As mentioned in the a previous post, prosthetic hands and other body parts are a pretty common theme. One of the things people seem to have had trouble getting their heads around is how we could possibly marry the synthetic construct with the flesh and nervous system.

Well, in yet another case of “Holy shit, it’s not actually science fiction if that crap is actually real and on the consumer market, so stop thinking people talking about that technology are Star Trek nerds or some other moronic nerdom, because that stuff is real!” some Israeli scientists have actually managed to make a synthetic hand that actually gives haptic and tactile feedback back to the person it’s been fused to.

Of course, this now brings up a few questions of what else can be done with this technology. We also saw the hot chick in another previous post with her sexy Half Life 2 Combine arm. So what other parts could be made sensitive to touch and provide feedback? Will we be able to actually have robots that do feel pain? And if we do, will you be able to hire them as subs in a BDSM dungeon?

And if you can hire them for those services, what kind of new merged viruses will we be exposed to? I hear electro-gonorrhea is a noisy killer.

You know Vampires really are becoming far too much of an “in thing” when even Microsoft have gotten on to them for the purposes of advertising.

No, I’m being serious.

By now, if you don’t live under a rock or own an iPhone, you will have heard of MS’ latest search engine called Bing. They’ve been going on an insane spending spree advertising it, spending about six times as much as the actual development costs so far, according to some rumours. If they have to pay a licensing fee for this atrociously b-grade knock off of True Blood, I think I’d believe that.

On the bright side, they get some points back for this hilarious knock off of The Shining.

With all that said, having used it a bit, it’s actually a pretty decent search engine if you’re looking for something to purchase or pay for, specifically. It definitely seems geared towards commercial transaction over “imparting knowledge” or “the end user experience”.

Oh, and happy halloween folks…

Today, let’s get right to the heart of the matter. The Brain.

I think at one time or another, everyone has wanted some form of psychic power, be it telepathy and the ability to read/see/hear other people’s thoughts, to some form of -kinesis: movement via the power of the mind, at varying levels.

As we’re not X-men like mutants, or residents in the city of Rapture, such powers  will never be ours thanks to universal laws such as the conservation of energy. You can blame James Prescott Joule for this. Also for making you fat.
(more…)

Ok, WTF are we talking about this week?

Telepresence. Telecommuting. Virtual Offices. The art of doing work from home.

… or like all those smug Intel ads would have you believe, from under a tree on a delightfully sunny day while you’re a lot more attractive for owning a Centrino based device (even though the CPU has absolutely zero impact on the mobility and wireless connectivity of a device… but y’know, whatever, most consumers are too stupid to know the difference).

So fucking what, right? Telepresence is something that’s been done for ages. Nothing new there, right? I man, I do my job by telepresence three days a week because to work online doesn’t actually require you to be in any particular office location.

But what if you could phone it all in. You’re entire life. Live virtually through some kind of artificial agent. An android, replicant, surrogate.

Which is basically the premise of the comic The Surrogates, of which the recently released film with Bruce Willis (+ Bruce Willis from Moonlighting) is based on.

The movie sort of weakens the premise of the comic because it doesn’t go into the depth, but what can you expect in 88 minutes, right? That depth, unfortunately puts a lot of holes in the premise of the film.

Obviously, there are some great uses for this tech, namely fighting wars without any real loss of life to your own site. But the civilian level seems rather implausible. What use is there for this other than being “100% physically safe” at all times, and being able to be young and pretty, and looking however you like, until you die of old age (or a malignant abscess because you never move)?

The idea of still working any real kind of job, other than ones that involve extreme hazard to one’s self (such as law enforcement) via surrogate is kind of ridiculous. Especially people that work lower tier jobs (such as Agent Greer’s wife in the film. How would a robo-beautician’s salary provide enough money for the level of quality surrogate she has?).

Some would argue you may as well go into a virtual world, like 2nd Life for this sort of activity, and with the advances espoused by the movie, surely graphics and haptic feedback issues are resolved. Technically speaking, we can do this right now if the virtual worlds are enabled. As in my previous post on this subject, we have virtual worlds, we have full immersion visual and auditory gear. We have basic haptic feedback happening. There’d be no need for this sort of tech for civilian usage.

This all begs a few questions:

• What the hell happens to the hospitality industry if everyone’s going around in a robot? No need to meet for coffee anymore, and you do all your eating at home! Billions of dollars of jobs and industry gone, just like that! Where does all the surplus labour go?
• 

  2055 AD: "Women's" soccer finally gets noticed on TV. All athletes are actually fat, mid 50s men living in their mothers basements

  For that matter, what happens to athletics if it’s just a case of what can be built?

• Would all popular spectator sport now become ultra violent because it finally can? If so, would the ratings change so that children can no longer watch or participate in sports?
• If the ratings change for sport, will they change for porn as it’s no longer degrading for “real” women?
• Will we get an R18+ rating for video games when real life becomes much worse?
• What if you’re suicidal and forget to put the gun to your actual head and blow your surrogates CPU out instead… Will your medical insurance cover the therapy for trauma over being such an amazing failure you can’t actually commit suicide properly?
• Would you use your surrogate to give yourself a Stranger treatment?
• Can Surrogates actually commit rape if the victim is also a surrogate? The victim can disconnect at any time, and the surrogate is not an actual person.
• Would it be proper for men to go around comparing the size of their ePenises?
• 

  2060 AD: Otaku the world over decide to get the Gundam surrogates

  How far would you actually go in body modification of the surrogate? The human form is actually amazingly impractical for a lot of things, so surely you’d want to have a few extras added in, such extra limbs… So why bother with a human form at all?

Personally, of all the cyberpunk ideas floating around there, I think the idea of 100% physical surrogacy via telepresence is the least likely to actually happen, even though a lot of the technology to actually make it workable is already on the markets.

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