It’s the holy grail in bionics—artificial limbs that function entirely intuitively.
Category: transhumanism – Page 123
Making the world’s first brain-controlled bionic leg
Bionics: surgically inserted sensors controlling a prosthetic limb. Meet the man who sometimes forgets that his bionic leg is not his own.
Why Won’t Sanders, Clinton, Trump and Cruz Discuss Transhumanist Science Issues?
My new Huff Post story asking why the major presidential candidates don’t discuss transhumanist science:
THE BLOG Why Won’t Sanders, Clinton, Trump and Cruz Discuss Transhumanist Science Issues? 03/11/2016 03:49 pm ET Zoltan Istvan US Presidential candidate of Transhumanist Party; Creator of Immortality Bus; Author of #1 bestselling Philosophy novel ‘The Transhumanist Wager’ Image by DonkeyHotey Have y…
Amputee feels texture with a ‘bionic’ fingertip
An amputee feels texture in real time: Signals from sensors in an artificial fingertip are converted to neural-like spikes and delivered to nerves in the upper arm. (credit: Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne)
Amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first person in the world to recognize texture (smoothness vs. roughness) using an artificial “bionic” fingertip surgically connected to nerves in his upper arm. The experimental system was developed by EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) and SSSA (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna).
“The stimulation felt almost like what I would feel with my hand,” says Sørensen. “I felt the texture sensations at the tip of the index finger of my phantom hand.”
Bionic fingertip lets amputee feel textures
Cool beans.
Using a bionic fingertip, an amputee for the first time has been able to feel rough and smooth textures in real-time, as though the fingertip were naturally connected to his hand.
After Luke Skywalker got his hand cut off during a duel with Darth Vader in “Star Wars,” the young Jedi received an artificial hand that helped him both grip and feel again. Scientists worldwide are seeking to make this vision from science fiction a reality with prosthetic limbs that are wired directly into the nervous systems of their recipients.
Researchers experimented with amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen from Denmark, who damaged his left hand more than a decade ago while playing with fireworks. Doctors immediately amputated the appendage after Sørensen was brought to a hospital. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies].
Never Say Die – SELF/LESS from Science-Fiction to –Fact
In SELF/LESS, a dying old man (Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley) transfers his consciousness to the body of a healthy young man (Ryan Reynolds). If you’re into immortality, that’s pretty good product packaging, no?
But this thought-provoking psychological thriller also raises fundamental and felicitous ethical questions about extending life beyond its natural boundaries. Postulating the moral and ethical issues that surround mortality have long been defining characteristics of many notable stories within the sci-fi genre. In fact, the Mary Shelley’s age-old novel, Frankenstein, while having little to no direct plot overlaps [with SELF/LESS], it is considered by many to be among the first examples of the science fiction genre.
Screenwriters and brothers David and Alex Pastor show the timelessness of society’s fascination with immortality. However, their exploration reflects a rapidly growing deviation from the tale’s derivation as it lies within traditional science fiction. This shift can be defined, on the most basic level as the genre losing it’s implied fictitious base. Sure, while we have yet to clone dinosaurs, many core elements of beloved past sic-fi films are growing well within our reach, if not in our present and every-day lives. From Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic hand in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) to the Matrix Sentinal’s (1999) of our past science fiction films help define our current reality to Will Smith’s bionic arm in I, Robot.
Gene therapy to save the world
The most recent Liz talk. According to her in this vid her first test results of telomere length are next month.
Liz Parrish, the Founder and CEO of BioViva Sciences USA Inc, is best known for recently becoming the first person to be treated with gene therapy to reverse aging.
BioViva is committed to extending healthy lifespans using gene therapy. Liz is known as “the woman who wants to genetically engineer you.” She is a humanitarian, entrepreneur and innovator and a leading voice for genetic cures.
This talk, “Gene therapy to save the world”, was co-hosted by Oxford Transhumanism and Emerging Technologies (OxTET) and Oxford University Scientific Society. It was held at IEB building, Department of Engineering Science, Oxford, on Feb 23rd 2016.
For more details about the event, see https://www.facebook.com/events/1682079625367629/.
Zoltan: The transhumanist for President — The Feed
A new 9 minute video on transhumanism and my campaign from The Feed at SBS, one of Australia’s major tv channels. It aired today:
Meet the US Presidential candidate who not only wants to beat Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but — also — death.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SBS2Australia
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thefeedsbs
Insta: https://instagram.com/sbs2australia
Tumblr: http://thefeedsbs.tumblr.com/
Terence Mckenna’s ‘cyberdelic’ predictions for Virtual Reality 25 years on
Cannot wait to hear Mckenna’s perspective on BMIs for brain connection to all things digital, and microbots used to extend life as well as bionic body parts.
Famed psychonaut Terence Mckenna envisioned a very radical approach of bridging psychedelics with virtual reality to create a supercharged version of consciousness in which language, or rather the meaning behind what we speak, could be made visual in front of our very eyes.
In Mckenna’s “cyberdelic” future of virtual reality, artists and the revival of art, would be at the forefront of innovation, according to a talk he gave to a German audience in 1991.
Does this not still ring true 25 years on? Are not computer programmers and virtual cartographers the modern artists who are pushing the boundaries of our understanding of reality and ourselves?