Common Paradox Tech Blog

A spillover from last week’s Cyborg-a-thon, Wired has put together a list of the top ten cyborg videos. But not everything is about fusing man with machine.

As you can see in the sample videos above, sometimes we choose to make bionic monkeys and insects. Truly, it’s the weirdest of the weird sciences. Check out Wired for the complete list. [Wired]

With Monday here, it’s time to wrap up last week’s theme This Cyborg Life, a look into the future of the machine called Man.

Yes, that means saying goodbye to Aimee Mullins. She was with us for three essays, all of which dealt with issues of prostheses from unexpected perspectives, that few of us will soon forget. In case you missed any, have a look:

• Is Choosing a Prosthesis So Different than Picking a Pair of Glasses?
• Racing on Carbon Fiber Legs: How Abled Should We Be?
• Normal Was Never Cool: Inception of Perception

Of course, what we really tried to explore is the notion that “prosthetics” aren’t just carbon fiber limbs. Is a smartphone with a Bluetooth headset anything but? Using technology to augment ourselves physically and mentally is now a regular part of our agenda, and will be more and more integral to our selves in the coming decades, from implantable computers to programming our body’s biological robots to do our bidding.

A big thanks to Aimee Mullins, Marc Hodosh at TEDMED and all of the other contributors and experts who joined us this week:

• Robot expert and author Daniel H. Wilson – Me and My Exoskeleton: The Trick to Super Strength
• Michael Specter, author and science writer at The New Yorker – Synthetic Biology: Why Not Pursuing Crazy Biotech Is Dangerous
• Author Anna Jane Grossman – Psychic Powers, Cochlear Implants, and My Bionic Ex-Boyfriend
• Dr. Debby Herbenick, author and sexologist at The Kinsey Institute and Indiana University – Becoming a Sexual Cyborg (NSFW)

And in case all of that wasn’t enough, to read all of the stories from This Cyborg Life, use this link.

What better way to, um, end the This Cyborg Life theme week than a post about a British guy with a bionic ass?

Meet Ged Galvin, a 55-year-old chap from Barnsley, south Yorkshire, who is currently in possession of a very special remote control. A remote control that, when engaged, controls Galvin’s bowels and allows him to go to the bathroom with dignity. Dignity that was, sadly, robbed from him in the wake of a horrific motorcycle accident that nearly killed him.

At first, the operation that saved his life left him unable to control his bowels. That meant a colostomy bag and all the inconvenience and potential embarrassment that comes with such an arrangement. But then in stepped more doctors. They had a plan. They could rebuild him, make his sphincter stronger. And that’s exactly what they did.

Using muscle from Galvin’s knee, the doctors wrapped his sphincter muscle and attached a number of electrodes to the muscle nerves. Enter the remote control, which Galvin compares to a chubby cellphone, and bowel function was restored. It’s as easy as an on/off switch, he said in an interview with the Telegraph, “just like switching on the TV.”

Britain is calling him the man with the bionic bottom, and he’s just fine with that. After all, he could be dead. This is better, and while he’s not as beautiful as guest editor Aimee Mullins, he’s a great fit for This Cyborg Life, and I wish him well. [Telegraph via Geekologie]

How might one repair a cyborg’s eye in the future? Why, with this handy eyeball removing tool. How does one forget what’s seen in this image? Macallan 12 years, neat, that’s how. [Bloomers and Bows via Boing Boing Gadgets]

One idea behind a “cyborg life” is that we look to machines to take on critical, physical roles. These 10 machines illustrate how we have already begun passing the torch on tasks we are getting to lazy to do ourselves.

Remember handwriting? We have all but abandoned it, but the torch is being taken up by robots like Kuka, who has been put to work writing out copies of the Martin Luther bible. [BotJunkie]
Developed by Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge, Adam the robot was the first machine to independently discover new knowledge.

Using artificial intelligence, Adam hypothesized that certain genes in baker’s yeast code for specific enzymes which catalyse biochemical reactions in yeast. The robot then devised experiments to test these predictions, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results and repeated the cycle.

The results of the experiment were later replicated and confirmed by a team of human scientists. So, it appears that computers are not only doing our calculations, but they have begun thinking for us as well. [Scientific Blogging and Link]
Are you lactose intolerant? Do you have frequent heartburn or constipation? Perhaps one day your defective digestion system could be replaced with a more advanced version of the Cloaca machine. This thing simulates actual human digestion and, in the end, produces a turd you would be proud of. [Cloaca via Link]
Dishwashers have been around for decades, but we still have to physically put the dishes into the machine. This is completely unacceptable. Panasonic’s robot takes care of the entire cleaning process from start to finish. [Link]
Seriously, what don’t smartphones do for us these days? At the most basic level, these phones are how we communicate, how we entertain ourselves and how we gather information. Thanks to apps, smartphones are taking on even greater roles—like helping us keep our girlfriends happy without actually having to do any work. Girlfriend Keeper sends automatic texts and emails to your significant other depending on the intensity of your relationship. [Girlfriend Keeper]
If you are tired of your co-workers being promoted over you, just wait until a robot becomes your new boss. JAST or the “Teamworkbot” has the ability to observe and mimic human behavior. As you will see in this video, JAST already knows how to complete the task, so it observes the human’s actions, anticipates his next move and dresses him down when he gets it wrong. [Link]
I’m pretty sure that allowing robots to take a critical role in surgery qualifies as crossing a Rubicon with respect to our level of trust in machines. The Da VInci robot enables a surgeon sitting at a console to control movements and equiptment with greater precision—resulting in a procedure that is minimally invasive. [Wikipedia]
It’s only a matter of time before technology becomes advanced enough to allow lazy parents to turn over the duties of child-rearing to robots. In fact, it’s already happening in Japan where robots like Tmsuk babysit kids in shopping malls thanks to RFID badges. They even have robot teachers like Saya that terrify elementary schoolchildren into doing their work.
The Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) was developed by MIT to help drivers navigate, bitch about their driving when necessary, and keep them company on long trips.

“When it merges knowledge about the city with an understanding of the driver’s priorities and needs, AIDA can make important inferences,” explains Assaf Biderman, associate director of the SENSEable City Lab. “Within a week AIDA will have figured out your home and work location. Soon afterwards the system will be able to direct you to your preferred grocery store, suggesting a route that avoids a street fair-induced traffic jam. On the way AIDA might recommend a stop to fill up your tank, upon noticing that you are getting low on gas,” says Biderman. “AIDA can also give you feedback on your driving, helping you achieve more energy efficiency and safer behavior.”

[MIT via Link]
While the AIDA robot helps you navigate, there are plenty of engineers working on cars that do all of the driving for you. Chevy’s “Boss” Tahoe is one of the higher profile projects that have come out in recent years, winning the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007 after successfully navigating a 60-mile course littered with obstacles. [Link]

This week, we’re celebrating the human body: the ultimate machine, 4 billion years in refinement.

Your heart can beat 3 billion times in your lifetime without maintenance—that’s a performance spec that no motor can match. Tens of trillions of cells inside you undergo constant death and regeneration. And your brain juggles countless autonomic and cognitive processes without so much as a status bar. But it was just eight years ago that we decoded our genome, seizing the blueprints for ourselves. We’re just starting to understand this machine enough to tinker with it. And Man being Man, we need to tinker.

Techie people like new toys. In the future that will mean everything from artificial limbs that perform better than the originals to benevolent viruses that recode the software of the human body. And as the gadget obsessed, we’d be the ones most likely to sign up first. And to go high end, cutting edge.

Last year I got lasik, and sprung for all the upgrades. Like the cornea mapping system to correct sector by sector aberrations on my eye, the same tech used to remap the flaws in Hubble telescope’s glass. And the laser cut instead of the scalpel, which reduces night halos. Everyone else attending the mandatory pre-surgery briefing went budget. But when it comes to our bodies and minds, the gadget-minded think of our flesh and soul as extensible and upgradable with only with the best.

For a far more interesting story, we are lucky to have an amazing guest editor with us this week named Aimee Mulllins—Aimee was born without fibulae in both legs and her doctors decided to amputate her legs below the knees to give her a chance to walk with artificial legs. Eventually, she became the first woman with a disability to compete in the NCAA using carbon fiber equipment modeled after the hind legs of a cheetah. She’s also been voted as people magazine’s 50 most beautiful people in the world and, at 17, was the youngest person to hold top secret Pentagon security clearance. Some might classify Aimee as handicapped, but I’d call her enhanced. I hope she can share with us what its like to depend on her gear and have it change the way we live and the conditions we’re born with.

Through the week, we’ll hear from other experts too:

• Daniel H. Wilson, author of How To Survive a Robot Uprising, will be writing about his experiences searching for super-powered strength.

• Sexologist Debby Herbenick will discuss some of the upgrades going on below the belt.

• Our own Mark Wilson, who spent a week hearing about the outer edges and most pressing needs of health science at the TEDMED conference in San Diego, will share his encounters with the stars of organ growing, genome mapping, human body imaging and more.

• In a Q&A with The New Yorker’s Michael Specter, we’ll see why it’s more dangerous to not embark on the paths of genetic and viral manipulation than to follow them to their most unnerving ends.

This week, Gizmodo will be exploring the enhanced human future. We’re calling it This Cyborg Life. And its all about what happens when we treat our body less as a holy object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine. Even if we can’t replicate it—yet—we can make it better.

Readers and writers and editors for other periodicals and books: if you’ve got old or new stories that would fit into our theme week, please let me know! We’d love to link you.

(Gizmodo’s bullpen a few minutes ago). Me: The new A-Team. Liam Neeson will be Hannibal. Brian: What the fuck. Backlink to the team limo. Me: That’s not for posting.

Brian: Oh, I think it’s postable late at night.
Me: Hahaha, you think that’s for posting, you fool.
Brian: They always had gadgets, home made.
Me: That’s a streeeeeeeetch. But I’m not going to say no.
Brian: I pity the fool who thinks that’s not a post.
Sean: Jessica Biel is in that shit too.
Brian: Yeah, just go with it. It’ll feel great.
Me: They better make it good.
Brian: They won’t. They will ruin our memories. If T drinks poisoned milk, it will be all good.
Me: Our memories of cheesy TV, yes. We can only hope Mr. T gets a cameo.
Wilson: Yeah, they’re second only to MacGyver in postable cheesy 80s TV shows.
Adam: How can anyone play Mr. T? I don’t understand.
Me: Me neither.
Adam: Seems like an impossible challenge.
Me: That requires serious acting.
Brian: Yeah, BA Baracus wasn’t even a character. He was Mr. T.
Me: I don’t think DeNiro would be able to pull that off, much less this dude.

That, dear readers of Gizmodo, is how we spend our afternoons. While we drink cocktails. On the beach. Mixed and served by ninja cyborgs.

A-Team, the movie based on Stephen J. Cannell’s famed TV series, is being directed by Joe Carnahan. Liam Neeson will be Hannibal (great choice, although George Peppard will be hard to beat), Sharlto Copley as Murdock, Quinton Rampage Jackson as B.A. Baracus, and Bradley Cooper as Face. Let’s hope this remake is as good as the new Star Trek.

You may not have heard of it before, but “augmented reality” is coming, and it’s more than just cool tech—it will change the world.

Augmented reality has been a Hollywood staple for the last 30 years—although it’s more commonly associated with robots and cyborgs than people or PC enthusiasts. Put simply, it’s a technology that overlays a real-world scene with relevant contextual information, directly from a computer. In Robocop and Terminator, augmented reality was used by the movie’s eponymous characters to overlay friend or foe info. In Minority Report, it was used to display targeted ads, unique to each individual, as they walked through a city landscape.
 
More recently in the real world, augmented reality has been used in advertisements, rendering 3D animations attached to 2D surfaces you hold up in front of a webcam. (Check these sites for demos: http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/ and http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/mini-augmented-reality-advertising-a-reality.html). The Mini-Cooper ad is especially neat, because you can explore a 3D rendering of a car using a 2D ad and your PC. To date, the applications of augmented reality tech have been cool, but not particularly useful.

That’s about to change. Armed with GPS sensors, accelerometers, and compasses, many smartphones—like the iPhone 3GS and Google Android phones—have the hardware required to determine your position and orientation in the world. With that info, your phone will be able to display a HUD, overlaying info from the Internet atop a direct feed from your phone’s camera.

The first of these apps is likely to be acrossair’s Nearest New York Subway app for the iPhone. The videos we’ve seen of the app are amazing—hold the phone parallel to the ground and you see a traditional 2D map of NYC’s subway system, complete with your location. When you hold the phone perpendicular, the camera turns on. As you rotate, it displays icons revealing the direction to and the key info for the nearest subway stations over a live feed from the camera. (To see the video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps49T0iJwVg.)

As computing becomes more integrated with our day-to-day life, it becomes easy to envision ever-more-interesting use cases. I’d love a presence app—like Loopt or Google Latitude—that lets me see public profile information of people who share my coordinates in meatspace. Right now, I have no way of knowing that the guy standing next to me on the bus is my college roommate’s brother-in-law. But if my phone played a quick game of Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon with his Facebook profile, I might end up talking about something more interesting than the Giants’ game on our shared bus ride. In fact, with a large enough social circle, I may never meet another stranger again.

I can’t help but think that that would enrich my life. Isn’t that what technology is for?