Robotic Monkey Arms
Man I love the title of this post. A couple days ago, the journal Nature published a report about monkeys that have learned to control a robotic arm with their thoughts, via a sensor implanted in their brains. Let me write that again. The monkeys can control robots with their brains. This is seriously cool stuff.
This is not entirely groundbreaking. Scientists have been working with this stuff for a while, and have been able to use brain waves to control simple things, like a cursor on a screen. I could be mistaken, but I think some of the technology started with the Air Force, which was researching thought-controlled computers for aircraft.
It sounds like this experiment was a serious step forward, however. You can read the NY Times article here, but I’ll summarize things quickly. The monkeys first learned to control the mechanical arm with a joystick, to get a feel for its movements. Then a chip was implanted on their their motor cortices , a portion of the brain that controls hand and arm movements. At first, the scientists used the computer to help the monkeys move the arm, but after a couple days, the animals could do it themselves.
Here’s a mental image: The monkey sits with its arms restrained. Using its thoughts, it causes the mechanical arm to reach out and grab food, which it moves to its mouth and eats. The researchers said that the animals even learned to adjust movements to compensate for sticky food.
This has obvious implications for prosthetics, but the long-term implications are so much bigger. Nearly everything humans do depends on our body’s ability to manipulate the world around us. Brain-technology interfaces could change the way we use computers, the way we drive, the way we work. More abstractly, they will change what it means to be human.
My friends will tell you that this is one of my favorite topics of discussion. After a few beers, I just won’t shut up about this stuff. The story of humanity is really the story of technology. From the club to the iPhone, we better ourselves by bettering our technology. A kid with a computer has access to information that people would have killed for only decades earlier.
Things are changing, however. Faster computers, nano- and bio-technology, brain-computer interfaces, better understanding of our our own biology…These things make new technology fundamentally different, in my opinion. We’re approaching a time when our technological potential outweighs our biological potential. When technology really makes us superhuman. Maybe this is the so-called Singularity…I don’t know. What I do know is that the future will bring closer integration between technology and our bodies and minds.
Sign me up for robotic monkey arms of my very own.
Harry Potter leaks, and I’m super-pissed.
Well, that didn’t take long. The hot story yesterday was the possible leak of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. See this Time Magazine story about the leak. Photos of each page were leaked online in the typical places (torrent tracking sites, usenet, and the like).
This photo was included in the Time article.
Shortly after this leak, some jackass on digg submitted a comment in the form of “character x dies. character y dies. character z lives happily ever after.” Such comments are generally buried/deleted in seconds, but I happened to see it.
I suppose it might be false, and since I don’t know any details, it isn’t really ruined. But I’m still mad.
After this occured, I grabbed a torrent of the leaked images and downloaded a few, just to see how they looked. I was careful not to read anything, but I have to say that they look legit.
I suppose that with all of the thousands of people involved in the production and distribution of these books, it’s damn near impossible to keep things off the internet. I’m not one of those crazy people who avoid the internet for 2 weeks before a book comes out, so I should have expected this. Still, I’ve gotta say: what pricks.
A glimpse into the excitement, and the simplicity, of war
This is an article that I stumbled upon (quite literally — see stumbleupon.com) today. It’s a piece written about by an Iraq war veteran about missing the intensity and clarity of combat.
I don’t really feel qualified to comment on it too much. It was powerful, and gave a lot of insight into a situation that few of us will ever see, but most have imagined. Like most kids these days, I have friends in the military who have seen, or will see combat.
Read it, if you’ve got the time. It’s worth it.
[edit — I neglected to include the author’s name, Brian Mockenhaupt. The article is on msn.com, but it looks like it was written for Esquire]
Hometown Baghdad
This is a site that I’ve seen a few places, including digg. For me, this really represents the power that computers and the internet bring to communication. Hometown Baghdad is a film project started by a New York-based company (Chat The Planet), following the lives of young, 20-something Iraqis. When the city became too dangerous for the Americans, the Iraqis began filming themselves.
If you haven’t seen it, please check it out. The result is often very compelling. In an instant, with the click of a mouse, I can have a glimpse into another person’s life — across thousands of miles and inside of a combat zone. Not only that, but the technology required to do so becomes cheaper and easier to use every day. The result is the rise of user-created content, which may not adhere to the same journalistic standards as the New York Times, but can provide a truly unique perspective. The stories on this site are intensely personal, which might be their real strength. Technology gives individuals, kids even, the opportunity to help create the discourse surrounding current events, as the news is breaking. Today, Ann Frank would have kept a blog.
Every now and then, something on the internet really fills me with hope. It is so easy to look at computers as gadgets, but they have augmented our communication abilities like nothing else. In less time than it takes to walk to the fridge I can experience life thousands of miles away. It’s an amazing time to be alive.
I’ll end my optimistic rant, but I’ll re-post a couple videos from Hometown Baghdad.
