Oh my! You go on vacation for a few days and the craziest things start happening. This is no joke it seems.
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Strange Days
28 May 2008 08:46 pm
Comments (33)
Did you see the account that a robot conducted the Detroit Symphony.
You know what this means? By controlling the robots, monkeys will soon be conducting our symphonies.
I saw that headline and I thought "what does it matter that it was a monkey? A human controlling a robot arm with his thoughts would be pretty amazing too."
Though maybe that's what you're getting at.
Big deal. Dick Cheney has had a monkey unerringly perform his every command for nearly eight years.
I saw that headline and I thought "what does it matter that it was a monkey? A human controlling a robot arm with his thoughts would be pretty amazing too."
Additionally, the headline seems to imply that it takes more than one monkey to control a single robot arm. Multiple monkeys are apparently capable of thinking in concert.
Joel Garreau had the scoop on this two years ago in his book titled Radical Evolution. I don't understand why the Times is so slow on the uptake.
First monkeys controlling robots, then bears! Where's Colbert when you need him?
This is not hugely new. There were articles on this a couple of years ago. There's been technology using electrodes on the surface of the skull (EEG) that's been used for decades to make simple arm movements. The technology is always getting better and using electrodes in the brain allows for more precise and natural adaptation over time. Of course, there are also studies showing some neurodegeneration from the chips used in these brain machine interfaces, but the concept of a direct brain machine interface is definitely real.
(Read up on cochlear implants for some real and widely used neuroprothetics)
I believe this was in a BBC documentary that aired last year, a horizon documentary called "human 2.0".
A youtube video of the event itself (the monkey using the machine), which is part of the documentary itself, can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-cpcoIJbOU
Cheers!
This does offer new possibilities for our dystopian future.
First, the uprising takes out the monkeys, making clear the hubris of these monkeys in thinking that they will always remain in control of the robots.
It's not just monkeys. Coming soon - computer games without a handset. Prepare for pudgy thumbs!
I had a piece on wired.com about the physics of Ironman when the film opened:
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2008/04/ironman_physics
If, back in the 1960's when I read Tales of Suspense, if you had asked me which feature of Ironman would be closest to reality in 2008, the last thing I would have picked - the cybernetic helmet!
But my colleague Bin He at Minnesota, and many others, are developing just that.
And those fools call us Mad! MAAAAADDDDD!!!!
Coming Real Soon Now to a video game near you, minus the gel or holes in skull:
The Singularity is near.
Maybe I'll finally get some funding for my efforts to put buzz-saw hands on monkeys.
i for one welcome our new monkey overlords.
It's all so clear now.
The robot rebellion won't be against *humans*, it'll be against their monkey slavemasters and their poo-flinging ways.
I, for one, welcome our new robot monkey overlords!
i for one welcome our new monkey overlords.
Ummm...you may not have been paying attention, but the fundamentals look very bad for the republicans this year, so don't jump the gun on this one.
What the article forgot to mention is that the robotic arms that they control type on the keyboards at The Atlantic.
P.S. PerezHilton does the paint.exe thing much better.
Hopefully this technology will advance fast enough so the world can see Stephen Hawking as Ironman, delivering vicious beat downs in the name of justice.
Jim Kakalios-- I read your article, in which you pooh-poohed jet boots and repulsor rays. Of course the one thing you didn't take into account-- chest-mounted arc reactors. put that in your cybernetic helmet and smoke it!
My article was written before the movie opened - so I was going off of the trailer as to what features the suit would have. Having seen the film, let me just say: I have got to get me one of those arc reactors! At 3 GigaWatts for 15 minutes - that's roughly 2.7 trillion Joules of energy!
Of course, this pales compared to Pepper Potts' superpower. I refer, of course, to walking in 7 inch high stiletto high heels! Not just walking - running over broken glass and metal grates! As soon as the movie ended (and we had watched the Nick Fury scene at the end) my teenage daughter and I had a debate as to whether those were real shoes or CGI.
As a wise man once said: Face Front, True Believers!
Matt, are you becoming John Madden?
Well, you seen one chimp controlling a robot, you've seen them all.
I don't see any difference between Matt moving his mouse and a chimp controlling a robot arm.
Mouse monkeys, both of them.
It does give me a bit of a chill to think of a monkey controlling THIS robot:
http://www.summer-glau.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/new01.jpg
Where's Eddie Izzard when you need him?
What does robotic poo look like? Does it fling well?
Who knew that the Terminator movies were set in the same universe as the Planet of the Apes movies?
Holy crap! Rival to Ahmadinijad elected speaker of Iran's parliament! How could that happen to the all-powerful, authoritarian, totalitarian, lord-tyrant-for-life of Iran?
Joel Garreau had the scoop on this two years ago in his book titled Radical Evolution.
Heck, I blogged it four and a half years ago.
Matt, maybe you were right:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080529/ap_on_sc/tec_ice_robots
The robots or the pirates? I don't know which is worse.
Luke wins the thread ... hands down.
I, for one, welcome our new monkey-cyborg overlords
"Get your robot hands off me, you damn dirty ape!"
Oh there will be a cybernetic helmet, but it will run Windows Vista.
Comments closed June 11, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
And yet we can't control what a monkey thinks, which gets us back to square one.
Posted by tomj | May 28, 2008 8:55 PM