit extreme. Look at it this way, I have two daughters who's computing power, mobility, task ability, etc ad infinitum is vastly superior to anything we will see for some time. I think I have a few hundred dollars in each of them (what insurance didn't pick up and including vaccines, etc), and I had a hell of a lot of fun creating them. Yeah, working with servos and transistors is some fun, but I like to make my future chore doers the old fashioned way. ooooo -- penguin dung

  • This guy is a wanker (Score:5, Informative)

    by FurryFeet ( 562847 ) <joudanx&yahoo,com> on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:55PM (#3209220)
    Check out The Register's coverage of Warwick. [theregister.co.uk] This guy is a publicity hound, with little (if anything) to show that justifies all this hype.
  • VCR+ is just so late 90's. TiVo is where its at ! ;-)

  • Emotional Spam (Score:5, Funny)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) <bittercode@gmail> on Friday March 22, 2002 @02:58PM (#3209240) Homepage Journal
    From the register article:

    "But wait, where there's a sponsor, there's a commercial opportunity. Tumbleweed, a specialist in secure communications, is providing the technology "vital to ensure the safe transmission of our nervous system signals via the internet," Captain Cyborg says"

    They say they want to send "feelings" over the web.

    I can't wait until they start sending out emotional spam. I haven't really bought into any of the "enlarge your penis" emails. But if they carry with them a great sense of inadequacy...

    who knows?

    .
  • with all these electronic nerves in his wrist permanently connected to a computer, I guess we will be able to say for certain how much of a wan**r, you have to be to do this to yourself.

    On a serious note I can see good uses for this technology in terms of gesture control of digital devices. Imagine being able to point at your PC or TV and being able to control it just by waving your hand!
    • Ahh. Kinda like the Jedi mind trick...

      waves hand "You will change to channel 56" the TV complies and changes channels

      Ok, maybe not so neat, I can do that with my remote right now (waves hand over remote while touching buttons). On the other hand (no pun intended) controlling Traffic Lights with a wave could be useful....


  • Warwick Gets a Few More Wires

    Am I the only one who thought of the movie Willow when they read this headline?

    epenguin.org - Can You Feel It? [epenguin.org]
  • Hmm... this sounds like nervous system hacking to me. It's kind of a "man in the middle" type infiltration for recon purposes. Makes one wonder exactly how the communication that lets me type this message is getting passed around my body.

    If we can decode the human nervous system, that would be a huge step. I'm not sure if it's a good one or bad one, but a step.

    However, I don't know how successful we will be at integrating computers and the body. As far as I understand it, the nervous system while based on electrochemical energy circuits, is not a binary system. Each nuron has many possible states, not just on/off. These various neuron states cause different neurotransmitters to be released at synnapses (where they connect) and somehow a super-complex net of this leads to consciousness. Hopefully this research will eventually shed some light on that "somehow".

    In the mean time, the most succeess will probably come from just letting the human body adapt to computerized input, like that optical sonar implant they did a while back.

    Offtopic: I did some research on neurotransmitters recently. It's fascinating stuff... makes one realize that taking drugs is really just a crude (though often entertaining) way of hacking your own body/mind. But then agan, so is any activity you take designed to have some effect of yourself.
  • the real importance of this (besides all the realllly cool street samurai stuff) would be the ability to overcome debilitating diseases and damage from accidents.

    this may be the perfect way to interface with nanomachines, send a certain message through the external device into the nerves and muscles for them to attack this section or help rebuild.

  • In the register they say:

    Sponsoring the operation is a company called Tumbleweed. And we have a statement from Martyn Richards, vice president at the company: "We are proud to potentially be part of history in the making as for the first time ever, one human will be truly able to say to the other, 'I know how you feel!"

    This is hype.

    You cannot KNOW how someone else feels unless you become them.

    You could know what it feels like to have implants that do something to you that approximates what happened to them- but feelings are completely subjective. So how it "feels" to you will be unique to you alone.

    I hope these tumbleweed folks aren't putting too much of their future into this. It might not be too bright.

    .

  • Beware of Kevin Warwick (Score:5, Informative)

    by amarodeeps ( 541829 ) <dave@[ ]itable.com ['dub' in gap]> on Friday March 22, 2002 @03:22PM (#3209330) Homepage

    Despite the fact that some of you feel The Reg. to be unnecessarily sarcastic or (tongue and cheek) sensationalistic, I think they've hit it spot on with their take on Prof. Warwick. He seems to be pretty much into it for the 'look-at-me-I'm-original' factor, but he doesn't seem to have much scientific credibility when it comes right down to it. Here is a good Reg. analysis from 2000, after his the big story in Wired came out about him: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/29/9250.html [theregister.co.uk].

    His attempts to become a cyborg from what I understand consisted of little more than putting a chip in his body which would open a door as he walked towards it. How is this that different from: having the chip in your pocket, sticking it to your arm with some sort of patch, etc. My roommate's cat has a chip implanted in her to find her in the case of her running away. Is she a cyborg kitty??

    As far as this new venture is concerned, Warwick seems to have the idea that using this kind of technology to help paralyzed is his idea, or has never been done. Think again [nature.com], Professor Warwick (I really this is somewhat different but seems to be essentially the same idea, stimulating nerves to create movement in people struggling with paralysis...my point is merely that Warwick is not the brilliant loner on the revolutionary fronts of scientific acheivement that he makes himself out to be...there are people doing real science all over who don't need the gratification of being in the media--this is a non-story).

    Check out this link for further information: http://www.kevinwarwick.org.uk/ [kevinwarwick.org.uk].

    • As a student of Kevin Warwick, now having had him as a lecturer for two years, I would like to say that, yes, he is a bit of a prat. But he's a nice guy. The Department of Cybernetics is one of maybe two in the country, and it is a bit publicity orientated. My AI lecturer just asked me if I was going to try to market my neural network project, and I don't think he was joking.

      And the rest of the Department is not against going on the radio to tell Warwick he's completely insane. The fact that the electrodes he's having fired into his arm have never been removed from live animals (let alone humans) before adds a little zest to the whole operation. Aside from gangrene and other infections that could get in from the hole in his arm he now has that could destroy his use of his hand.

      And there are a lot of uses for this implant if it works. Admittedly most were thought up afterwards, but there are uses. It's just a little overmarketed. He's a bit weird but he's not as serious as some people think he is. I think he's just trying to shock people to get their attention

      • Just to clarify: I wasn't trying to suggest that Reading University or the Department of Cybernetics there is a bunch of morons, or that they don't know what Warwick is up to--certainly not. In fact, I think they keep such a prat as Kevin Warwick on because he makes money for them. That's very intelligent, if cynical. :-)

        Of course, maybe he's damn good at something, I don't know really. But based upon his media exposure, all he seems to be good at is drawing attention to himself.

    • Smart Card Cyborg (Score:2, Informative)

      by NullStr ( 549687 )
      His attempts to become a cyborg from what I understand consisted of little more than putting a chip in his body which would open a door as he walked towards it. How is this that different from: having the chip in your pocket, sticking it to your arm with some sort of patch, etc.

      I worked in the lab which built the door-opening, PC-booting stuff at Reading. What we didn't tell the countless media hacks was that he had the implant removed after a few weeks, and that a Smart Card in his back pocket was exactly what was opening the doors ;o)

      He was/is, however, very competent at teaching Control Theory. He had me understanding Nyquist in a few weeks, which is saying something. Unfortunately, as I graduated, he seemed to have laid claim to work done by other people in the department, causing several good staff to leave.

      It is a pity that Cybernetics is reduced by Warwick to robotic gizmos, when it should really be known as a meta-science [cnrs-mrs.fr] or scientific philosophy [physics.hku.hk]. Its applicability is far beyond robots and just the technological, to business models, large-scale human behaviour, meteorology, etc., etc.

  • Save Our Celebrities (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @03:30PM (#3209362)
    Photo Caption: It is hoped the science could one day help actor Christopher Reeve

    He's mentioned by name twice more in the article. I understand that they're trying to use a widely-known sufferer of spinal cord damage to underscore the potential of this technology, but it comes across as sounding like he's the only one they want to help.

    Bad journalist, no cookie.
  • Imagine walking down the street and everyone on the street is tapping the air as if pushing an invisible button when in fact they're using personal holographic screens that only they can see. Scary1 http://www.geocities.com/lilmacumd/escape.html

  • Captain Cyborg strikes again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tsugumi ( 553059 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @03:56PM (#3209581)
    So now this publicity-seeking fool even gets airtime on /.
    It's a real shame for people actually involved in the AI/robotics field that he gets away with it. He's considered a joke by academis in his field, and especially colleagues at the University of Warwick. Lots of people are doing important research that gets sidelined by his "cyborg" stunts or his proclaimations that robots are going to take over the world. (Okay, full disclosure, a close relative is a professor in the field).

    I went to a talk he gave where he started making wild claims that "computers are now as intelligent as dogs". It grabs the headlines, fine, but it is pseudo-science, or to use the correct phrase, bullshit.

    But, because he gets the publicity, he gets rolled out anytime there is media interest in what is a great area of technology, and his lies, FUD and hyperbole end up being accepted into popular culture as science.

    Okay, incoherent rant off...

  • the register's coverage (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aqu4fiend ( 528775 ) <aquafiend AT email DOT com> on Friday March 22, 2002 @03:57PM (#3209595)

    Even better than The Register's real coverage of this story [theregister.co.uk] is the thematically inspired BOFH techno-zealot alert [theregister.co.uk], which makes reference to the cyborg prof in question.


  • is here [rdg.ac.uk]. It doesn't seem to cover the most recent implants, but it has information on some previous experiments (and some photos [rdg.ac.uk]-- not for the squeamish).
  • Their beginning was always a mystery. Why do I get the feeling that the borg are really a result of a bad accident resulting from some demented combination of ai and cybernetic implants.

    -Restil

  • Done. Didn't work (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:11PM (#3209701)
    Watched the discovery channel a while back. Had a piece about these devices that implanted wires to help paralyzed people walk. Problem was that the wires break/wear-out. The paralyzed people end up with hundred of wire filaments lacing their legs where the few good nerves are. The xrays looked like steel wool. They reported that it tended to be painful but surgery to remove the thousands of little pieces of broken up wires was just too difficult.

    Beware of combining organic and non organic substances. The living things break and rebuild themselves constantly, in fact it is part of their design. Metal wire are not organic.

  • New Scientist calls it a "Gimmick" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Curious__George ( 167596 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @04:34PM (#3209867)
    New Scientist has this article under the headline: Nerve Implant Experiment "a Gimmick" [newscientist.com], but you can't help but wonder if it is jealousy at the media attention that the guy garners more than bad science that has other scientist against this guy.

    Curious George

  • In other news, (Score:3, Funny)

    by Snafoo ( 38566 ) on Friday March 22, 2002 @07:56PM (#3210862) Homepage
    Mr. Warwick has just undergone his most extensive and painful 'cyber-surgery' to date. After a gruelling twenty-hour operation, cutting-edge 'cyber-medicine' has managed to give Warwick a prosthetic clue.
    The electronic 'micro-chip' helps regulate Warwick's desperate appetite for publicity. Scientists hope that one day, clueless people everywhere will be able to benefit from this technology, including such celebrities as George Bush and the Church of Scientology.

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