Common Paradox Tech Blog

There were some perks to dating a cyborg.

My ex-boyfriend Josh was born mostly deaf, but had some hearing in one ear thanks to a cochlear implant—a spiral of electrodes threaded into his cochlea to stimulate the auditory nerve, bypassing damaged parts of the ear. The surgery, which is irreversible, wipes out any residual hearing in the operated ear. (It’s a major invasive procedure—fortunately a one-time thing—that puts the patient at risk of facial paralysis.) A microphone connects to a removable external processor that converts sound to digital code; the code is transmitted to the implanted mechanism by way of a magnet. When fed through the cochlea, the decoded digital information is perceived as sound.

Josh wore the external part of the CI during most of his waking hours and we got by with lipreading and basic signing whenever he took it off. He never once complained about my snoring. If I wanted to have a private conversation with him in the room, I could just detach the magnet on the side of his head. It was also a fun party trick to announce that my boyfriend’s head could stick to the fridge.

Not everyone likes a cyborg, however. In fact, many deaf people would be offended at the suggestion that they do something so drastic to artificially augment their hearing. Last year at Gallaudet, the federally chartered university for the deaf in DC, Josh and the writer Michael Chorost co-taught a class designed to address the deaf community’s division regarding the use of cochlear implants. There’s concern that the technology will eventually render an entire language—American Sign Language—obsolete.

A majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many who would sooner opt for insurance-covered implants for their kids than years of sign education, audiologist visits and hearing aids, which are pricey and usually are not covered by medical insurance. Those against CI argue that sign language is categorically better than oral language, and that orally educated deaf children with CIs are missing out on gaining entrance into a rich community and culture. If the CI business “cures” all deaf people, the implications for the signing community are dire.

Gallaudet is a signing university with a vociferous pro-ASL population. In 2006, a newly appointed president was voted out of office ostensibly because she had been educated orally and didn’t learn sign until her twenties. Mike and Josh’s class looked at how other minorities have dealt with “threats” to their communities and tried to apply the lessons from those experiences to suggest ways that signing deaf people can survive the increase use of CIs.

The other day I asked Mike—who wrote Rebuilt and the amazing cochlear implant story in Wired—what he thought was the most exciting stuff happening in the world of CIs right now. Really, I was fishing for things that would improve my life, should I ever date another half-bot: How about solar-charged receivers that don’t require batteries (which used to die so conveniently during fights)? A line of accessories that could keep the thing in place during snogging? A remote control that could allow me to manipulate his every move, want and desire?

Mike didn’t think there was that much to report—I was a little disappointed he didn’t mention cat CIs! The future, according to Mike, is technology that facilitates two-way communication. Hearing people who dream of super-human auditory abilities probably won’t be lining up to get CIs any time soon.

“The engineering is too difficult and the risks are too great,” Mike told me. He sees implantation surgery going in a more practical direction. “People might be willing to get them to facilitate new forms of communication that to us would seem like telepathy,” he said. “I don’t mean the transmission of speech; there’s no point to that, since we can do that. I’m talking about the transmission of brain states—fear, alertness, anger—and, in a certain sense, of memories.”

In short, CI technology, as crazy science-fiction-esque as it seems, is already looking like the old grandpa in the rocking chair, nodding knowingly while the pro-CI and anti-CI groups still battle on like so many Hatfields and McCoys. “The real breakthroughs in neurotech will come not from doing existing things better, but from doing entirely new things,” he said. From an outside perspective, it seems that, if the two sides were to unite and embrace implant technology, the deaf community could come out at the forefront of cyborg-ology. The deaf community has already been profoundly effected by neurotechnology. It’s a point of view Mike argued elegantly in a much-debated 2007 speech he gave at Gallaudet:

We are heading into a future where the technology is opening up profoundly new possibilities for communication and group awareness…Cochlear implants are the cutting edge of a field called neurotechnology—the science of developing completely new kinds of ways of interfacing with the body and the brain…Who better than the deaf community to actively seize the lead in developing communications technologies that interact directly with the nervous system? And to experiment with new social forms to explore their uses? We already have one foot—more than one foot—in that world.

Tomorrow, I may get a brain implant that will help me not repeat myself or remember where I put my keys. Or remember where I put my keys. A large part of the deaf community, however, have already ventured farther down that road than I may ever see. Or, for the matter, hear.

Anna Jane Grossman is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of iamobsolete.net. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

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]

I am ashamed of two things. 1) That in our quest for the cyborg life, we were beaten to the punch by SkyMall, and 2) that none of the following products are fake.

Let’s just get this first one out of the way: Not only does the Head Spa Massager look like someone in the 1970s designed it in a future-Sparta fashion, but it’s a massage helmet. You look ridiculous, and it can’t even secretly double as a sexual aid.

This handsome silver fox has it going on. I mean, he’s talking to a sexy lady, and a power call could easily come through his Bluetooth earpiece at any moment, right? Nope, he fooled you! He’s hard of hearing, and that’s just his Stealth Secret Sound Amplifier. (I laughed when I first saw this, but now it just makes me sad.)

Every cyborg I know of has a head-mounted camera, and since this 5-megapixel Digital Camera Swim Mask is only good for 15′ depth (that is, snorkeling or swimming pools), you might as well make the most of it and wear it on dry land too! Even has a cyborg-friendly LED that shines inside the mask, to let your friends know who’s part robot tell you when you’re shooting.

If sci-fi tells us anything, it’s that the bionic man (or woman) has great posture. Thankfully, the Posturetek Biofeedback System—it’s a shirt, but they call it a system—”senses incorrect posture and gently encourages posture correction.” My assumption is that it doesn’t use sharp spikes or electric shocks, but it’s still a tad sinister.

Snore correction makes up approximately 94% of SkyMall revenue, but only one, the SnorePro Snore Relief Device, attaches to your wrist and sends a “biofeedback digital pulse” when the log sawing kicks in. (Can you imagine having a business card with the word SnorePro emblazoned on it? Would that be awful or awesome?)

When you embark on the man-machine merger, it makes sense to complement some of that silicon with silicone, if you catch my drift. Hell, you got so much going on, nobody’s going to notice that you’ve shoved some Body Figure Enhancing Pads down your pants. Well, they’ll notice, but not in a bad way.

What good is the cyborg life if it doesn’t permit you to jump higher, run faster, have more energy, appear 2″ taller and “look like a million dollars”? The Gravity Defyers (spelling lessons sold separately) have been tempting travelers for ages with those very promises. Besides, its patented spring-loaded sole is found on no other shoe in the world pretty much ever, for some reason.

Locutus of Borg wasn’t much of a jumper—his footwear of choice skewed toward the comfort-illumination lines. That’s why he swore by the Brightfeet Lighted Slippers. They’re just the thing to slip on when you’re making the midnight trek from the regeneration chamber to the cube pissoir.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.

I used to think “sexual enhancement” just meant “sex toys.” That is, until I started exploring the wonderful—and sometimes utterly weird—world of mechanical and electronic sex augmentations. Here’s what’s happening now and what will happen soon.

As you’ll see, existing innovations take our tongues, fingers, vulvas and penises to the next level. But the future of sex augmentations appears to lie in biometrics and in networking. Soon toys will learn from and interact with our bodies’ responses, with or without a partner, while teledildonics will help people separated by vast distances get closer (and wetter).

Tongue, Extended
Whoever made women’s genitals certainly made them tricky to stimulate—especially orally. Enter the Tongue Joy, a vibrating tongue enhancement to help human tongues do what no human can in terms of sensation and endurance. Strap the silicone-banded vibe on your tongue (or, if your tongue is pierced, use the barbell piercing attachment) and proceed with awesome. It’s battery operated and comes with multiple band sizes in case you want to strap it around something bigger. Four silicone sleeve attachments enhance the size and texture of the vibrating yummy-ness. Lovely for oral sex on a man, too, particularly those who are into hummers that aren’t cars.

Bionic Fingers
The vibrating three-finger power pack and glove by Fukuoku enhance the size and function of one’s digits, transforming your fingers into vibrators that run at up to 45,000 vpm (that would be vibes per minute). They’re more particularly cyborgy than most sex toys, if that’s your thing. (Ahem, Malebots subscribers!)

Unnatural Male Enhancement
The Ride On (pun intended) blows most penis extenders (pun not intended) out of the water. It’s more comfortable, less bulky and stays on in more positions than other models—all while fulfilling its purpose of enhancing the size and function of a man’s penis. Function? Yes. Some men use these not for length or girth but to keep having sex during half time. Available from Vixens Creations, the Ride On gets men around that annoying “refractory period” that is the curse of many a man’s sexistence. It’s also useful for men with severe or chronic erectile dysfunction (ED) who want in.

Electronic Condoms?
Given the perception that condoms may reduce sensation, sex-loving scientists have been proposing vibrating condom designs since at least the 1990s. Given the enormous improvements in vibrators since then, it’s unclear what a vibrating condom—if ever brought to market—would ultimately look like. Will it have an awkward external wire and power pack like the one in this 1995 patent image? (Here’s a PDF of the actual patent.) Or will it be built into the condom itself, as thin as a BandAid, as in my dreams? The design will have to depend on functionality: The vagina is not as sensitive as a woman’s vulva (clitoris, labia, etc) so the value of a vibrating shaft may be more for a man than his partner. That is, unless it vibrates at the base by a woman’s vaginal opening or clitoris, like the Trojan Vibrating Ring or the Bo—a favorite.

The Hydraulic Penis
As potentially borgy as it is, this pre-Viagra augmentation is for now only available for men with ED that is unlikely to respond to medication or sex therapy. This type of penile implant lets men pump themselves into an erect state whenever they want—note that pump in the scrotum—and deflate on command. There’s none of those scary erections lasting longer than 4 hours that we hear about in commercials starring Bob Dole. Though many men may dream of having this much control over their erections, the ones who use this do it as a last resort. Once it’s been in use for a while, some men lose their natural erectile reflex because their body no longer has to work at it. Moral of the story: Enjoy what you’ve got.

Hymen Again
Fake hymens give the illusion that one is going where no man has gone before. One option is a hymenoplasty—a surgical procedure that “restores” a woman’s hymen. This is done only rarely in the US, but is performed increasingly in other countries, often for women who who feel they need to prove their virginity to their fiancé or his family lest they risk shame or, scarily, even violence. Sometimes, the operation is requested by women who want to give their partner the “gift” of taking their virginity, like as an anniversary gift (for serious—and to think I’d go with golf clubs or a Garmin).

There is a mail-order product that a woman places inside her vagina which simulates the loss of virginity, fake blood and all. Gigimo’s Artificial Virginity Hymen, has come under fire by some Egyptian politicians, who even called for a ban on it. Meanwhile, women everywhere are still calling for an end to practices that insist they “prove” their virginity to anyone or anything. On a different note, a quick word to Gigimo: When you write that you can “have your first night back anytime,” does that include the awkward fumbling, 20-second staying power, and the two weeks of worrying about being pregnant?

Biometrics: Gadgets That Get You
I’ve seen (dreamed?) the future of sex toys and It. Is. Awesome. Ideas are swirling about how to create sex toys that rely on digital biometrics. No, we’re not talking fingerprint-activated toys that prevent women’s husbands from getting curious when they’re home alone. We’re talking about products that respond to vaginal temperature, pelvic contractions leading up to orgasm, heart rate, even pelvic blood flow. Sexual Aids of the Future may be able to learn a person’s sexual response and alter stimulation patterns based on the data.

Maybe there will eventually be a gadget that will help men to last longer (so long, baseball!) or women to come more quickly. Maybe it will build sexual tension in such a lovely way that pleasure and orgasm are on the “better than average” side of the mountain more often than not. The technology is there, the ideas are there, all it takes is execution, I’m betting sooner rather than later. When the day of biometrically enhanced stimulation comes, I guarantee we will wake ‘n gadget with more than our iPhones.

Teledildonics: Long-Distance Yearning
Though most sex toys enhance in-person play, some toys facilitate sex between people across the miles. Take the PenisTron, for example, which looks and probably feels (thanks to vacuum effects) like a Fleshlight version of a vagina—and it can be controlled, tightened or slowed to a seductive drag by a man’s partner out in the ether to simulate the two of them having sex.

There’s also the Communication Hole Rider (which involves vacuum effects) and the Joystick (vacuum effects on the penis and a joystick up the butt)—all which can help to connect two people for interactive sex play.

It’s not sex with a toy; it’s sex with a person via a toy: Big difference. Sure, you miss out on the kissing. (The mostly male sex toy designers never seem to create toys that make out with you, except for some freaky robot girlfriends.) On the other hand, there’s no risk for infection or pregnancy when you’re doing it teledildonically.

My dream for teledildonics is that we eventually fine tune toys to produce more variety and transitions. IRL sex tends to move, for example, from sucking (vacuum effects) to licking (hey there, Sqweel) to mouth kissing (freaky robot girlfriend) to intercourse (vacuum again) to hand play (toned down version of the Fukuako glove) or whatever else you’re into (furniture play?). And if it were me playing with a partner over the internet I’d want to touch, to kiss, to lick, to play in varied teasing ways—not just yank their junk with the PenisTron (though it’s a good start). Who’s with me?

Debby Herbenick, PhD is a Research Scientist and Associate Director of The Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute and author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman’s Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction. She blogs at MySexProfessor.com.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.

Yes, it’s the RoboCop question. How much of your body would you have to replace with machines before you could no longer be considered human? Let’s break it down into percentages.

What Percentage of Our Body Would Have To Be Replaced Before We Ceased Being Human?(poll)

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]

We are at a biological turning point: We can invent organisms to make our drugs and fuel, even recode our DNA. It’s easy to run away screaming, but author Michael Specter says we have to quit whining and face it.

Specter, who covers the science beat for The New Yorker, is pissed off. Forces on both the left and right have been coming down on good clean science like never before. Yes, this “denialism,” as he calls it, comes from both sides. People on the left might think of it as Bush-flavored Intelligent Design agendas and bans on stem-cell research, while those on the right would recognize liberal whining about vaccinations and genetically modified food. It’s all of these factions, and plenty more.

And in his new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, Specter demonstrates that ignorance is death.

For our discussion—fitting the theme of This Cyborg Life—we singled out synthetic biology, a pursuit, as Specter describes it, that “by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology, seeks nothing less than to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world.” Here’s an edited version of our discussion:

So we’re talking about, synthetic biology, the ability to take cells or small organisms and turn them into machines?

Yeah, that’s essentially where building machines, unbelievably complex ones, that will eventually be able to do whatever we want, out of cells and chemicals.

Yeah, so we just mix some chemicals in a pot and suddenly we got a car manufacturer?

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the direction we’re moving in—you put some chemicals together and you get an organism, and then you get a more complex organism, and you get organisms that’ll do things, and you can get drugs, or chemicals, or plastics or fuel… These [scientists] are trying to take basic sugars, basic chemicals, and make it so they can digest carbon (which is kind of exciting though we’re not there yet) or just diesel fuels, plain fuel, that doesn’t emit any sort of greenhouse gasses. That has happened in small scales—we’re there. It’s just a question of scaling.

So why is this kind of low-level synthetic approach better doing than, say, the guys making fuel from algae?

I think the hope is that this will be cheaper and more stable. I don’t know that it’s better. I’m sort of agnostic on that, I think you’d rather have a lot of different approaches that are kind of greenhouse gas neutral. And whatever works, you’ll use. And you know we’re not gonna have one source of energy, we’re gonna have a bunch. We’re gonna have wind, we’re gonna have solar, we’re gonna have chemicals.

When we look at the malaria drug [one of the first products that can be manufactured through synthetic biology—and a project funded by the Gates Foundation], they are going to be able to make all the drug that is needed in the world in a couple of vats. One of the reasons that’s exciting is because it’s a stable, easy way to regulate the manufacturing, to make sure that it’s done properly. We have a big problem with malaria medicine because it’s misused, it’s taken the wrong way, it’s counterfeit—and this is a way of regulating it. I think we’ll see that with energy sources too. It’ll be solid.

In the book, you refer to the opening of the Will Smith film I Am Legend, when doctors say they’ve harnessed the measles virus and turned it into a cancer killer, a mutant virus that eventually turns everybody into zombies. But two years after the movie comes out, real doctors from the Mayo clinic say that they’re using measles strains as a real cancer treatment, in real life.

The point I’m trying to make is, these things are a little scary. Anything that powerful has to have a downside. And we need to know what the downside is, we need to talk about the downside. And we need to acknowledge it exists and say to ourselves—and sometimes we won’t agree—but say to ourselves, “Gee, you know what, the potential benefits outweigh the risks.” Sometimes we won’t think that. But I do believe that lots of times, given the information, we would think that way.

We’re on the verge of creating our own viruses that go into the body—I mean, is that right?—they go into the body and they do something good rather than bad.

Yeah, but the thing is, that has a bad connotation but it ought not to. There’s a guy named Eckhard Wimmer who created a fake version of the polio virus, and lots of people screamed, because why would you do that? I even trashed him in an article once and I was wrong and so were those people. What he had been trying to do was to make synthetic vaccines. In order to make totally synthetic, rapidly reproducible vaccines, you need to understand the viruses. Wouldn’t it be great if, for H1N1, instead of growing tons of this stuff in eggs in Pennsylvania, we could just gear up instantly, making in factories all around this country, so that we could have millions of doses in two weeks? That’s not a pipe dream; that can happen.

Who says whether this kind of research happens or not? Who pounds the gavel?

If you live in America, it’d be some sort of Democratic process. We need to have some sort of regulatory framework. Who approves a new drug? It isn’t just a pharmaceutical company that says, “Hey, I’ve gotta drug, let’s put it out there.” No, there are tons of hoops to jump through, and we need to have some hoops. And we need to make those hoops reasonable so that they’re not so ridiculous that no one bothers to try to jump through them but not so easy that we’re endangering our citizens.

But the scientific progress will probably continue regardless of whether there’s a discussion or a regulatory framework?

I’ve never seen anything in the history of our planet where human progress has stopped. People have gotten in the way, people have slowed things down, but yeah it continues. People do the work. And so I think we kind of need to get on board and harness that work. Some people said, “We need to stop some things,” but I don’t think that can happen. I don’t think we can turn information back.

Right. In your book, you mention that Bill Joy’s argument was to just put a padlock on certain venues.

Yeah, and I understand why he said that, I just don’t think it’s realistic. I don’t think that’s the way the human animal is built or has ever acted.

The point I think that you make in the book is that, if American science infrastructure bans certain researches, it’s not gonna stop people who are outside America from doing the research, and maybe won’t stop people who we definitely don’t want to be doing this research.

It’s true. Look at the stem cell ban. People went elsewhere to do it. It set us back, it set the world back. But it isn’t like it stopped. That’s a good thing, but it could be a bad thing. If we’re gonna do sort of high-end synthetic biology, and be creating all sorts of exciting but theoretically scary things, let’s do it in this country. Let’s not have it done in some place with no regulatory system.

What’s the worst thing that could happen here?

You mean like in terms of?

I mean in terms of messing around with this particular biological technology.

Look, the worst thing that can happen when you mix genes around is you can let something loose that you can’t bring back that destroys, you know, fill in the blank. Humans? Animals? Life? That is the worst thing. That is the doomsday scenario and it… it can happen, these things can happen.

We have had agricultural biotechnology for 35 years and we’ve planted two billion acres. And people still talk about how it’s untried and untested. It isn’t untried. It isn’t untested. It doesn’t make people sick. It doesn’t mean there aren’t problems with it. But to go right to the idea that the worst thing will happen, it’s crazy. There’s always a worst case scenario. We don’t need to assume it. We need to think about it.

And then obviously the upside, this is the point of the book, the upside far outweighs the downside.

Yeah, you know, the worst case scenario is something goes awry and destroys the universe. OK, that’s the worst case scenario, and it’s a pretty remote likelihood.

Now, a pretty good likelihood is, if we continue living the way we live, my kid, who’s 16 years old, maybe she won’t live a whole life because people are dying of skin cancer like crazy in 50 years. This isn’t so long from now. We have really severe problems we need to address instantly. And those are the potential benefits of this research. We don’t talk about that very much. We need to do the work and find out and make our decisions and not decide beforehand that it makes no sense.

If this has piqued your interest, or if you’re just tired of people bitching about stem-cell research, genetically altered foods or the alleged evil that lurks in vaccinations, be sure to pick up Michael Specter’s amazing book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, and meanwhile have a look at his most recent piece on synthetic biology in The New Yorker. Thanks Michael!

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.

Special thanks to Kyle the Intern for transcribing the interview

Even though their are benefits to artificial enhancement, sometimes “natural” is the way to go. Imagine if plastic surgeons could grow boobs instead of relying on traditional implants? It could happen sooner than you think.

The idea of growing tissue in a lab is nothing new, so why not breasts? It’s fun to think about, bu there is a serious side to all of this as well. We know that there are benefits for patients suffering from disease and injury, but we have to ask ourselves: what implications could this technology have for elective plastic surgery?

Back in 2006, scientists discovered a clue to growing new breast tissue using mammary stem cells. While this development could lead to drugs that could stop cancer, it could also give plastic surgeons the ability to grow new breast tissue. Today we discovered that Australian scientists are starting trials of a procedure called Neopec that involves implanting a biodegradable, synthetic chamber containing a woman’s fat tissue in the breast. The chamber acts as “scaffolding” for new breast tissue to grow on.

As awesome as all of this sounds, think about the bigger picture here. Today, there can be a stigma associated with excessive physical augmentation. Do you think our views would change if a woman (or a man for that matter) could be “naturally” augmented through cell manipulation? [Telegraph via PopSci and Times Online]

Augmented reality. It’s definitely a buzz phrase, but what is it, exactly? How do you experience it? Is there an app for it? Oh, most definitely. Here are 10.

True to their title, augmented reality apps add something to what you see, using a combination of camera, GPS, and sometimes, in the case of the iPhone 3GS, a compass. The result is something like a real-life heads-up display on your phone, and it’s spectacular.

It’s been a few months since Apple enabled AR apps in the iPhone’s firmware, and as you might expect, there’s been an explosion of new takes on the concept. Here are ten of the best:

Note: Most of these apps will work best with the iPhone 3GS, and some explicitly require it. It’s worth checking into exactly what you lose without the compass before downloading. Also, here’s the article in one page.

Layar: Layar was one of the first augmented reality mobile apps to hit any platform, so by the time it made the jump from Android to the iPhone it’d had some time to mature. Layar is an augmented reality framework, not a single purpose app—it’s fed by a growing library of “layers,” which range from Wikipedia to Flickr to apartment listings in your local town. Plus it’s free, so it’s a great way to see how the hell this augmented reality thing works in the first place.

Wikitude: Another straightforward overlay app, this one hovers little text bubbles over the locations of geotagged Wikipedia articles. What differentiates this from something like Layar is that through the app’s website, Wikitude.me, you can add your own points of interest. Most of the data sets used by AR apps are broad and not that useful outside of large cities, so this is a good way to build your own hyperlocal augmented reality.

Robotvision: A location-based point-of-interest app like Layar or Wikitude, for contrarians. Why? Because it uses Bing local search, like a badass* OK? It’s a nice change of pace if you’re getting tired of browsing through local historical sites with Wikipedia, or watching local Twitterfiends broadcast their locations every eight minutes. A dollar.

*Person who prefers not to use Google. (You can use Google if you want, too.)

Nearest Subway: Overlays your camera’s view with floating, labeled avatars of your nearest subway stations. This one’s local to NY, though there are similar apps for other cities (Nearest Tube for London, Bionic Eye for Tokyo, etc). But it doesn’t matter, because the experience of actually using this thing borders on sexual, especially if you’re used to compass-less Google Maps. Two dollars.

Assassin FPS: Remember that old Kids in the Hall skit, where Mark sits back and pretends to crush everyone’s heads with his fingers? This is that, except more modern, less funny and ever-so-slightly sinister. It’s essentially an FPS HUD, gun included, superimposed onto real life. You know, so you can shoot your boss in the face because he’s got coffee breath, or rocket-blast your wife’s silly porcelain dog figurine collection, because you hate her so so so much and wish she would just die, that harpy. Healthy coping, for a dollar!

Pocket Universe: Pocket Universe is a mixed bag. It’s not a camera overlay app, so in a way it’s the least pure augmented reality app of the bunch. The effect, though, is the same: A compass-equipped iPhone 3GS can use Pocket Universe to display a labeled map of the cosmos matched to wherever it’s pointed. It’s a heavy-duty astronomy news and reference app in addition to the AR feature, which helps justify the $3 price.

cAR Locator: This concept has been around in one form or another since the advent of GPS in phones, probably because it’s extremely simple to execute. Also: useful! Tag your car’s location when you get out of it, then later, just point your camera at the parking lot to see your spot. Two dollars, which to be honest. is probably too much.

Yelp: Yelp is my go-to service for new local recommendations in the first place, but the addition of augmented reality adds a layer of whimsy to your typical “where can can a guy get a decent wax job and/or hamburger around here?” adventures. This one’s secret—you’ve got to shake your phone to activate it. Free.

Urbanspoon: Like Yelp, except with an explicit, specific food focus. The augmented reality implementation is much slicker here too: tilt your iPhone down to switch to 2D map mode, and tilt it back up to switch to THE FUTURE. Free.

Junaio: Augmented reality on phones is still a fairly new concept, and most other apps fit a fairly simple template. Junaio is more ambitious, letting users construct 3D scenes in their cameras’ viewfinders, place them on a map and share them with others as pictures or as part of explorable layers. The current implementation is kind of rough and the aesthetic is cartoonish, but Junaio captures the spirit of AR better than most. Free.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.