News: 1600417808

I'm having a hard time parsing this article, since there's no link to the Kaspersky report. As Yes Minister demonstrated, the wording of preceding questions can affect how respondents perceive subsequent questions. That said, if we assume the survey was conducted in the manner, then the cultural differences between France and Italy are interesting.

Upvote for Yes Minister reference alone ! A true masterpiece of British humor, and a testament to skeptics everywhere.

I found the extract, relish it [1]here .

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSKwf4AIlI

A break down of the age of respondents would also be interesting.

It might be, for example, that if you're older and some of your mates have had operations to correct cataracts then the idea replacing body parts with synthetic parts might not that strange a concept.

Synthetic parts are commonplace already.

Cataracts

Heart valves

Pacemakers

Teeth (fillings and false)

Hip replacements

Just a few, but none of those improve on the original design they just replace the bits that have failed.

Now actual improvements are harder to quantify do you look at the blades amputee runners use and say are they better than the original limbs. What about if someone comes up with a Star Wars type artificial hand should it perform as the original or should it be stronger?

That is the sort of thing when the technology is working that people will have to decide for themselves.

I am very colour blind do I want the ability to see a normal colour range - well having lived in the world I perceive for 47 years I don’t honestly know, unless I was going blind then probably not, but different people will have their own views.

I used to wear glasses. Then I paid a bunch of money for a doctor to shine lasers into my eyes, and now I have 20/20 vision. Is that augmentation?

Interestingly with the blades that paralympic sprinters use - there's already controversy about augmentation. The longer your blades, the bouncier they are, the longer the stride-length, the faster you're likely to be able to go.

So say I lose my legs in a car accident. I've got a known height, strap on appropriate sized blades, Bob's your uncle, go off and sprint. What if I lie about my pre-injury height? Is there reliable data to check?

What if I was born without legs - so an original height can't be known?

Hence there are all sorts of rules comparing to arm span, which is usually similar to height - and trying to come up with reasonable compromises and approximations.

I just had cataract surgery a couple of days ago and my vision feels great (still got to finish up all the procedures and get new glasses but the focus is highly improved making my old glasses bad.) So I think this is definitely augmenting my vision but not a sifi cybrog.

You didn't augment your vision, you just corrected it.

> You didn't augment your vision, you just corrected it.

For sure. The reason I choose cataracts as my example is that these days artificial corneas are available which are tuned to the patient to correct not just cataracts, but the myopia and astigmatism.

The definition of augmentation is why I was curious as to how the respondents were questioned.

Although I greatly admire your remarkably efficient portmanteau of "cyber", "bro", and "balrog", I very much hope I never get to meet one.

Out from under this bridge! Or I shall plunge you into the abyss of moderation. Then fall! Spawn of 4Chan! Fall!

...Fly you foools...

[Mine's the anorak with the certain book in the pocket]

I've had a spinal fusion and it certainly didn't turn me in to Wolverine.

Right pain in the Arse to be honest. At least I can say it's behind me. :)

Imagine, like, if you DID have a smartphone in your HEAD, like, but it was stuck on, like, Android 4.4 Kitkat, and like, COULDN'T be updated with all the new emojis and stuff without major brain surgery, yeah? Bummer...

The smartphone in your head that got an "upgrade to ensure free service" by continually beaming adverts into your mind ... :-(

Or the "Angry Bird"! app gets stuck in an infinite loop at the loading screen and you are stuck with the theme tune in your head for the next 40 years....

I'm sorry, but I don't see that there is all that much that is possible for the general public right now. Apart from laser eye surgery, there is nothing high-tech that anyone can have implemented which will improve their eyesight or hearing (there are no hearing aids implanted in the ear), much less their strength.

And as for improving one's strength, how could that possibly work via implant ? What would you implant ? I know of nothing that could even begin to do that. Improving strength is via exoskeletons at this point in time and that's all we've got (and we don't have too much of it either).

There are lab experiments trying to allow control of a mouse via thought, but I haven't heard that they're ready for market yet.

Anyone know of some implantable thingy that actually enhances a human being ? Beyond an RFID chip that allows you to open a door, I mean.

Pascal Monett,

There are hearing aids implanted in the ear. They're called cochlear implants, and have been around for a couple of decades now.

There have been several experimental eye implants as well, I remember reading about one guy who went from total blindness to monochrom vision at a resolution of something quite a lot less than VGA. But I've not seen much about it since. Maybe they're still trying to find enough Matrox Millenium cards on eBay?

In principal I could imagine an implant that would pump glycogen directly into your muscles - which wouldn't give you more strength - but would give you more endurance - so you could say sprint over longer distances.

But the standard medical implants are things like insulin pumps, pacemakers and the like.

Though in the more science fiction realms - some artificial limbs are now radio operated. Because the nerves in the amputation site tend to be damaged as well - it's much harder to make a standard operation that utilises them. So instead you chop some nerves that don't do much around the side of the ribs and implant a radio transmitter that they can control. Then do excercises to retrain the brain to use those to control arm muscles instaead, then have a radio controlled robot arm.

Or there's a Parkinson's Disease thing where you have electrodes into the relevant bits of the brain. Feed current in from an external battery pack and hey presto! Full muscle control. Watching a guy on telly switch that box on and off again 15 years ago totally blew my mind.

Not a single word (so far) on Kevin Warwick? What is wrong with you people?

Nothing. Though we suspect there's something wrong with him.

Actually, in recent years quite a few people (dozens, maybe) have had little RFID chips implanted in their hands for using public transport. It's no bigger than the contraceptive implant that many women have in their arms these days.

> What would you implant ? I know of nothing that could even begin to do that.

Read more. It's still cutting edge, but DARPA as well as the fringes of sports training are using electrical current to reduce inflammation and train harder.

There are lab experiments trying to allow control of a mouse via thought, but I haven't heard that they're ready for market yet

I wondered why you would want to control a mouse by thought. It's not like it's a big enough animal to do anything useful for you. In my house they're mostly controlled by mousetraps.

Then I realised that you might mean a computer mouse. I still can't see any advantage. It would be far more useful to cut out the intermediary and control the screen cursor by thought.

While the concept is not new in the realm of science fiction, has many possible benefits and is probably inevitable, I foresee a huge problem in a real world implementation.

With embedded augmented reality, this will just mean <$enter ad-flinger of choice> will be able to deliver advertisements directly to your retina.

Or is this a sales pitch by Kaspersky for a new opportunity for an ad-blocker?

If it can be done, it probably will be done.

The idea of not just repairing but improving/augmenting our bodies is being research in way too many places for it now not to happen. Whether we ever get as far as some of the SF scenarios of the far distant future is debatable. But there will be folk walking this earth with improved bits and pieces in the fairly close future. Not radical upgrades at first, but that is only a matter of R&D once the problems of integration with the Mark 1 human body have been solved.

As an amusing bit of pedantry, one might claim the the Mk1 human body originated with genus homo about 2 million years ago, and that each subsequent generation produced new versions. Assuming a 25 year generation (well, I have to assume something), that would suggest we're on about Mark 80k :-)

Improving my eyesight would only give me a better view of the misery squalor and degradation that is modern britain, as we plunge headlong into the bleak winter with our international trade ruined, national health service stretched to breaking, food shortages likely, on a train driven blind by the least capable political leadership in living memory. Improved eyesight? All I can see is death. Death death death.

Have a super day.

I had to give you an upvote: (a) because you sound in need of cheering up and (b) because you're probably right...

Upvoted, but... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmc819RMVUE

Go for a walk in the countryside and try to forget about things for a while. Before it pisses down next week.

Heck, even a walk in a downpour can be a lovely sensual experience if your boots and jacket are up to the task. You can perhaps feel even more insulated from the horrible wider world than you would on a sunny day. (Waterproof and breathable jacket. Not a cheap one from Mountain Warehouse. Clothing, our species original augmented skin.)

"Well, uh, when I was a mechanoid, the right nipple-nut was used to, uh, regulate body temperature, while the left nipple-nut was used mainly to, uh, pick up shortwave radio transmissions. Now, what I'm saying is, no matter how hard I twiddle it, I can't seem to pick up Jazz FM."

I'll agree to getting "enhanced" when they can guarantee, on penalty of THEIR death in case of failure, that what is implanted cannot be hacked, pwned, or otherwise interfered with without my permission. What's that you say? Not a fat chance in hell of that ever happening! Guess I'm going to the grave un- enhanced then. I'll leave the enhancing to those who have a fervent desire to become part of the Borg.

Classic.

"How do I zoom in?"

"Well, you move your head closer to the object"

"Ah yes, that seems to work"

Nobody so far has mentioned the work towards creating an artificial pancreas.

So far, insulin pumps linked to blood glucose monitors with some open source software to do the clever bits.

Each generation should be smaller, cheaper, smarter.

Permanent implant to cure T1 diabetes would be a major step forward.

I'm still waiting for my bionic eye with zoom capability, being to lift up a car with one hand, and to run in slow motion at 60mph.

Knowing my luck I'd only be able to afford the upgrade for one leg & be able to walk normally or run really fast in tight circles!

The article states the humans have the most powerful computers on the planet in their heads.

However, the average volume of an adult human brain is about 1260 cc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size

The average volume of an adult sperm whale brain is 8000 cc.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/are-whales-smarter-than-we-are/

There are of course considerations of brain size to body size ratios and folding of the neocortex etc. to be considered, but the Scientific American article shows it is quite a complicated issue, and we simply do not yet know who is the smartest species of them all.

All I know is that it is Friday, I'm TIRED of Brexit and Covid-19 and my personal brain hurts, and is not feeling very clever at the moment.

Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.

But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

The article finishes with "Anyway, when and if we get there, I'll have the one with the extendable [that's quite enough of that – ed]. How about you? "

Now if we could fit each politician on standing for office with a nose that extends when they lie, that would be a great boon to democracy.

For Health read ‘the ability to lie around filling your face with junkfood and guzzling alcohol and why not smoking stuff as well and not suffer any side effects such as obesity, a bad back, bad skin, heartburn, body odour and lung cancer’.

No mention of the EyePhone from Futurama?

I despair of you lot sometimes! :)

I have had epilepsy since the mid 1970's. As I explain to people, if I don't take my medicine, I can do a BSOD without a computer.

I like the idea of peripherals that can improve things but I don't anyone tinkering with my, already faulty, Personal Operating System (POS).

No mention of Deus Ex?

Currently replaying the series. Seems more relevant than ever these days. Even forces you to consider the moral and ethical problems related to augmentations.. and other things.

You played the first two, you get the icon :)

I'd also be worried about strong magnetic fields. It'd be somewhat irritating having an MRI scan without your eyes, and down right dangerous if stray EM fields could cause interference whilst say driving or operating heavy machinery.

It would be interesting to see what sort of japes you could get upto shining various light sources, frequencies, colours and patterns to cause issues for the poor optically enhanced recipient.