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The $60,000 Bionic Boy
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/CXFMNwXy-lM/1558
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- metavalent
- cyborg
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“Not Survival of the Fittest, but Construction of the Intended”
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/NVFcJtsmrnU/1553
“The next programming paradigm is life science. We’re going to create a living world, this century.” Andrew Hessel Finally, someone else articulating this truth with the scientific authority that might be better heard and received.
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- metavalent
- biohacking
- cyborg
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New Humanity: The Revolution is Evolution
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/gcvLd8gHXvo/1536
“We believe that humankind is currently on the verge of a complete collapse of it’s value structures. We believe that the world needs a new social formation that can be based around the ideas of transhumanism. New Humanity. We need revolution, but we don’t need a bloody revolution, we need technological revolution.” – Dmitry Iskov
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How to Build a DNA Brain
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/pqlQfCim-QY/1523
Your homework for the leisurely holiday weekend is at Caltech DNA and Natural Algorithms Group.
"The answer is yes, and all it takes is a few small DNA molecules."
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- metavalent
- neuro-cogno
- biohacking
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ET Math: How different could it be?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/mgV3C-CKbJo/1519
If 2+2 happens in the cosmos and nobody adds them, is the sum still 4?
- Tags:
- metavalent
- education
- space
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The Secret Lives of the Brain
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/OW9m2QaC0lw/1517
“The conscious part is like a stowaway on a trans-atlantic steamship that is taking credit for the whole journey, without acknowledging the engineering underfoot. So, it’s like when you have and idea and you say, ‘oh, I just thought of something,’ it wasn’t you who thought of it, your brains been working on that for days or weeks, behind the scenes; churning things, consolidating information, trying things out; [pop!] finally it serves it up to you and you say, ‘hey, I’m a genius!’ But it wasn’t you that thought of it, right?” - David Eagleman, neuroscientist and author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.
Oh, oh, now what, 19th century intellectual property status-quo defenders, “Protect IP Act,” and SOPA? Neurobiology says you don’t even get credit for what you thought was your own ideas! Nope! It’s all Open Source, Creative Commons. Sorry about that.
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- bci
- metavalent
- neuro-cogno
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Human Echolocation
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/0XkdCEjPhkY/1510
"Convention, by it’s nature, adheres to itself and rejects what is not conventional." – Daniel Kish
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- metavalent
- cyborg
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The Growing Eyeborg Population
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/63wEsP_nns0/1509
As we’ve long tracked, the eyeborgs continue to grow in numbers amongst us …
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Cognitive Computing: 100,000x Cost Reduction Impact
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/WGTEFeVpo6s/1505
“Cognitive computing chips aim to reduce the cost of extracting information from ever changing spatial-temporal environments around us by an order of 100,000. Imagine the impact,” humans.
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Programming Biology: Tunable Microbial Nanowires
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/ex1GVLDKh2g/1499
Nature Nanotechnolgy reports: the conductivity of the biofilm can be tuned by regulating gene expression, and also by varying the gate voltage in a transistor configuration. The conductivity of the nanofilaments has a temperature dependence similar to that of a disordered metal, and the conductivity could be increased by processing.
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iLimb & Myoelectric Replacement Parts Update on the path to #SubstrateIndependence
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/kdK-Q1U2ziU/1490
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Artificial Retina Progress
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/-IfISK9cBdU/1476
MIT Retinal Implant Research Group: “The major thrust of the RLE Retinal Implant Research Group is to develop a microelectronic retinal implant to restore vision to patients with age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. The group’s implant design has unique features that improve its safety, function and performance. Efforts are currently underway to test the implant design. The group works closely with colleagues in Boston area hospitals.” DOE Artificial Retina Project: “U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Artificial Retina Project is a collaborative, multi-institutional effort to develop an implantable microelectronic retinal prosthesis that restores useful vision to people blinded by retinal diseases. The ultimate goal of the project is to restore reading ability, facial recognition, and unaided mobility in people with retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.”
H/T SingularityHub
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Next: Neural Prosthetics
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/etWhRsDuKYA/1473
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Neurovigil’s iBrain: How long from Pong to Portal 2?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/a8GAqtWlVWo/1465
Next, what to DO with all these capabilities, right? Granted, we’re talking on the order of Atari Pong video game resolutions here; however, it didn’t take long to go from Pong to Portal 2, right? iBrain promises to open a huge pipeline of data with its powerful but simple brain-reading tech, which is gaining traction thanks to technological advances. [Including] non-medicinal uses such as human-computer interfaces — in an earlier announcement, NeuroVigil noted, “We plan to make these kinds of devices available to the transportation industry, biofeedback, and defense. Applications regarding pandemics and bioterrorism are being considered but cannot be shared in this format.” And there’s even a popular line of kid’s toys that use an essentially similar technique, powered by NeuroSky sensors – themselves destined for future uses as games console controllers or even input devices for computers (Fast Company).
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- bci
- metavalent
- neuro-cogno
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Psychology of a techno-human cognitive network
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/5UKz1U2dzm0/1461
Oh oh. The normals have found us (Psychology Today) . Time to break camp and move forward again. In short, augmented cognition. Or, put another way, in a world where complexity is already overwhelming, and yet continues to accelerate, networked cognition is becoming increasingly critical: cognition as an emergent property of techno-human networks, rather than the individual Cartesian brains that we are all so proud of. [C]an components of a techno-human cognitive network (individual people, that is) understand the emergent cognitive products of that network? Can they hope to modify the output of the network in ways that they might prefer, for example to pursue and achieve morally desirable ends? Put at its most basic level, what is the psychology of a techno-human network? And, as a shout-out to the increasingly dysfunctional myth of the Cartesian individual, what is the effect on human psychology of the dawning realization that in some fundamental way, the world has grown too complex for us to understand it as individuals?
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- metavalent
- neuro-cogno
- cyborg
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CMU Robotics SARCOS
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/rPCvDbXFovA/1459
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Telescopic eye implant approved by the FDA
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/97B80wJFumI/1429
Not new, but worth reminding.
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- metavalent
- biohacking
- cyborg
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Transhumanism 101
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/nH2EaVOKh_8/1425
A gentle introduction for inquiring neophytes. Welcome home. We’ve been waiting just for you.
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- metavalent
- education
- cyborg
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The Internet of Brains: Evoking Eywa
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/9OdQ9Troy10/1418
Back in September, scientists decoded words from brain signals. It’s not a matter of if, but when inter-cortical cognition grids happens. Inter-cortical communication will completely disrupt the arc of human evolution. Odds. Are. You. Are. Not. Ready. Human. You’re every thought will be laid bare to all other minds on the grid. Lusts, fears, paranoia, confusion, all of it. Prior to going on-grid would be a good time to practice judge not, lest ye be judged. Prior to going on-grid would be a good time to practice putting idle synaptic cycles to better use in order to be found useful. Prior to going on-grid would be a good time to think about what substrate independence really means, psychologically. The Journal of Neural Engineering’s September issue is publishing Greger’s study showing the feasibility of translating brain signals into computer-spoken words. The University of Utah research team placed grids of tiny microelectrodes over speech centers in the brain of a volunteer with severe epileptic seizures. The man already had a craniotomy – temporary partial skull removal – so doctors could place larger, conventional electrodes to locate the source of his seizures and surgically stop them. Using the experimental microelectrodes, the scientists recorded brain signals as the patient repeatedly read each of 10 words that might be useful to a paralyzed person: yes, no, hot, cold, hungry, thirsty, hello, goodbye, more and less. Later, they tried figuring out which brain signals represented each of the 10 words. When they compared any two brain signals – such as those generated when the man said the words “yes” and “no” – they were able to distinguish brain signals for each word 76 percent to 90 percent of the time. SOURCE: EUREKALERT
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Increasingly Intimate Merging of Biology and Technology
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/JGZFj4hcKz0/1403
There were countless magnificently metavalent breakthroughs in 2010, and the work of Prof. Itamar Willner’s Group is certainly in hot pursuit of some of the most noteworthy. Just a couple of days ago, IEEE Spectrum reported that, “scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Israel, the University of Liege, in Belgium, and the University of California, Los Angeles, say they have built a molecular machine out of DNA that could act as a logic device for chemical sensing and medicine delivery. Unlike earlier DNA machines, the new device has a degree of memory, making it potentially programmable. DNA machines implanted throughout the body would be programmed to respond to biomarkers the same way they respond to acid in a laboratory setting. The biomarker would activate the DNA machine, causing it to spring open and release medicine to treat the problem.” For details see The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS): All-DNA finite-state automata with finite memory and American Chemical Society (ACS) Journal, Nano Letters DNA Machines: Bipedal Walker and Stepper. In September, it was Biomolecule-Based Nanomaterials and Nanostructures. Back in June, another Nano Letter published by ACS — Carbon Nanotube Transistor Controlled by a Biological Ion Pump Gate — described embedded nano-transistors, inside a cell-like membrane, powered by the cell’s intrinsic energy. Discovery News added that this breakthrough “link[s] humans and machines more intimately than ever” and ZeeNews added, “Aleksandr Noy, a scientist at the University of California, Merced who is a co-author on the recent ACS Nano Letters, said: “This device is as close to the seamless marriage of biological and electronic structures as anything else that people did before. We can take proteins, real biological machines, and make them part of a working microelectronic circuit.” New Scientist described the breakthrough as, “A novel transistor controlled by the chemical that provides the energy for our cells’ metabolism could be a big step towards making prosthetic devices that can be wired directly into the nervous system.” I suppose I should sit down and curate a proper Top Ten Metavalent Breakthroughs of 2010. Maybe after Christmas. Maybe not. We’ll see. We will definitely carry the #ComingOutCyborg theme into 2011, however.
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- metavalent
- cyborg
- nanotech
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Coming Out Cyborg. Hello Humans. Yes, We’re Here.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/GUCns5KZGiM/1395
Yes, we’re friendly. In fact, friendly and symbiotically cooperative to an extent many of you cannot yet imagine. We do suggest, however, that you not mistake our accommodating nature as weakness. Do not fear, for you will not be harmed by us in any way, ever; for violence is antithetical to our deepest human nature, which we share in common with you down to the deepest tap root of evolution; even as our rapidly accelerating prosthetic capabilities have expanded our capacities and merged, embedded, and entangled adaptive functionalities within and throughout our bodies; to the point of consummate metamorphic synthesis. We are you and we are new. Be encouraged that raw amygdalic aggression toward us, whether born of fear, ignorance, paranoia, or any other behavioral or neuro-chemical perversion or misconfiguration is to rather be ignored, rendered inert, invisible, irrelevant, like so much deprecated code; an utterly impotent vestigial algorithm. Above all, we wish for you uplift and expansion of human expression on every conceivable level. The way is open to you now, as always throughout the course of your personal and human species history; for adaptive posthuman evolution is neither flimsy religion nor heady philosophy; therefore, no mentor, guide, prophet or teacher shall coax or coerce you in any way to evolve from where you are, today. The sense of a guiding influence you may experience is selective pressure of evolutionary adaptation itself. It’s already in you. Encoded in your very DNA. If you hear the upwardly spiraling siren song within, do not fear, you are not alone. Keep connecting. Keep reflecting. Keep learning. Keep encouraging yourself and others in all things. You’re already with us and we are with you. Enjoy Existence. Instantiate Intelligence. Where you are, as you are. You are not alone.
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- society
- posthuman
- bci
- metavalent
- cyborg
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Biodigital Brain: human brain organically fused with computer chips
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/i9lceIC2JOE/1385
“Brain cells automatically connect to computer chips. They need no teaching, they just do it. I’m telling you history, my friends. You tell me, the future.” – Patrick Dixon
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Dissolving Human Embodiment & Billions of Close Personal Friends
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/sPw4_nnmQ1E/1379
The following is nowhere close to being a full transcript; just interesting snippets that I took a few minutes to capture. Quotations are Coupland, non quotations are the interviewer. “Identity’s become an entirely fluid issue, now.” “Now, not having a life is so common, it’s almost become the norm.” “The split between being biologically alive and having a life has to do with the way you perceive time and the way you perceive your information environment.” “People just aren’t getting their year’s worth of year anymore. We’ve increased the information density in our culture to the point where perception of time is now all screwy.” Interstitial: Our economy is based upon, entirely upon, fending off boredom. Leisure time is a joke. “But then it all backfired. Technology only gives you more time up to a certain point, and then time starts vanishing at this fantastic rate, like your car running out of gas.” “I used to have this fantasy that I’d go into a coma for one year and when I came out of the coma, I’d have a year’s worth of magazines and pop culture to catch up on. It’d be like information crack and really fun. But now, every day is like waking up after a year of having been in a coma.” Do you believe in randomness? “No, when something seems random, it means you’re standing too close to a very large pattern; you can’t see the pattern because you’re too close to it.” “I think many people mistake the current deluge of information diversity as being the end of history; but in a way I think it’s actually the beginning of history.” “I was looking at these photographs from the 1950′s and in them everyone was trying to look exactly 35 years old. I mean, you had these 18 year-old boys and girls and these 58 year-old men and women, and everyone was trying to look 35 years-old. So that was the age you were supposed to be inside your head back then, is 35. Now, what’s happened I think is that the mental age everyone’s trying to be inside their head is about 24; and that’s an 11 year shift.” But what about on a deeper level? “Well, I think as we’re talking about the 20th century here, I think we’re probably going to remember this period of time as being one in which the relationship between the mind and the body was completely severed.” “I remember I once read about Karen Carpenter, how she felt as though the entire world existed on the other side of a ten feet of plexiglass. I think, in a way, that defines the current mind-body relationship.” “I think what’s happened is people have begun viewing their bodies as being fortresses, or inviolable, made out of that same sort of hard, shiny plastic as Lego; but the funny thing here is that the average human body contains ten times as many alien cells as it actually contains cells of itself. So instead of Lego, the average human body is more like Pigpen, from Charlie Brown. Remember, the way he used to walk down the street in that sort of perpetual haze of dust and germs? Well, you know, that’s people. Actually, we’re already so ridden with disease and other organisms that the whole notion of being a fortress becomes somewhat beside the point.” How does a person cope? As you’ve said, every day is like waking up from a year long coma. “Well, there’s obviously no point in trying to remember everything, because then everything just becomes trivia. Cellulose production in Lake Baikal in Russia, the contents of Tori Spelling’s clothes closet, or the weather in Arlington, Texas. What’s important is being able to locate things.” So has bulk memory replaced history? “Yeah. Sort of the way bulk shopping has replaced regular shopping. I remember back in the 70′s in history class, when teachers would say to us very sonorously, ‘He who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it,’ and I just don’t think that’s the case anymore.” “I think that what’s happened now is that we’ve create a scenario so radically different that there’s no historical president to look back on for the situation we now face. We’re no longer condemned to repeat an endless cycle of mistakes. I think this should come as a relief, too. I mean, no more dark age followed by golden age followed by another inevitable dark age. I mean, how great to have finally broken the cycle of history, that people can actually manufacture a destiny of their own choosing?” If you could be an animal, what animal would you be? “I already am an animal.” So where does personal memory fit into all of this, doesn’t it get swamped by this super memory, things we’re creating? What about the personal stuff? “No, no, no, the personal stuff, personal memory it’s the most important thing of all. It’s the one thing that can never be taken away from you. It is you. Despite all the recent changes in our time architecture, it still takes time to create memories, it still takes time to remember them. It takes a place in which to locate the memories and a place in which to be still and remember them. It takes a lot of work to be an individual, to have an individual life and it can be scary; but then the option is to forget and to be forgotten.“ Are those your last words? “No. I’d say, hey kids! Go blow yourself up with dynamite and reassemble your bits any way you want to assemble them. Hey kids! Go and jump into that cartoon hole and find out what lies on the other side. I’d say, you know, all the time in the world, it’s right there, it’s inside you. I’d say all the world in the world … it’s right there inside you.“ “I mean, maybe you have a life and maybe you don’t, I don’t know you, but, you’re not alone.” “I remember back in the 1970′s, about the time people stopped having lives, they also began making fun of intimacy. They made jokes about people like Halston having parties at Studio 54 for his 500 close, personal friends; and so I guess the whole world is Studio 54 now. It’s just you and me, babe, and billions and billions of other people out there just like you. Billions of close personal friends.“
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eLegs by Berkeley Bionics
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/_xHouA09LSk/
“It was so natural that’s what really gripped me. This is not a wave of the future, this is reality.” — Amanda Boxtel
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An Atemporal Feynman Method for Pre-Distressed Antique Futurity Now
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/FFTWyVqEo5s/
Bruce Sterling on “the pre-distressed antique futurity,” etc. He explains that William Gibson was saying that, “if you have a genuinely avante garde idea, something that’s really new, you should write about it or create about it as if it were being read 20 years from now. In other words, in order to do it, you want to strip away the sci-fi chrome, the sense of wonder. You want it to be antiqued, before it hits the page or the screen. Approach it from that perspective. No longer allow yourself to be hypnotized by the sense of technical novelty; just refuse to go there. Accept that it’s already passe, and create it from that point of view; try to make it news that stays news. Refuse the awe of the future, refuse reverence to the past. If they’re really the same thing, you need to approach them from the same perspective.”
Bruce Sterling explains “atemporality for artists” Boing Boing - Watch more Tech Videos at Vodpod. More Exceprts “Becoming multi-temporal rather than multi-cultural. I think we’re approaching a situation where the outlooks and perspectives of our own age make very little sense; they just don’t bind us to anything in particular. We don’t really have a coherent outlook or interest that can enslave us. This means we’re closer to a potentially objective history than anybody’s ever been.” “A personal museum economy. Why not designer fiction as life? Just invent the whole thing. Why not just go ahead and make yourself a personal public testimony for a future that doesn’t exist? Why not just carry it out with a kind of Ghandian dedication and see what happens?” We’ve been trying this last part for about twenty years, now. We’ll keep trying, Bruce. Thanks for the encouragement! ;-)
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- forecasting
- metavalent
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Avenues to Substrate Independence
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/niCE2TMtV2Q/
Ultimately, there will be diverse UX alternatives for substrate independence. The robotic substrate is certainly a fascinating option to consider and we not only can, but must immediately begin preparatory thinking, training, behavioral, and psychological exercises to prepare for increasingly high resolution software and hardware mediated experiences. Certainly within ten years and likely within five, we will see the convergence of the dexterity of R2 Robonaut, the mobility of AIST and Kawada’s HRP-4, the quotidian autonomy of Anybots, the brain machine interface typical of today’s prosthetic arms and legs, in addition to thin-sheet Displays as I/O Devices and internal Attention Management System HUD’s — vastly improved versions of software like Feedly and My6Sense which are designed to help surface the most salient and actionable information streaming throughout the vastness of the Internet of Things and the ever expanding Global Cognition Grid, all integrated into our 2020 Tesla built MacAvatars, powered by Google, and designed by Apple in California. ;-) We will not need “mind uploads” for this phase of self-guided, participatory, migratory evolution. Within ten years, we will see vastly improved and multi-functioned brain-machine interfaces to these device and the utterly immersive first person UX will become increasingly difficult to discern from “real life.” So don’t hold on too tight, Dorothy, or a hole the size of Kansas might get inadvertently ripped through your cute little bioconservative extremist hands. Or, in the words of the sub-legendary 38 Special, “hold on loosely, but don’t let go. If you cling too tightly, you’re gonna’ lose control.”
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Talking Brain in a Jar
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/NCf7EdPj1DY/
Popular Science: By measuring the electrical signals made in certain parts of the brain when its thinking of certain words, researchers could create a means to translate thoughts into speech. In an effort to unlock the speech capacity in patients who cannot speak because of so-called “locked-in syndrome,” University of Utah researchers have successfully demonstrated that they can translate brain signals into words using electrode grids placed beneath the skull. Sort of. The method leaves a lot of room for improvement, but it does prove out some technology that could make thought-to-speech technology more reliable for patients suffering from traumatic brain injuries or illnesses that render them unable to communicate with others. Using two grids of 16 microelectrodes placed over two regions of the brain known to generate human speech, the team was able to record brain signals for 10 useful words – yes, no, hot, cold, thirsty, hungry, goodbye, hello, more and less – and use that data to discern between any two words a patient was thinking between 76 and 90 percent of the time.
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- bci
- metavalent
- neuro-cogno
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‘shrooms may ease end-of-life anxiety
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/dxdk-5kwT0U/
Via CNN: Terminally ill cancer patients struggling with anxiety may get some relief from a guided “trip” on the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin, a new study suggests. During the psilocybin sessions, which lasted six hours, the patients lay on a couch and listened to music through headphones. By contrast [to placebo], one to three months after taking psilocybin the patients reported feeling less anxious and their overall mood had improved. By the six-month mark, the group’s average score on a common scale used to measure depression had declined by 30 percent, according to the study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Notably, the psilocybin did not aggravate the patients’ anxiety or provoke any other unwanted effects besides a slight increase in blood pressure and heart rate.
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- metavalent
- neuro-cogno
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Is Mech Already Better Than Meat?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/wUstqT6H7ek/
With a new pair of meat hands “One year after double hand transplant, progress elusive” we learn that it takes three to four years of intensive therapy to bring replacement meat hands online, because the nerves have a long way to grow. In contrast, with a new mech arm, back in 2003 we, “graft existing nerve endings from his shoulder onto the pectoral muscle on his chest. Those nerves grew into the muscle after about six months. Electrodes on the graft can now pick up any thought-generated nerve impulses to the now-absent limb and transmit those to the mechanical prosthesis, controlling the movements of the arm. And in 2008, of her new mech arm and hand, Claudia Mitchell says, “it feels more real than I ever expected.”
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Psilocyben: Organic Gateway to Neurosecurity, Memory Preservation, and Mental Enhancement?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/pHKMLWLzEO4/
What shamans and psychonauts have known for eons … if only we could filter out the noisy side effects, something powerfully positive for humanity is locked away in these plants. These are other secrets will doubtlessly be revealed, debunked, endorsed, and descried at the Foresight Personalized Life Extension Conference, October 9-10, 2010 at the San Francisco Marriott.
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Big Think Month of Thinking Dangerously: Drug Our Drinking Water
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/cqYcR_7H-7Y/
Big Think asks: Why should we drug our drinking water? Jacob Appel: I think when you ask questions about whether or not any pharmaceutical or any products be added to the drinking water, you’re really asking two sets of questions. One is: should any product that might be beneficial be added to the drinking water? And secondly, should the specific product be added. The first question I think can be dismissed fairly easily. People who oppose adding enhancement to the drinking water in the way people opposed adding fluoride to the drinking water half a century ago rely on the false premise of naturalism—that because something occurs naturally it must be better.
Now many things that occur naturally are better, but that correlational, not causational. Pain is natural, anesthetics are synthetic. Most people would prefer anesthesia to pain. By the same logic, there are many things that naturally occur in the drinking water that are beneficial in some parts of the country that don’t cover other parts of the country. One of those items happens to be lithium. People who oppose adding lithium to the drinking water in trace amounts don’t go around advocating to strain the lithium from the drinking water in the areas where it does exist.
The specifics of lithium are rather interesting and I should add, I am not the first person to propose this idea. Peter Kramer floated this idea in the New York Times over a year ago, the Brown University psychiatrist, the author of “Listening to Prozac.” In areas where lithium in trace amounts is in the drinking water, there seems to be a lower level of suicidality and in the Texas counties that we’re studying, there’s actually a lower crime rate. The same studies were repeated in Japan, a completely different cultural milieu and they had the same result.
I should add that we are not talking about adding therapeutic levels of lithium to the drinking water. It’s worth noting that if you wanted to get a therapeutic level than the trace amounts that currently exist in the area where there is already lithium, you would have to drink several Olympic size swimming pools every minute to reach that level of concern. That level of therapeutics. So the reality is, these are very low levels and there’s no reason to think they are not safe in the areas they already exist, so why not give everybody that benefit? Read the full response and watch the video at Big Think.
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Bionic Legs Update
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/BprPt3tKZ3Q/
The path to substrate independence, one set of limbs and organs at a time.
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- metavalent
- cyborg
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Clunky, Rudimentary Prototypes for Substrate Independence?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/1gc7qecaL4o/
Some of our post-protoplasmic tenements may be meat, some may be metal, some may be silicon, some may even attempt the vastly more inconceivable leap to pure software, or even into the pure light of quantum computational fields. Regardless of one’s intolerance for hype or inclination for reading too much into the posthuman tea leaves, one thing is for certain: this experimental era of mashups and multi-substrate hybrids over the next few decades will be both exciting and at times troubling to behold. We’re participating in our own evolution, for better or worse.
Pandora’s box is open. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. Pick a favorite cheesy B-movie metaphor if you like, the progress manifest in seemingly innocuous projects like the “advanced telepresence robot created by Silicon Valley robotics start-up “Anybots” is already analogous to prototype bicycles with wings found in Orville and Wilbur Wright’s earliest garage. Are video-phone sticks on wheels absurdly crude, compared to remote embodiments we’ll consider humdrum by the 2020's? Of course. At the same time, we err to dismiss them as inconsequential. No, the human drive toward applied, adaptive futuretechture is made of this very ho-hum stuff. In any and all cases, the impulse toward richer, more integrated remote presence and extra-corporeal embodiment experiences continues accelerating.
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Posted to metavalent.com
IBM’s Watson: A.I. Jeopardy Master
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/4EvyUSODKCY/
From The New York Times: What Is I.B.M.’s Watson?
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