in the shell

Not shure where to post this , but anyway.

"The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together."
Cyberbrains anyone

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology ... chips.html

So if possible would you get a cyberbrain or/and external memory?

if i had the chance i just might, if everyone else was willing to grasp one, no sense in having a cyber brain if you can't use all of the options. Then again, any technology that isn't taken by people in a whole just falls off the way side, beta tapes for example.

I possibly would get, but I would like to see a lot of research done to see if it will cause any problems after the procedure.

I would love to do that, because then I could hoard even more useless facts into my brain... but I would have to wait and see like M 2030. I wont even get Lasik because they dont know the later effects of it on the aging eye.

Im looking forward to cyborg bodies, or even suits that can assist weekened (sp) muscles, as my best friend has MD and I would love for her to be able to dance like in her lucid dreams.

(I realize there would be more too it than a suit, like lots of therepy, and probably body straightening which is unpleasent, but I think she would be up for it, if she could walk.)

A little browsing through that site also shows this:
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology ... rface.html

The relevant section is the Monkey See, Monkey Do section.

Wow! I wonder if they could then make something soon to help her.

*dances around in glee, and forwards site*

Thanks!

Well, it's only a matter of time - sooner the better, ofcourse. Hopefully "decades" means something like two or three - if Kurzweil is to believe, that is the case.

I, ofcourse will take the chance as soon as it emerges to the commercial market, presuming a price that I can afford, ofcourse. Still, I would be perfectly willing to pay for a good brain-implant as much as I would for a car, if it had all the options seen in GitS.

i don't think i would....
i'm not sure if I'd want
to put some corporate-made
device in my head.
once I'd turn on my microwave,
I'd probably start hearing commercials.

the whole brain-hacking thing is a bit scary.

That site makes it sound so easy

I'd definitly get one... as soon as they got a way to implant it without killing me... or extreem possibility of injuring me.

Figure the early one's with just extra memory will be less networked (might be safer from kackers!! Ha ha). Also does it require external power? If it does, then I'd think twice. Recharging my brain wouldn't be that nice... I've had problems with regargable batteries before..


#EDIT#
I just thought of a question. It seems from those pages that you can't remove parts from your brain. What you actually do is add accessories to it and use your brain to control them. Any of you who know biology better than me may be able to confirm or reject that removing part of your brain would be seriously detrimental to your health, but going on labotomys I'd say it is.

So here's my question. Cyberbrains and headspace. How small can we make them, and could you ever really replace part of the brain with cybernetics? It appears on the face of it that the process may kill the person. And failing that, it may remove too much function. You need the brain to adapt to the use of the new parts [as per report in the above link].

From what I can tell, in GITS, a cyberbrain is created when micromachines bind to the grey matter of the brain that is open to the venricles and the sub-arachnoid space. These micromachines pick up on the electrical impulses associated with neural function, allowing an individual with a cyberbrain to control electronic devices (prosthetic limbs, external memory, etc.), and allow digital information to directly enter the brain in order to simulate sensory experience (and also allowing for brain hacking).

I assume that external memory is the cyberbrain equivalent of a flash drive. It would be a cybernetic device that one could activate in order to store thoughts and sensory information of particular events and then activate again to retrieve that information. We would of course still have our internal memories (normal, biologically recorded memories) of these thoughts and events, but the human mind is falible and an external memory device would allow us to back up important menories without fear of forgetting or memory distortion (ie. false memories). I wouldn't think that the external memory device would even have to be located in ones head, there could be an internal USB type cable conneting the device and the brain.

As long as the procedure described above was considered to be safe (in other words there is a high rate of success and a low rate of complications), I would not be opposed receiving a cyber brain. I would be much more reluctant to adopt the usage of any device that replaced brain matter. I already explained why in one of the discussions in the philosophy section so I won't bother explaining again.

I just read that Mereck has invented a new super thin plastic called Liguid crystaline polymer that conducts electricity as "speeds never before seen".

Tonks_kittygoth wrote:I just read that Mereck has invented a new super thin plastic called Liguid crystaline polymer that conducts electricity as "speeds never before seen".

Hmm...Conductive plastics have been around for some time now, but so far they haven't been very fast...Perhaps this stuff will extend the life of the electrical computing, until the optical systems finally catch on. Depends ofcourse on the relative speeds and prices.

They did mention that this could make flat screen tech much less expensive.

Merck is a medical company so I wonder too what the implicatoins for medical use are.

This subjstance is probably some kind of superconductor. There are several kinds of ceramic superconductors already in existance. Some of them maintain a charge's strength over a theoretically infinate distance, but require super cool conditions.

New Prostetic leg, with computer functions.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/health ... bionic_leg