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Category: cyborgs

Trailer for Ghost in the Shell.

Based on the internationally-acclaimed sci-fi property, Ghost in the Shell follows Major, a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, who leads the elite task force Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.

A couple other actors were first considered before they finally settled on the current cast. Margot Robbie was firstly considered for the lead role of Major (Scarlett Johansson’s role). Matthias Schoenaerts was considered for the male lead of Batou. Pilou Asbæk was cast instead. Sam Riley was in talks for the role of the Laughing Man (Michael Pitt’s role).

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In Brief:

  • Bionic eyes are already in development and could alleviate sight issues for hundreds of millions suffering from visual impairments or blindness.
  • The mechanical eyes could also provide enhanced sight so cybernetic humans could see more of the electromagnetic spectrum.

With an estimated 285 million people worldwide with visual impairment, many treatments and technological innovations have long been in development. The panacea of restoring sight to the blind is the stuff of sci-fi: the bionic eye.

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WeaRobot wants to democratize robotic exoskeletons. They want to make modular exoskeletons, so that is more affordable. The exoskeleton can boost the mobility joint by joint. Just supporting the movement of one knee or one elbow or assembling all modules for a full body exoskeleton. This is targeted at enhancing mobility and function for the growing elderly population.

WeaRobot is breaking apart robotic exoskeletons to make them more affordable and adaptable.

Robotic exoskeletons are electromechanical suits that can give paraplegic people the chance to walk again. Full body suits produce impressive results, such as teaching dormant body parts to move on their own again. But they are expensive, ranging from $40,000 to more than $100,000. Now, a Mexican robotics startup is breaking exoskeletons down into smaller pieces, with the goal of making this medical technology affordable and adaptable.

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Scientists may have made a significant breakthrough in restoring human sight, as a woman who had been blind for seven years has regained the ability to see shapes and colours with a bionic eye implant.

The 30-year-old woman had a wireless visual stimulator chip inserted into her brain by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) surgeons in the first human test of the product. As a result, she could see colored flashes, lines, and spots when signals were sent to her brain from a computer.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, suffered no significant adverse side effects in the process, according to a statement.

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In Brief:

  • A new visual implant from SecondSight may help restore useful sight in more than 6 million additional people who aren’t candidates for the company’s previous implant model.
  • Recently, there are more options being developed to restore both hearing and sight in affected patients, such technology has the potential to improve the quality of life of countless people.

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Come “ask me anything” right now!!! I’m trying to answer all questions I get asked:

Hi Reddit,

Thank you for having me here. My name is Zoltan Istvan, and I’m a futurist, journalist, and science fiction writer. I’m also the 2016 Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party.

For the last 725 days, I have been campaigning full time to spread transhumanism and life extension policies across America and the world. While I never expected to win the US Presidency, my campaign has received a lot of attention—both good and bad—for its emphasis on radical science, technology, secularism, and futurist ideas.

During my campaign, I’ve spoken on transhumanism at the World Bank, consulted with the US Navy on artificial intelligence, got a chip implanted in my hand, interviewed with underground group Anonymous, and drove a coffin-shaped bus called the Immortality Bus across America to deliver a Transhumanist Bill of Rights to the US Capitol. My 20-point political platform has many futurist policies in it, but some of the most important ones are supporting a Universal Basic Income, classifying aging as a disease, legalizing all drugs, creating a Transhumanist Olympics, and taking money from the military and giving it to science.

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The strength of spinach isn’t only in its nutrients, but also in its ability to be hacked to function as a sensor, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An MIT team used wonder-material carbon nanotubes to give the greens the ability to detect explosives and wirelessly transmit information to a mobile device.

MIT engineers applied a solution of nanoparticles to the underside of the leaves, allowing them to be taken up into the mesophyll layer where photosynthesis takes place. The embedded nanotubes then acted as sensors able to detect nitroaromatic compounds – which are often used in explosives like land mines – in the groundwater taken up by the plants’ roots.

If the chemicals are present in the water the plant is feeding from, the carbon nanotubes in the leaves emit a fluorescent signal that can be picked up with an infrared camera when a laser is shined on the leaves. The researchers hooked up such a camera to an inexpensive Raspberry Pi system and set it to email the user when the compounds were detected.

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Rattling around inside a hard drive doesn’t sound like an awful lot of fun — but then, neither does death.

Both eventualities are rather difficult to imagine, but we’ll all have to give them some thought sooner rather than later. Neuroscientist and neuroengineer Randal Koene thinks it’s only going to be another 10 years before we replace parts of the brain with prosthetics.

From there, it’s just a matter of replacing each region systematically, to end up with someone whose brain is immortal and electronic. Could the last person to die have already been born?

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There have been significant advances in developing new prostheses with a simple sense of touch, but researchers are looking to go further. Scientists and engineers are working on a way to provide prosthetic users and those suffering from spinal cord injuries with the ability to both feel and control their limbs or robotic replacements by means of directly stimulating the cortex of the brain.

For decades, a major goal of neuroscientists has been to develop new technologies to create more advanced prostheses or ways to help people who have suffered spinal cord injuries to regain the use of their limbs. Part of this has involved creating a means of sending brain signals to disconnected nerves in damaged limbs or to robotic prostheses, so they can be moved by thought, so control is simple and natural.

However, all this had only limited application because as well as being able to tell a robotic or natural limb to move, a sense of touch was also required, so the patient would know if something has been grasped properly or if the hand or arm is in the right position. Without this feedback, it’s very difficult to control an artificial limb properly even with constant concentration or computer assistance.

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Politico: Write a transhumanist in in New York! http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2016/10/new-yorkers-have-a-wide-variety-of-presidential-candidates-to-write-in-106729 #transhumanism #Election2016 #ScienceCandidate

ALBANY — While Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have debated issues such as immigration, gun control, and health care, neither of them has weighed in on the topic of a bill of rights for cyborgs.

Voters chagrined by that oversight do, however, have another option.

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Zoltan Istvan thinks that not-too-distant technology will make it possible for humans to live for up to 10,000 years, and he’s running as the Transhumanist Party’s presidential candidate in order to bring public attention to the need to speed up this process and prepare for the eventual societal impacts of immortality.

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