New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | July 29, 2005

Jesse Walker, for one, welcomes our new cyborg overlords.

Comments

Britton|7.29.05 @ 4:12PM|#

The William Gibson fan-geek in me says "sign me up!"

|7.29.05 @ 4:31PM|#

Me too; I'll take a pair of surgically-embedded (prescription) mirror shades, please.

Warren|7.29.05 @ 4:48PM|#

Wake me when they start beta testing 'the jack' for production.

|7.29.05 @ 4:51PM|#

It's funny. I really do consider Google an extension of my own brain. And I no longer remember what it was like to decide to go somewhere without Mapquest (or, these days, Google Maps).

I'll throw random thoughts I have online somewhere, where I know I can find it later. When I come across interesting information, I just assume I can find it again somewhere.

I get really frustrated when the internet fails to provide me with information I want. And I feel like half a person when our internet connection goes down at home.

|7.29.05 @ 4:52PM|#

Heck, just give me two extra retractable arms with fully articulated hands and fingers. That, and the extra brain power to control them correctly.

|7.29.05 @ 4:58PM|#

I remember something like this on the drudge. It was being used by healthy people to carry loads way heavier than a human normally could. Ironic, I think, that we're becoming the very ants we step on.

CodeMonkeySteve|7.29.05 @ 5:00PM|#

Obviously, the best solution would just be to shrink a PDA down to a few microns and stick it directly on your grey matter.

Short of that, I'd at least like a pair of Bluetooth sunglasses with full-motion video, stereo audio, and web-cam.

|7.29.05 @ 5:25PM|#

Personally, I'm looking forward to the contact lens which can project TV so that I can watch something interesting while appearing to be paying attention in business meetings.

Does anyone remember how, when Star Wars first came out, we were all thinking how "futuristic" it looked? I watched it again a couple months ago and, except for the whole faster-than-light travel thing, all I could think was how "primitive" and "quaint" it looked.

|7.29.05 @ 5:32PM|#

JMoore,

To see someone else's disappointment when watching Star Wars 28 years later, go here, with the links that follow.

Jack William Bell|7.29.05 @ 5:38PM|#

Wake me when they start beta testing 'the jack' for production.

While I really would like to have a direct neural connection to a computer there are three points I'd like to make:

• Personally, I have no intention of beta testing the damn thing. I might even hold off installing until at least version 2.5.
• 
  
• It had better damn well be running open source software. I want to be able to validate, and tweak, any software directly connected to my brain.
• 
  
• It had better be damn secure. Can we say "Personal Spyware?"
• 
  
• I want the failure modes to consist entirely of performance degradation. And I definitely want to avoid getting a BFOD. (Blue Face of Death.)

Jack William Bell|7.29.05 @ 5:39PM|#

OK, that was four points... Doh!

|7.29.05 @ 5:50PM|#

Shawn Smith

Thanks for the link. It really is amazing how our perceptions of technology can change in less than 3 decades.

When I hear people complaining about how technology is dehumanizing us or fragmenting our society or whatever other Luddite complaint they can muster, I just tell them to wait 10 years.

To think, I used to be one of them--a rare book collecting, Chaucer-reading, anti-tech curmudgeon. Now I have my entire library on a 2GB flash key.

|7.29.05 @ 6:29PM|#

JMoore,

Yeah, and here I am going the other way--I will only pay my bills by paper check, my CD, DVD and LaserDisc collection is less than two feet long, and I still use my Apple IIe, Amiga 3000, and Atari 2600 for entertainment. Heck, if my wife wouldn't be so pissed off if I tried it, I would sell my truck and get back on the bicycle as my primary means of transport (sans helmet, of course.)

|7.29.05 @ 7:43PM|#

Jesse Walker, for one, welcomes our new cyborg overlords.

And would he like to remind them, that as a trusted media personality, he could be useful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves?

I dare you to sneak a Simpsons reference by me. It can't be done.

|7.29.05 @ 7:50PM|#

Anon,

A riff on that line gets used in a comment on each and every post on Slashdot. Not exactly a stealthy reference. :)

|7.30.05 @ 3:56AM|#

Jacking into the matrix...

Recall:

The computer generated info-domains are the new frontiers. Though there is better living through science and chemistry, we are all becoming cyborgs.

They say all information should be free - it is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit. So mistrust authority.

Cyberpunks are the true rebels, cyberculture is coming in under the radar of ordinary society.


Mistrust authority

Mistrust authority

Mistrust authority

Mistrust authority

|7.30.05 @ 6:42AM|#

Shawn Smith,
Interesting Star Wars link that you have there. I recently watched the original Star Wars (episode 4) after watching episode 3 for the first time. I found a bunch of the stuff to be silly. The main problem I had with the old episode 4 was how regular useless humans were fighting the genetically desined clones, and how bad the clones looked.

Anyhow, the guy in the link talks about how robots are going to take all jobs, which seems like a reasonable prediction, though I don't know if it is going to happen as soon as he thinks.

I wonder what the libertarian take is on that? How will humans earn money in a world where every job can be done better by a robot?

|7.30.05 @ 8:34AM|#

kwais

I don't know what the libertarian take on this is (I'm more of a "fellow traveller" than a hard-core believer), but fears of machines taking all the jobs are IMHO both entirely justified and a bit silly.

Fear is justified because machines destroy need for human workers. Assembly lines, e.g., are already almost totally automated. Even maintenance on machines is often carried out by other machines. Humans are becoming less and less needed to make the things we want. Jobs will be, and are being, destroyed.

Yet fear is silly because of creative destruction. As we all know, for every job destroyed by mechanization, more are created. Now, thanks to technology, human civilization employs more people than could have been imagined just a century ago--most of them doing things which were equally unimaginable in past times.

The only problem is that, while it is easy to see what jobs new machines will destroy, it is seldom as clear what new jobs will be created. So, while fear is justified to the extent that you may not know what you'll be doing next year, you still know you'll be doing something. You just have to use your imagination.

A prediction:
I am now 35 and I have smoked heavily for 15 years. But, barring any accidents, I will live to be at least 120 years old. Furthermore, by the time I die, almost every human being will be doing jobs which I would now consider "creative" or "artistic." In 200 years, our cyborg overlords will pay us to play games and dream.

Unless they figure out how to dream, too; then they will keep us as pets.

(After reading that SW article, it suddenly occurred to me that, not only is the technology in the series surprisingly quaint, but Vader's injuries do not justify encasing his head and chest in a helmet/iron lung. They can make fully realistic artificial limbs, but they can't come up with a better solution for a severe burn? Pathetic.)

|7.30.05 @ 8:36AM|#

Don't bother reading my last post...read jadagul's instead...much better response :)

|7.30.05 @ 8:50AM|#

The distinction between human and robot may be somewhat artificial. I'd be very surprised if humans do not end up mixing with their technology, Brain-computer interface research funded by DARPA is just the beginning.

I doubt robots will replace humans. Humans may integrate with machines as machines become more capable of taking on human tasks.

|7.30.05 @ 9:35AM|#

Not one,
I wonder if there comes a point where a sexual partnership with a person of the opposite sex is obsolete.

It has been said that technology has made marriage obsolete. The woman doesn't need the man for protection, hunting/gathering, or whatever, and the man doesn't need the woman for cooking, raising the kids, or making clothes or whatever. Neither needs to be married for sex.

Soon neither will need the other for sex. When touch, smell, sounds, actions, and appearance can be exactly duplicated, how can a real person ever match your fantasy?