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Cybernetics Prof to Attempt Computer Control of Own Limbs 179

Posted by Hemos from the my-pc-controls-my-leg-movements dept.
Tony pickering writes "Spotted on the BBC - "Professor Kevin Warwick is to have a silicon implant inserted in his arm in an attempt to find out whether the computer will be able to move his limbs by copying signals from his brain." Possibly has some medical apps, but a little spooky nonetheless - hey, now, I can lock my body up! " The really scary part is that the next step he's going to do is emotion control. /shiver/ Check out a recent interview with Kevin Warwick, as well as more info on human chip implants.
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Cybernetics Prof to Attempt Computer Control of Own Limbs More

Cybernetics Prof to Attempt Computer Control of Own Limbs

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  • ...if it worked and could be controlled by thoughts or perhaps through facial movements. Christopher Reeve would love something like this, as would all the other quadriplegics and paraplegics out there. A few of the problems include:
    • Sensory feedback - it's much more difficult to listen in on a nerve to find out what the hand is feeling than it is to fire the muscles. Sensation will be crucial for manipulating objects.
    • Reflex arcs (muscle "stretch" sensory feedback) - if you stimlate a nerve or muscle directly, you will elicit a relex in the opposing muscles. This "stretch" reflex is mediated by the spinal cord. Voluntary movements usually suppress this reflex so that when you bend your knee, it doesn't kick back out like it does when you stretch the quadriceps tendon with a reflex hammer. These relexes will need to be suppressed somehow.
  • I can see the headline now...

    In a widely awaited move, Microsoft has announced it's new nervous operating system version 1.0, Microsoft Brain (tm). Co-developed in Redmond, WA and Reading, PA, this new operating system is designed with human efficiency in mind.

    "No more unecessary arm movements!" proclaims John Q. McFoo of Microsoft. "We have achieved partial control of humankind, and we eagerly await leg control as well" says McFoo. "Unnecessary arm motion is now a thing of the past. This is an energy savings for all consumers" McFoo adds.

    Microsoft is widely expected to deploy Brain 1.0 in time for Christmas, so users can purchase as many Microsoft products as their budgets allow. "With control of the arms, we anticipate a huge increase in Microsoft product purchases" says industry analyst Bob Smith. "Without leg control, however, getting them to the store is another matter" cautions Smith.

    Citing a stunning 90% uptime figure, Microsoft is touting this as a real win for reliability. "Losing use of the arm for only 10% of the time isn't so bad" claims McFoo. "Besides, with the new Microsoft Nerual Uptime (tm), you can have friends paged to reboot you" during downtime, he concluded.

    this is a joke, and you should take it as such
  • No pun intended... Hehehehehe...
  • ..I don't see why they couldn't just supply
    needed chemicals for us.
    It may not be something that is possible today,
    but this scenario is also way off.
    If someone did want to control our emotions to
    make us happy, and make us don't care about
    the police state we're in, they could probably
    make us dependent on some endorfin-supplying
    drug.
    I'm not a chemist, and not a doctor, so I don't
    really know, but there are research on ways to
    boost this natural process, isn't there?
  • But what really scares me is the emotion control.

    People have been taking illegal drugs for decades in order to perform emotion control. This may be equally sad, but scary?
  • How about you doing the recording, and several other people doing the playback? Real handy for line dancing. :)

    Even more interesting when a few of them get out of sync. Oriented the wrong way, fallen over...

    You cannot have two people walking using the same signals. They have different weight, their muscles may react slightly different, and soon enough one falls over forward. Trying to correct this the other one falls backwards. It wouldn't work - not even with identical twins. One might step on a pebble and so on.
  • I doubt that much of use will come out of this experiment. The element of auto-suggestion is too great. We all know that Kevin Warwick really really wants this experiment to work. So, they press the button, his arm moves -- who's to say that the signal really moved his arm? Unless he's prepared to hand over complete control to the machine, and effectively paralyse himself, I'd suggest that his arm moved because he moved it.

    And then we have the element of training. It's known that you can train various muscles to react to stimuli, so if the chip starts working, it seems to me that it would be hard to argue from there to the conclusion that "the right signal" had been given, still less that a chip which worked in Kevin Warwick would be transferable to anyone else.

    jsm
  • A guy I work with had his spinal column severed about half way down in a motorcycle accident ten years ago.
    Paul is undergoing physio at the minute to build his leg muscles up, and has a strap-on "magic belt" and surface electrodes which allow him to stand during therapy sessions. If he continues the treatment, it will ultimately lead to implant technology so he can stand at will, by pressing the button. He is still a guinea pig, and is awaiting results of tests, but in 6 months time he hopes to become a bionic man, with surface electrodes being actually implanted onto nerve junctures. Give it 5 years or so, and the technology may allow him to walk again. The plan is to "bridge" the gap in his spinal column, once grafting techniques are perfected. I applaud Kevin Warwick for his efforts so far, and hope that his research may lead to my friend being able to walk again.
    Interesting times, indeed.
  • "Co-developed in Redmond, WA and Reading, PA"
    Prof Warwick is actually based in Reading, Berkshire. Which is in Britain (about 45 miles south of London).
    Only the British can produce eccentrics of this calibre - something to do with rigorous, assiduous and sadistic training from birth, I think.
    I forget who said it, but the difference between madness and eccentricity is how much money you have..... :)
  • > Is this guy more interested in real cybernetics
    > research or becoming a media sensation.

    As a graduate of Reading Uni, I can confirm that Warwick is an excellent self publicist. Not that that means his research is nessecarily BAD, but it doesn't give me great confidence. He is endlessly on Tommorow's World [bbc.co.uk] (BBC popular science program).

    I have a lot more respect for science that is reported through peer reviewed journals than through the mass media.
  • Thanks, it was even funnier the second time, no, really.
    I'm a blues singer. We sing every line twice.
    Yeah, we blues singers, we sing every line twice.
  • I believe his motive is to help the handicapped or otherwise disabled. Personally, I'd take my chances on computerized implants before spending the rest of my days in a wheelchair or god forbid in a bed paralyzed from the neck down.

    I don't believe these implants would offer anyone any superhuman abilities, due to the fact that they're still your muscles, your nerves and your body. If he was talking about replacing muscles with some kind of substance that contracted with electrical impluses like muscles do, but was ten times faster or stronger than muscle, well then...
    --

  • We have so little ability to determine with any accuracy exactly how and where which nerves are stimulated to trigger muscle movement in all the different ways, and these are pretty much unique between different people, so one person's "recording", not only would only work for that one person, but only at that one moment. It'd be nearly impossible to reconnect the equipment so as to stimulate each of the neurons in precisely the same way they were stimulated last time. You'd have to re-do the recording.

    In it's current form I can't see it being particularly useful, but if his work is successful, it could open quite a lot of doors for experimenters to more accurately determine how to effectively stimulate nerves so as to produce a desired movement.
  • I don't think the emotion control is really all that different from "better living through chemistry", i.e., drugs, except that the precision & potential effect will be much stronger. I can easily see people becoming "wireheads". I'd be REALLY scared in the situation where governments/organizations wouldn't think twice about torturing people - I doubt there's a human alive that could stand being broken when their brain's pain centers, depression, etc., are being directly stimulated.

    As far as helping disabled people are concerned, this would probably be true for missing limbs/prosthetic situations - in the case of nerve damage, like with Reeve, I suspect they'd be happier if the scientists just figure out how to regenerate that damaged nerve tissue.

    What might really be interesting for controlling your own muscles via computer, if the control is complete & precise enough, is the possibility for muscle training - slap in a two-month training program for your favorite martial art & be absolutely SURE that you are performing the katas & drills correctly because they were recorded from a master's movements (although I suspect there will have to be some tweaking by the playback mechanism for differences in body-type).
  • I can see it now, way in the future, the year is 2000. MAO inhibitors have been replaced with new silicon chips to make you happy, the government has a conspiracy where they say it makes you immune to some new plague, which they made up and it really just makes you a big fat walking telnet server for their pleasure!....Fido keeps begginf for food?....just telnet right in and make him not so hungry. That was a joke for all of you stiff-heads.
  • How about you doing the recording, and several other people doing the playback? Real handy for line dancing. :)
    Wonder if you could use it to teach people how to do things (like dancing, for example)?
    Combine it with cloning and some impressive VR feedback, and you'd never have to leave the house. Just control your clone out into the dangerous world.. it gets hurt, just plug in another. Good for soldiers.



    -beme
  • Actually emotional control has been possible for years with the right mix of drugs. Pharmacuticals are capable of producing a wide range of emotions.

    About the only positive use I could see for something like this is a sort of "anti-panic" calming device. For folks with strong phobias that want the "blind panic" mode to go away or something like that.

    I agree that there are a number of less altruistic methods something like this could be used for.
  • Useful applications of "emotion control"
    • treatment for clinical depression without the side effects of drugs.
    • training aid (you do it right, feel good, do it wrong, feel bad). Very intuitive.
    • new art media
    • another communication method (this is how that makes me feel).
    Of course it could be misused, but so can a coat hanger.
  • This is a field I'm trying to get into, so I've paid some attention to the kinds of neural-interface electronics which already exist. The ones which, IMHO, have the best chance to work require the nerve to be severed and allowed to regrow through the implant so that single axons can be recorded independently. Thing is, when you sever a nerve, it never comes back quite perfectly. To put in such an electrode and then remove it a few months later (as Warwick had to do with his previous chip) is going to be two nerve traumas. Even if he uses a different system than the one I'm thinking of, it's still got to be next to the nerve in order to control the whole arm, and that still leaves plenty of potential for nerve trauma.

    I'm neither a doctor nor a trained bioengineer, so I could be wrong, but it seems like Warwick is setting himself up for minor loss of limb function at the very least. I certainly don't consider this technology mature enough for this kind of trial. (Of course, the BBC article doesn't say when he's going to do this experiment --- could be a couple years from now, though they make it sound like tomorrow.)

  • Other uses (Score:3)

    by N1UGLham ( 90356 ) on Thursday November 04, 1999 @10:37AM (#1562226) Homepage
    Could this also be used as an alternative to Viagra?

  • N1UGLham dun said: On the contrary, I think it could be quite useful to a large number of disabled people. There are so many things that we don't understand about the nervous system (including the brain).

    I m'self think probably the most likely use for this would be for people who are paralysed as a result of nerve injury (i.e. like what Christopher Reeve did--fell off a horse, broke his neck in the process). I am not certain it'd work for neurodegenerative diseases nor am I sure it would work for stuff in the brain or that is inborn (i.e. strokes or spina bifida).

    Who's to say that, for instance, that this couldn't prevent people with MS?

    I myself doubt it'd work because MS is largely an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own myelin nerve sheathings. (A rough parallel would be stripping the insulation off of an electrical cord, leaving it vulnerable to corrosion and short circuits and whatnot. The problems you get with MS are basically due to the fact the nerves are short-circuiting, and I'm not sure how a muscle-movement chip is going to help because it has to go through the nervous system at some point.)

    Or possibly prevent at least the physical and damaging side of seizures for people with Epilepsy (anyone read the Terminal Man by Michael Crichton?).

    It really depends on the cause and type of epilepsy. Most epilepsy is due to a lesion of unknown cause, brain injury, or severe problems with brain development (I'm thinking on the last of really bad kinds of epilepsy such as infantile spasms or Lennox-Gastaut syndrome where people can have upwards of hundreds of seizures a day and they are rarely controllable without surgery.)

    The most useful kind of "chip" I could think of for epileptics is POSSIBLY some sort of "brain pacemaker" (epilepsy is caused when part of the brain, usually around a lesion, starts misfiring; yes, the concept is similar to arrythmias in the heart, and in fact the type of abnormal brain waves in infantile spasms is referred to as "hypsarrythmia"). These devices are supposedly in clinical trials for severe epilepsy. (This is also why severely epileptic kids will sometimes get half their brain removed--it removes the focus of the seizures and the kids can usually do pretty well with half a brain. This is also why most epileptic drugs (especially for status epilepticus--where one is constantly having seizures) tend to be heavy downers or tranquilisers.)

    Or act as a "circuit breaker" of sorts to, for example, domestic abusers. Whenever they became enraged, the chip could immobilize their limbs, preventing them from harming another human.

    I'm not really sure this is possible. Firstly, the chip would have to recognise NOT ONLY that the person is enraged but also recognise the TARGET of the rage and realise this is a person who is a victim of domestic abuse. I don't think AI is quite that good yet. :)

    Besides, it still wouldn't take care of OTHER types of domestic abuse such as emotional abuse (trust me...even if an abuser can't hit you they will STILL find ways to make your life a living hell if at all possible) which probably occur along WITH physical abuse. It also doesn't take care of the fact that being an abuser is largely an emotional/behaviour disorder that is poorly understood as are ALL disorders of violence. (No, I don't think this could work for rapists either, because rape is far more of a crime of dominance and power over a helpless individual than of sex. You'd have to do some real work to get it to distinguish impulses relating to rape from impulses relating to being the "top" of a consentual BD/SM relationship. :) How does one program "consent"?)

    Not to mention my aforementioned Viagra alternative.

    I keep seeing people mention this and I have to chuckle. Penile hardwiring is going to be far more useful for, say, incontinence than getting a hard-on because the muscles that control the urethra are just about the only muscles IN one's penis. (Seriously. You know why cock-rings and Viagra work? Because one gets a hard-on by a rush of blood caused by stimulation of the penis. The cock-rings hold the blood in acting as a tourniquet; Viagra basically causes you to pump more blood (this is why it is Very Bad for heart patients to take Viagra). This is also why a lot of diabetic men have problems with impotence; diabetes has a tendency to destroy nerve endings ["diabetic neuropathy"] and pretty much they can't get enough of a nerve signal to get the "hard-on" message, and diabetes causes thickening of the blood and heart damage [this is why a lot of longterm diabetics are on heart medication]. And no, a penile implant wouldn't work unless you have an "on" button for them--it's the nerve endings at the END that are destroyed.) You'd do better with a combination of sensor + blood-pump near the penis.

  • What next, breast implants for this guy?

    --
  • Wow, imagine a chip in your John Thomas (female hackers excepted) that you could use during sex. A slight electric shock at the right moment...
    And of course, if you used Windows, you'd never have any problems going down.
  • Oh, why can't we all ignore him? Yes, he's interested in some things that sound potentially cool, but is this expecially serious research? No, it's a way of getting more funding for his department - his main skill, if we're going to be honest. Take his previous implant - not actually powerful enough to be of any use or to actually do what he said it could, but it sounded interesting so the press picked up on it.

    I've actually had a few lectures from him as part of an introductory course to Cybernetics that I did in my first year (I'm a computer science student at Reading Uni, the first year crosses over a bit on the two courses). Did we learn anything? No way. He sat us down in front of videos about robots that could walk badly, juggle badly or kill each other. We got the occasional joke, a bit of self-publicity as (what a surprise!) an interview with him predicting that robots will take over the world fairly soon cropped up on one of the tapes. Does this sound like a serious scientist at the cutting edge of research to you?

    This guy is a joke in his own department, with a reputation for embellishing the truth regarding his department's work and their abilities. Demos regularly get rigged to make it look like they're better than they are for the cameras. It was a running joke that the earlier implant was (lack of power ignored for humour purposes) a bit like an electronic tag for a criminal in its function - other staff wanted to be able to track him, make sure he wasn't in the wrong place and be able to avoid him.

    Please, we have a publicist here, not a scientist. If we can stop reporting his every word as a new breakthrough, we might actually notice the genuine work out there.

    As an aside, I'm very worried about any doctor who's prepared to put in such an implant. The idea of being able to montor his nervous impulses is an intriguing one and potentially useful, but where's the real attention here? The playback mode. Do we really know enough about the nervous system to say that it's truly safe to wire something into his nerves and then have it transmitting its own signals? This is just dangerous.

    Greg
  • I thought it read "will be able to move his limbs by copying signals from his brains," and I thought "Wow, Professor Warwick has certainly made progress since the last time I read something about him."

  • > Similarly, you could not feel happy all of the
    > time, regardless of the signals sent to yoru
    > brain, without an increase in seratonin
    > production levels among other things. If you or
    > someone you know has tried the street drug
    > Xtacy, you will be familiar with the post-high
    > depression that follows. The brain exhausts its
    > resevoir of "happy painless" chemicals and
    > consequently throws you into the opposite
    > imbalance.

    Um, that's not really true. The reason some people may feel "depressed" after taking
    E is just because they're not as ridiculously joyful as they were three hours ago.
    My...friends...have found that their good moods last quite a while after the supposed 6
    hour duration of the drug. There is an emotionally fuzzy period that lasts for 24 hours
    or so, but again, it's more the product of coming off a peak experience than anything
    else.


    What you say is broadly correct in one sense but so is the comment you're arguing against (ignoring minor details). You are simply looking at the phenomenon from an experiential, phenomenological point of view, whereas konstant is arguing from a neurological standpoint.

    There really is a depletion of neurotransmitter in the short term, though that is soon recovered. What konstant neglected to mention is this:

    The central nervous system contains both neurotransmitters and neuroinhibitors. Each has multiple functions depending upon the particular location in the brain, and there is some degree of overlap, but to oversimplify somewhat they can be though of as existing in mutually antagonistic pairs.

    Also, in any given synaptic membrane the population of receptors attuned to all the relevant neurochemicals is dynamic and changes according to local (intracellular and extracellular) conditions. An excess of a particular neurotransmitter will result in a decline in the number of receptors for it.

    Thus, the effect of releasing one of these chemicals into the brain can be offset by the automatic release of another chemical with the opposite function, and by changes in receptor populations. In this way the normal healthy brain provides a homeostatic environment. Well-known examples are the release of endorphins to counteract an excess of the neurotransmitters which mediate the sensation of pain, and the decline in receptors for cortisol derivatives under conditions of prolonged emotional stress (anyone here burned out yet?).

    The presence of elevated levels of certain neurochemicals via natural, electrical or chemical stimulation will therefore always result in elevated levels of some antagonistic neurochemical(s) and/or reduced receptor populations as the brain attempts to compensate and restore equilibrium.

    Under conditions of constant stimulation, neurotransmitter depletion can occur resulting in a type of neurological fatigue, but this isn't the usual reason for post-high "comedown": when the stimulation ceases, the compensatory neurological changes that have occurred in response to the stimulation still remain and it takes time for the brain to return to normal.

    When these changes take place over the short term, we describe it as "withdrawal". When the brain takes longer to recover, we talk about addiction.

    Back to the main point: if the proposed electrical stimulation can be turned off to give the brain time to return to its normal state, mood swings will result in the manner described by constant. However, if the stimulation is left on indefinitely, there will be long-term changes in the quantity and distribution of receptors and neurochemical producers (qv. heroin and crack addicts) which may not be completely reversible.

    PS. The brain is a complex and fragile thing. It's the best thing you own actually. So f*cking it up with chemicals *or* wires is simply stupid. Consider this too: the brain has evolved to work more or less optimally when healthy. Altered states of consciousness are non-optimal. Ever try to drive a car when you're stoned?

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • "So, you come here often?" she says...

    Oh no! Palms start sweating, pulse rate skyrockets. So you reach for your psion... fumble with the controls ... Loading Casanova program!

    "Hey," you suavely begin, "I lost my phone number. Can I have yours?" (Tee hee hee! you think)

    Who says this technology wouldn't be useful for freaking EVERYONE ? ;) ;)

  • There's another way of doing this: get a motorised gadget that will move the limb in question. Then get the disabled person to record "thinking about moving legs" or "thinking about blue cheese" or anything, and make this be the cue to move the gadget. Then they just need some training to learn to operate the gadget by thinking the key thoughts. The down side being you could then make them fall over by showing them blue cheese :(
  • Anyone get an image of this guy going the way of Lore form ST:TNG? Aside from that, i'm not looking at the aspects this has for cybernetics, what about androids? If you can replicate you can create, we could have some very lifelike robots coming up here in the next few years if these experiments are successful, not to mention a better understanding of ourselves, this is actually exciting. BUT the big brother issues ARE very scary, now he CAN watch you, and your heart rate and your sugar level, not to mention he can tell what EMOTION you're feeling....hmmm...thoughts can't be far away from that. Of course then we can get those very cool telepathy implants....of course with the cell phones causing long term memory loss ( see earlier slashdot article ) imagine what CELL (Cellular Electronic Long-range Listener/broadcaster) phones might do?
  • Red Dwarf covered this one in another episode as well :)

    Series V, 'Demons and Angels' IIRC. Lister had a spinal implant inserted by the bad crew, who then proceeded to remootely control him to try and wipe out the normal crew. Meant we get all sorts of wonderful lines like 'Look out, I'm going to kill you!' and the wonderful scene where Lister's trying desperately to shoot the crew but is warning them which was his next shot's going to go so that they can avoid it.

    The end scene's the one I'd be worried about if I was Professor Warwick, though. He accidentally sits on the chip again after it's been removed, then Rimmer and the Cat use the remote control to make lister repeatedly slap himself...

    Greg
  • WinCe an entirely new meaning.
  • So who remembers the "happy helmet" episode of Ren & Stimpy?

  • When you can use it to control a virtual one?

    Actors movments can be truely recorded and overlayed with 3d models for truely realistic movement.

    If you could intersept the signals and redirect them you could have classic cyberpunk VR. Or just a virtual keyboard so you don't have to worry about carpal tunnel.

    Or you could program your body to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night so you don't have to wake up and do it yourself.
  • Well my concern is that someone of a different weight or build could create havoc to another person.
    I need a certain amount of energy going a certain precise way to move my 5'9" 200 pound bulk. If I gave my programme to my friend who is 6'5" and 130 pounds, he is not going to fare too well.
    Similarly, if I take his programme I will be troubled to even stand on my own.

    Also, a glitch, it seems to me, could result in two muscles both being contracted simultaneously and excessively and possibly even tearing them from the bone.

    Though then again perhaps it could be used to hard-code monkeys to type hamlet.... :)
  • If you haven't read it, do so. Like most of Stephenson's other stuff it provides a lot of humor in the midst of some neat scifi exploration that is almost precisely in tune with this sort of thing.

    It's even got the implantee freaking out when driving by a microwave relay tower (better shield that implant).
  • >We could make our bodies more functional. Extra
    >strength, IR vision,
    We have the technology. We can make him faster, stronger...
  • Just think, someday all jocks will want to use this to let them attach bigger, stronger limbs. Then one day they pick on a geek, and take his/her lunch money. He/she goes home that night and figures out how to hack into the bad guy's implants.

    Give a whole new meaning to that "Stop hitting yourself" game, doesn't it? >:-)
  • ". the natural range and flow of emotions is part of what makes us who we are and part of what makes us human.

    But if you were unbalanced for whatever reason. (Born that way, brain damage, whatever...) You could use a computer to define a new range and flow.

    Also I assume the knowledge of exactly how this is controlled would be very usefull to people researching almost anything to do with our brains.

  • Don't worry (Score:4)

    by konstant ( 63560 ) on Thursday November 04, 1999 @11:31AM (#1562251)
    The idea of it making me happy all the time is just as strange as the idea of it making me upset or sad

    While your more general worry about emotion-influencing technology and propaganda is a valid one, you do not need to concern yourself with the scenario in which we are permanently "doped up" by happiness chips.

    The brain can only produce so much of any given neurotransmitter within a set time period. This is one of the reasons that you gradually become acclimatized to foul smells and loud noises if you remain long enough in their vicinity - you run out of the neurotransmitter that makes them perceptible to you.

    Similarly, you could not feel happy all of the time, regardless of the signals sent to yoru brain, without an increase in seratonin production levels among other things. If you or someone you know has tried the street drug Xtacy, you will be familiar with the post-high depression that follows. The brain exhausts its resevoir of "happy painless" chemicals and consequently throws you into the opposite imbalance. Women have a similar period after giving birth.

    So though a chip might constantly be sending you thrills, you could only feel them with a limited frequency. The rest of the time you likely would feel depressed. This cycle would be akin to manic/depressive mood swings and seems unlikely as a solution for long-term mind control.


    -konstant
  • I fear in the far future people will use cybernetic implants. Not just the injuried ( handicapped ) and the sick ( M.S. ), but healthly people. Have you ever seen "plesure wired" lab rats? The reenforcement of the unimaginable intense stimlus to the hypothalimus or what have you - overrides even the desire to eat/breathe.

    To stimulate the mind artifically in such a manner could become the first recerational drug that's 100% effective at killing you. Also who will be left to do manual labour after such a popualtion imposion? Good thing I want be around to see it. I enjoy being depressed and talking to myself, it's because I enjoy being. ;)

    To quote ACs: "ph43r, d00d"
  • This guy is a great self-publicist. Recently he walked around with some circuitry in him that allowed himself to be tracked. So what is new? This was being done years ago with 'smart badges' which had a major advantage - you can take them off! Now he wants to record and replay nerve signals. Again, this is nothing new. Devices to give movement in paralysed limbs by electrical control of muscles has been under investigation for some time. As for recording and replaying emotions - unless he has some special understanding of the brain that thousands of specialists don't - this is incredibly exaggerated stuff. This guy likes to promote himself as some kind of 'cyborg' because he puts electronic circuitry under his skin. I guess the thousands of people who have pacemakers and other well-established devices don't count? Good publicity can be of great benefit to science, but this kind of overhyped stuff has, I believe, a negative effect.
  • Finally, we begin to move into the cyberware age. I foresee widespread panic as people realize that they are outdated and can't get the money for the newest upgrade. In the end, the y2k nuts will get it outlawed by Congress and nobody wins.
  • I think some of the people writing about "emotional control" are taking things a little too far, too fast. We already have an intuitive understanding that some emotions are undesirable and worth manipulating as external objects. Example: subject has had a Dilbert-esque day at work and is brimming with frustration; doesn't want to take it out on significant other later on.
    Subject A lays down and thinks pleasant thoughts.

    Subject B drinks a glass of herbal tea
    Subject C pops a valium
    Subject D has biofeedback / systematic relaxation training, and can cause complete psycho-somatic relaxation by tapping left temple three times.
    Which of these people are manipulating their emotions naturally and which are doing it "artificially"? To an extent. since our consciousness doesn't have direct control over the emotions, we're always left to indirect methods like this - kludges which differ only in degree from pressing a button and having an implant do it electrochemically.
    Naturally, there would be negative consequences to relying too heavily on automated intervention, but I doubt that anyone could condemn this in theory (forget the big-brother applications) but defend drinking coffee.

    What this experiment offers is an interesting change to our current emotion-control paradigm. Right now, we try to tweak levels of neurotransmitters which seem to be causally related to the desired emotion. But the brain has many fewer transmitters than it has tasks, and so there are always side effects (e.g., SSRIs often cause appetite disturbance, because serotonin mediates both emotion and satiety). If we could deliver stimulation to a targeted population of neurons, we might be able to achieve transmitter release into just the desired area. Another possibility is to give the computer its own transmitter reservoir, so that it could micromanage the chemical balance itself. This would be advantageous in people who had suffered brain damage and lost critical pieces of tissue.

    As for the "how do we know Kevin isn't moving his own arm" question, the answer is a blind experiment: Kevin is in one room; the guy with the "move arm" button is in another. Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that he could feel a little stimulation and decide to help it along. For that, I put forward that humans already have a built-in paralysis mode: it's called REM. The brain clamps down on higher motor neurons to make sure that those dreams about supermodels don't result in damage to your housepets. But the chip is presumably located further down, at the neuromuscular junction. If pressing the "move arm" button made his arm move even during REM sleep (and he didn't have a history of sleepwalking), we could reasonably credit the machine.

    - Michael Cohn
  • Stanislaw Lem, the polish sf writer [1], author of many humourful sf book (he was writing books in a Douglas Adams style a long time before Douglas Adams started thinking about hitch-hiking in Europe :-) ) propheitized in one of his late books the end of sex as we know it. All possible cybernetic devices which could replace "the real thing" are nothing compared with a device - which he called "gnak", I don't remember why - which directly stimulated certain neurons within the brain, having an exciting effect at first and providing an unbelievable orgasm later. In his book, aside from the standard model, there are also the illegal "s-gnaks", where s comes from "suicidal" - overstimulating the pleasure centers of the brain they destroy it, providing their user with the ulitimate, but deathly orgasm - a really pleasant death, as confirmed by the enormous popularity of these devices (in the book, of course).

    Well, Lem is know for fullfiled prophecies - in the earlie sixties he described quite accurately what is now called "virtual reality", in the early eighties he guessed what will follow a chaotic gathering of information in a global network - well, Altavista should be paying copyright fees to him - and so on. Hm. Now another of his early propheties (damned! how do you spell this word?!) are coming to life :-) I wonder how long it will take the humanity to produce a gnak? :-)

    Regards,

    January

    P.S. Lem stopped sf writing in the early 90s with a novel called "Fiasco" - which was about communication: communication between intelligent races, and, as a side-by, communication between him, as a writer, and his readers. Lem sees Internet as a dangerous thing, which could lead to an informatic catastrophe, described in many books he wrote. He's a pessimist, his nickname - "Kassandra" :-)

    [1] P.K.D. thought S.Lem does not exist, and is a group of communist terrorists, aimed against his - P.K.D. - writing. It was very amusing to find a book by P. Dick in Germany, with the following note on the cover "[he is so good] that even Stanislaw Lem appreciated him" :-) Well, Lem is enormously popular in Germany.

  • One place where emotion control could be used is in the army. Blank out the majority of the emotions (except for a few necessary ones) for the duration of the battle and you would probably do a lot better than your "human" opponents. In Israel, for example, women can't fight in the army; but not because of lack of strength/skill. It is because the men can't handle it. So I can think of a few emotions that people can do without during certain times.

    This example could be generalized to any job that requires a high concentration level. Construction work, nuclear plants, and math quizzes :-) come to mind.

    To generalize the generalization, you could use this for any project where you want to concentrate, release adrenaline, or use any other of the myriad emotions that might be desirable for a particular setting.

  • And you call yourselves geeks!

    I'm appalled to discover /.ers are so frightened by an area of research, so willing to make value judgements about a technology which doesn't even exist, so devoid of imagination as to the potential benefits of such a technology.

    You people sound exactly like all those clueless yahoos^H^H^H^H^H^Hcommentators in the mainstream press who ranted that "The internet will be the end of interpersonal contact, high culture and human civilization" and "ATMs will never catch on because people really like standing in line to interact with slow and surly service personnel" and "Wouldn't it be terrible if everyone used email." Not to mention "Cloning will be the end of human individuality!" and "Designer genes will be the end of human individuality!"

    Get A Grip, people.

    This guy may be off the deep end for skipping all those pesky intermediary animal tests, but investigating ways to interface wetware and hardware is one of the most interesting and potentially humanitarian aims a scientist could have. Think prosthetics that work like (or better than) original limbs. Think repairs to nerves. Think about the control of mental illness (such as depression) without side-effect riddled drugs. Think about just having a sufficient grasp of how the nervous system works to be able to hack on it.

    Yeah, there are potentially scary applications. That's medicine. All hacking on the human body could be used to human detriment, hence the aphorism "the power to heal is the power to harm". And not only in medicine. Universally, the only technologies without the potential to do harm are those without any potential at all.

    I'd thought nerds, of all people, would grok that.
    ----------------------------------------------

  • Just imagine getting flamed.. ouch. Time to pull out those asbestos boxers.

    Hmm, maybe you could moderated out of existence too...
  • How would M$ deal with the support nightmare of a "Windows 2020: Body and Mind" operating system? People would call up with problems, M$'d say "Reboot your body, does that help?", and the customer would say "My fingers won't move you idiot, how am I supposed to reboot?"


    The new Windows OS slogan could be, "Let's You Operate Your Body Reliably 85% of the Time!".


    Anywho,

    --

  • If I could have just one part of my body replaced, it would be my hands. I really, really want those hands from Ghost in the Shell. You know, the ones with the fingers that split into three or four smaller fingers each? That would speed up typing something fierce...

    Of course, I'm going to wait until technology like this is *proven* to work.
  • Best way to impress a woman...
    - Candy
    - Flowers
    - Hack someone's arm
    - Crack someone's arm

    ./hackarm --script="pick nose" --target=="Kevin Warwick"

  • see "The Terminal Man [amazon.com]," an early Michael Crichton novel.

    Also made into a film [amazon.com] starring George Segal.

    Scary stuff, I read it when I was a kid. It's one of those "technology is evil" plots and seems eerily germane.

  • I have to say I find his concept, at least as explained, doubtful. A movement is a sequence of operations, and since he has no way of shutting off communication to the brain during the replay of the sequences, nerves will transmit the fact that the arm is moving, and the brain is more than likely to react by attempting to stop the movement or correct for it.

    After all, we've all had those times when one of our limbs, due to pinched nerve or other reasons, has started moving by itself and the non-involved muscles in the area react almost instantly to attempt to keep it in place.

    Its a goofy trick, but I don't think it can work on a non-disabled person.

    On the other hand, a disabled person would be perfect. Take someone with a spinal injury, unabled to move their legs. We can use a recorder/activator pair of these chips, with a wire between them, to jump the break in the nerves, allowing them to use their legs again. Such a strategy could work in many circmstances, including those where part of the limb is missing, so that the missing part can interpret the relevant parts of the signal and do what the part would do normally.

    It has great future potential, but I think his current testing method isn't liable to produce any amazing results. The brain very much likes to be in control.

  • I can think of only two uses. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And I think slashdotters have guessed both of them.

    1. This shows a lot of promise for people who have lost limb control through some sort of nerve damage, either from fire, disease, or some other mishap. That's a Good Thing.
    2. This also brings about the possibility of "meat puppets" (not the band), similar to those described by Gibson in Neuromancer. Basically, in Neuromancer meat puppets are prostitutes (or other service industry professionals) plugged into a machine to control their actions and behavior in order to give the customer exactly what he or she orders. That's Not Such A Good Thing.

    At this point, this technology only seems to offer direct muscular control, and not "mind control" and a lot of other things people here have mentioned. But even muscular control can be a little scary if put to evil uses. Technology itself in neither good nor evil, it just is. The use of technology can be either.

    Personally, what I find cool about this whole thing is that he's experimenting on himself. Now that's the sign of a true "Mad Scientist"... "No research assistants were harmed in the making of this technology."
  • One with the machine.
  • I didn't really mean to create controvercy. The examples I cited were just that, examples. I'm 16 with no medical background (well, my dad's a nurse, but that doesn't count), nevermind knowledge of the nervous system. All I'm saying is that there are possibly positive ways that this technology could be used.
  • Easy way to deal with the problem. Give him a spinal block anesthetic so signals can't get from his brain to his limbs. Then if it moves, it's because of signals sent from the computer.

    -Jeff

  • ..I don't see why they couldn't just supply needed chemicals for us.

    That would lengthen the 'high', but would also lengthen the crash. One balancing mechanism in the brain is that over-stimulated receptors are reduced in number making the brain less sensitive to the transmitter. Eventually, they will be reduced to the point that the megadoses of neurotransmitters leave the person more or less normal. When the doses are removed (chip/cells/ infusion pump turned off), there will be a corresponding crash until the receptors re-populate.

    Since there are multiple elements involved (production side as well as receptor), it could take quite a long time to return to equillibrium.

  • The first step to long term conditioning would be to create a secondary reward based on the highs created by the chip. Repeatedly expose the subject to muzak with the chip turned on, and then turn off the chip and the muzak. After a while, workers will find muzak to be it's own reward, and will perform better to get you to turn it up. Occasionally, the chips are turned on as well to reinforce the muzak as a reward. (NOTE: the above is EVIL to be sure!).

  • Why on earth would you want to control emotions w/ a chip? There is no practical reason that I can see. The argument that it might help manic depressives or other people with emotional unbalances is pure BS. Anyone w/ such unbalances that really wants to change can change. It may be slow but it can be done through nothing but will power. This is even more stupid than using drugs to acheive emotional balance. If someone hasn't the will power or desire to change then how is it my right to give them drugs or chips to force it upon them? Shortcut cures may work quick but the results just aren't the same as toughing it out and forcing yourself to adjust and cope.
  • Having skimmed this comments, I just want to say - a car can be used to run people down, a microphone can be used to spy on people, a hammer can be used to cave in the skull, and did you all know a computer can be used to tabulate and cross reference personal information?

    When I read the article, I thought - if it can relay signals, it can control artificial as well as real limbs, bridge gaps in the nervous system when reattaching severed limbs, and thinking about, you could 'filter out' palsies and ticks, cut off signals to motor nerves with the onset of a grand mal epileptic seizure - essentially downgrading it to petit mal...

    Emotional control? Reduce anxiety (and presumably cutting off pain can be done too) for people undergoing surgery while conscious, not to mention treatment for depression, bipolar disorders, paranoid schizophrenia... any other emotion-related mental illness.

    If you're worried about the big-brother possibilities, stay or become involved in politics and make sure there are laws protecting people. Personally, I think this kind of technology is a good thing.
    --Parity
  • yeah talk about a denial of service! I would touch penetration testing with a ten foot pole, not even robs pole!
  • Solving these problems is the natural consequence of this man's research. These are still baby-steps we're taking. After he does a proof-of-concept, we'll try it with a larger group, to study how variable the signals are among different people.

    I'm sure that if there is any similarity at all (and I'm sure there is, since we all use the same muscles) then a normalization can be performed on the signal. Hypothetically, we could sample signals from a large number of people, and use a consistent composite signal. Speculating further, over time, the person using the composite signal to move, could tweak it to account for height, weight and posture differences, agressiveness of their movements, precision vs speed... It's a wide open field.

    I doubt that the strength of an impulse increases with proportion to physical strength. It's much like IP multicasting, I suspect. Stronger muscles means more muscle fibers, more fibers means more pathways onto which the packet | impulse is transmitted.

    What would need to be done of course, is a mapping of junctions between the transmission nerves and the local nerve 'subnets' and injecting the signal there rather than to the muscle itself...

    The first step is decoding the neural signal, and we're seeing that start now. Next is sensory stimuli. That should make things like Brainstorm and Wm. Gibsons sensorium concept possible.

    Every time I hear news of this sort (or nontech or you name it) I'm reminded of the old Chinese blessing: "May you live in interesting times". We certainly do.
  • Unless they modify the technology considerably our unfortunate ex-superman will have to remain in his wheelchair.

    The reason that (most) quadraplegics and other "movement-challenged" [sarcasm]people are denied the use of their body is that their brain can'tget the signals to the limb in question. This usually means that their spinal column--or the area of their brain that sends the signals directly (very rarely)--is damaged irreparably.

    Sending the copied brain signals to the body would not help--they would also be unable to get to the muscles and the receptors found therein, since the spinal column relay system would still be absent.

    A scaled-down version of the chip could be placed directly within the muscle tissue in question, however, stimulating it quite effectively. It would need to include only the voltage and rate (pulsed) of the final signal sent by the brain to properly stimulate the motoneuron controlling the muscle.

    However, it occurs to me that in the future we could either regrow such neurons or replace them with electrically conductive (insulated) material. The signal could then be artificially applied (though I dont klnwo why you'd want to...), or applied the goshdarn way that nature intended...by the brain. Maybe next we'll be reading about stuff like this...And I know that research is being done concerning the induced growth of neurons.

  • Treatment for clinical depression? making someone emotionally controlled to be happy isn't really a solution.. but I guess I can see your point.

    Training aid? ... god, I hope not! Imagine if you were having trouble with a concept... you'd feel terrible... so much for motivation... I'd start not wanting to train at all!

    ---

  • If I was a carpenter, I'd hammer on my piglet

    I'd collect the seven dollars and I'd buy a big prosthetic forehead and wear it on my real head.

    Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads.

    They might be giants. Then again, they might not.

  • This reminds me of the movie "Strange Days", which involves full sensory recordings that could be played back (experienced) by anyone.

    One thing that really stuck with me from that movie was peripheral to the plot.

    The main character gave a birthday gift to a disabled, wheel-chair bound, hacker-type friend. It was a recording from the point of view of a man running along a beach with a beautiful girl, with the wind blowing and the waves rolling in, splashing over their feet...

    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

  • It seems that despite being written up in the very educated annals of the British Broadcasting Corporation, that Professor Warwick has not been paying attention to enough of their programming. Were he to do so, he may have been forwarned as much as 30 or more years ago by Doctor Kit Pedler about the dangers of what he plans. Next thing you know, he will be discovering a new planet called Mondas and moving his experiments there...


    EXCELLENT.


    Be Seeing You,


    Jeffrey.



  • Re:Don't worry (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > Similarly, you could not feel happy all of the
    > time, regardless of the signals sent to yoru
    > brain, without an increase in seratonin
    > production levels among other things. If you or
    > someone you know has tried the street drug
    > Xtacy, you will be familiar with the post-high
    > depression that follows. The brain exhausts its
    > resevoir of "happy painless" chemicals and
    > consequently throws you into the opposite
    > imbalance.

    Um, that's not really true. The reason some people may feel "depressed" after taking E is just because they're not as ridiculously joyful as they were three hours ago. My...friends...have found that their good moods last quite a while after the supposed 6 hour duration of the drug. There is an emotionally fuzzy period that lasts for 24 hours or so, but again, it's more the product of coming off a peak experience than anything else.

    Certainly not promoting illegal drugs, just accurate information. :)

  • and that gives the script kiddies a WHOLE NEW way to screw over users with "BackOrifice"...

    -----------------------------------
  • Every time I hear news of this sort (or nontech or you name it) I'm reminded of the old Chinese blessing: "May you live in interesting times".


    I thought that was an old Chinese curse.

  • There are many uses for emotion control. Emotion control can be used as a substitute for drugs. Hallucinate on electricity!

    Or, we can have a world full of infinitely happy people who don't feel like questioning authority, or we can implement the society in Brave New World without using time consuming subliminal programming!!
  • The problem with your "If you can replicate you can create" theory in this situation is this: he is replicating the signal the brain sends; by your theory he should be able to create that signal. This is only limited help to building an android. He can create the signal and send the signal but he needs a device to know the "when" to send it and the "why" send it without any human interaction. Basically, things the human brain does.

    What is cool that could come from this is a robot could be created to take complicated commands. Example "Robot, get me a beer." If he can figure out the signal to move body parts then he should be able to figure out how to control eyes so that the robot could recognize things nearly as well as a human. It would be able to open the fridge and be able to tell which object inside is a beer. Very cool.

    Still one problem, where do you get the arms and eyes and such to create it?

    -Al-
  • What if I get cracked? I don't need some cracker controlling my body parts.
    *slap* sorry I ...*slap*...I can't control my...*punch*...errghh!

    -Al-
  • Well, people do emotion control already, through drugs...
    One of the main problems with drugs is the fact that they have side-effects, including dependence on them due to the depression that sets in when the drugs wear off.

    I see a similar problem with computer-induced artificial happiness.

    Though, yeah, I see the clincal use of getting people off of extreme emotions.

  • Don't be too hasty. I can barely achieve 16/7 uptime with the original wetware. Let's not talk about reliability, either.

    insert smiley here

    --
    QDMerge [rmci.net] 0.4!

  • You all remember the article a while back, about Palm Pilot IR ports being used to intercept and play back car-lock codes, right?

    Well actually, this isn't really true. IIRC, the car door locks work on what is basically a one-time pad system, with the next sequence determined by an algorithm that was not cracked. Meaning, sure, if you grab your buddy's keys, have it send the signal to your PalmPilot, and then use that signal on the car, it will unlock the car. But the next time you try to use that same recorded sequence, it won't work.
    What's the point if you have to steal the guy's keys first? :)


  • "May you live in interesting times" is a Chinese _curse_. :)

    This leads me to my next question (not the quote), do you think that this technology (as an AC pointed out farther down, this article was posted in Januray) could be used as a pain reliever by sending false signals over the sensory nerve cells?
  • Two words... electromagnetic pulse. Hee hee.

    "Duh, why are you wrapped in aluminum foil?"
    "Oh, no reason."
  • In the near future: Some karate sensei has you go through the motions, slowly and deliberately. It all gets recorded by the chips all over your body. Later, you can play back the motions, speeded up by the computer. Hii-ya! "I know Kung-fu"
  • Byfromus Corp., PRESS RELEASE - April 1, 2005.

    Byfromus Corporation today announced their latest breakthrough in physical fitness technology: Exercise-For-U(TM). Based upon startling research by Prof. Kevin Warwick, Exercise-For-U(USDA) allows even the most slothful geeks to become fit and trim. Using their proprietary Neuro-Stim(TM,Pat.Pend,WeOwnItSoThere) bio-implant technology, Byfromus can guarantee even the most slothful slackers will look and feel like they actually care about their bodies.

    The Exercise-For-U(Int[10]) system utilizes an array of implanted Neuro-Stim(TM,Copyright,WeToldYouWeOwnIt) chips which interface directly with the nervous system of the user. When the user goes to sleep, Exercise-For-U(Bat. Not Incl.) runs their body through a series of customized multi-hour exercises. A special Consciousness-Supressor(TM Pend.) circuit keeps the user in a state of blissful coma while the Exercise-For-U(COD) chips work their body into a frenzied sweat. When finished, the system then gently lowers the users body back into bed.

    Order yours today for only $40,000 + tax (Monthly service fees apply). No refunds. Use at your own risk. No warranty is expressed or implied by this offer. Your mileage may vary. Some surgery required.

    Byfromus Corp. is a subsidiary of EvilGenius Intl.
  • Who can see this coming? "Emory University Hospital Tech Support, this is Bob, how can I help you?" "My husband is lying on the floor, and totally unresponsive!" "Ok Ma'am, tell me what happened." "Well, we were having a nice dinner when all of a sudden, his eyes turned bright blue and this message showed up on his pupils." "Did you write the message down Ma'am?" "Yes sir. It said: NTBrain.dll has caused a general protection fault in module Heart32.exe. System Halted." "Hrm... Have you tried rebooting...?"

  • Aww mom, the Warwick chip made me do it! (Score:3)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Thursday November 04, 1999 @12:35PM (#1562312)
    Warwick's last experiment is largely a joke. All it did was make him traceable throughout a building. The only difference between this and house arrest technology is that Warwick is wacky enough to put the transmitter under a flap of skin instead of tied around his leg. Big Brother? He's already here, at least for criminals.

    This new experiment is a lot riskier and a lot more fascinating. Maybe I'll be able to get a 'type 100wpm' chip eventually, except of course it'll be a nerve recording of Warwick typing his out new book...

    "Damn they sent the wrong chip, I wanted 'Ninjitsu' not '101 ways to please your man in bed.'" "Pop it in, a new skill never hurt anyone."


  • There is a little oversight on the technology by this professor.

    There are already recent high profile experiments by John Chapin's group in Philadelphia in which rats are trained to control lever arms by activating parts of their brains in which electrodes have been placed.

    Other cortical implants in primary motor cortex of humans show a lot of promise for quadrapelegics to be able to control robotics around them. The last I saw humans were quite able to make LED displays light up in certain patterns, and it is a small step from there to controlling robotics. In both cases a small number of bits of information is measured from the CNS and converted to simple movements.

    But the converse, computer control of humans, is in a much much more primitive state. Likening the ability of implanted chips to enable the lights to be turned on, to giving the computer control of your limbs is at this point a crack pipe dream, and there is far more advanced work going on than this press release. For example, advanced bionics makes cochlear implants that allow high fidelity sound reception. There is comparable work on retinal implants at a much less advanced state.
    But the problem is much more advanced, since the human arm has more than a few bits worth of degrees of freedom, and its natural control from motor cortex to movement is not even close to fully understood.

    As for controlling emotion, that would be a far simpler problem, since there are a few well localized centers of neuromodulators, and implanted stimulating electrodes already exist. It will be fairly easy to make someone hostile and aggressive, or sleepy, or passive, or edgy. Making
    someone alert and intelligent would be much harder. There would be a lot of unreversible psychosis caused in the pilot experiments, so don't expect them anytime soon.

  • Emotion control is scary (Score:3)

    by nano-second ( 54714 ) on Thursday November 04, 1999 @10:51AM (#1562328)
    I think the earlier experiment where the computer followed him around campus and could turn lights on for him sounded cool. (although as mentioned, the big brother aspect is scary). But what really scares me is the emotion control.

    I so wouldn't want a computer to control my emotions... how could I really feel that I was being "myself". And although it's not really related, it starts making me worry about a future where our thoughts are controlled by more than just propaganda. I think it's interesting research, but what the heck would you _really_ want to do with an emotion controlling computer??

    The idea of it making me happy all the time is just as strange as the idea of it making me upset or sad... the natural range and flow of emotions is part of what makes us who we are and part of what makes us human. What would be the application of this? If any one has any ideas about a positive application, I'm interested. My paranoid mind can't think of anything that's not sinister, right now.
    ---

  • How useful is this really? Now, having an artificial limb that could be controlled by your computer (i.e. your brain) would really be something. However, all this involves is sending electrical signals into your limbs. A computer is controlling you. Is there really any purpose to this? None that I can see. I suppose that there might be some people with neurological problems that might benefit, but there are already similar (although less full-featured) systems in existance for exactly that purpose. This experiment is cool, but I don't see much scientific merit to it. It doesn't demonstrate anything we don't already know, it just does so in a very flashy and unnecessarily involved way. Is this guy more interested in real cybernetics research or becoming a media sensation.
  • Alright, so if I understand correctly, he'll move his arm as the computer monitors the signals, and then he'll play the signal back to see if the arm moves without him willing it to...

    Interesting. Certainly mobility facilitation for the disabled is a great idea. Christopher Reeves could walk again. Proper form instruction and monitoring in a variety of sports would probably be another interesting application. Then there's ergonomic studies.

    Of course, being the technophile that I am, I'd wire up another species to see what it feels like to move like a cat or shark.
  • I don't think so. As I understand it, the users need to be able to record the signal and then play it back. If they can't do a particular motion, they won't be able to do it again, as they couldn't record it.

    So this will only help if you keep a storage bank of all your different possible motions so that if you are disabled later you can be...err..reloaded.
  • How about having the brain in one place, and the body in the other? and be able to switch bodies. Of course, you'd need either FTL comms, or lag correction (pushlatency!)

    As for the media sensation, I'm not sure. I've not actually seen any hard science published by him, and I do get the feeling he's only one of the leaders in the field, but he's famous because he takes risks.
  • First of, even if you have the tech you'll never be able to feel as high as you want to. If the tech becomes that potent it'll be treated just like a narcotic and made illegal. "It's making our kids crazy," screams an angry mother.

    This sounds like it'll have potential as a treatment for chronic anxiety or depression.

    You can't get goofy off prozac you know.

  • Great. This is cool research, but what are the implications here?

    "Well hello. My name is John Smith. I have computer controlled limbs. Let me just walk through this Airline Metal detector." Poor guy would look like he's having a seizure. Plus, what happens when someone finds out how to broadcast signals to interfere (and possibly take over) the computer controlled nerve impulses? Gee, let me immobilize you and take your wallet.

    When we can live in a harmonious society, this would be perfected technology. Until then (i.e.: Not damn likely), there's gonna be problems. Hey, don't get me wrong. This is damn cool stuff, but look at what could go wrong.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • I always wondered what the hell Bill was talking about when he said Digital Nervous System.
  • I thought the curse was: "May you get all that you deserve".

    Now THAT is a creepy proposition. ;)

  • Curse. (Score:2)

    by cdlu ( 65838 )
    Yeah. Sheesh, I can think of a few governments and corporations (which have more power anyway) that would be scared silly confronted with that proposition :)

  • Admirable courage... (Score:3)

    by TheDullBlade ( 28998 ) on Thursday November 04, 1999 @02:47PM (#1562351)
    I love to hear about researchers willing to be their own subjects. I think nothing does more to speed the pace of technological development.
  • Alright, who here DIDN'T think about Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" when you read that??

    Just set your mood for the day, and 'have a nice day' will become a thing of the past. Creepy.
  • You all remember the article a while back, about Palm Pilot IR ports being used to intercept and play back car-lock codes, right?

    The prospect of some phreak making me walk into traffic with his PDA is sure to give me nightmares tonight. That, coupled with having him make me HAPPY while I get personal with a speeding bus...

    But that's ok, at the rate we're going, I'll just be cloned up from the molecules by nanites in time for lunch.
  • On the contrary, I think it could be quite useful to a large number of disabled people. There are so many things that we don't understand about the nervous system (including the brain). Who's to say that, for instance, that this couldn't prevent people with MS? Or possibly prevent at least the physical and damaging side of seizures for people with Epilepsy (anyone read the Terminal Man by Michael Crichton?). Or act as a "circuit breaker" of sorts to, for example, domestic abusers. Whenever they became enraged, the chip could immobilize their limbs, preventing them from harming another human. Not to mention my aforementioned Viagra alternative. If this technology was harnessed for the use of good, I see it as having great potential. --------
  • How about having me do the recording, and having someone's disabled legs doing the playback?

    I know that there's a whole new pinoccio nightmare in there, with people becoming (potentially) one another's marionnettes (sp?), but...

    With small enough samples of motion impulses recorded by 'surrogates' like pro-athletes, actors and dancers, the disabled could choose sample sequences that suit their mobility needs.

    And the overly-rich could buy mobility-upgrades, to move like Baryshnikov or Tyson whenever they want to. Check out Jon Williams (?) Hardwired.
  • Do you not see the difference between loading the gun on the BBC and loading the gun in a compound surrounded by 2 feet of concrete?

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