Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
Category: Cyborg
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A good recent summary of some of the developments in prosthetics. See We have the technology to rebuild ourselves – tech – 07 January 2009 – New Scientist. Far-fetched as it may seem now, what if cosmetic surgery was to one day extend to replacing perfectly good arms and legs with more beautiful or powerful…
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A timely reminder in the face of all the hooplah about human-machine interfaces : timeless : Direct Human Brain – AI – Interface Technologies by Gina Rydland. Lack of factual information creates a naive conception of the development process of technologies sanctioned as safe to use, clouding the public debate and undermining sufficient grounds for…
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Scientific American has a recent article surveying the development of brain to computer interfaces up to recent prototypes that attempt recognise the neurological activity associated with controlling the muscles for speech and translating that into synthetic speech. Very interesting. From Putting Thoughts into Action: Implants Tap the Thinking Brain: Scientific American
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A recent issue of ESPN The Magazine has an article on athletes with prosthetics and some commentary asking what really is the difference between various sorts of technological enhancement in sport. See ESPN – ESPN The Magazine – Let ‘Em Play and the photo gallery at ESPN – ESPN The Magazine – Photo Gallery. Hat…
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These looks interesting – new prosthetic hands that allows for greater control of fine motor skills. See New Prosthetic Hand Has Grip Function Almost Like A Natural Hand: Each Finger Moves Separately
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Sentient Developments points to a special report in IEEE Spectrum on the current state of prosthetic arms. See IEEE Spectrum: Special Report: Prosthetic Arms with video here.
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I’ve been wondering whether South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, who runs with carbon-fibre prosthetic legs, would be competing at the Beijing Olympics ever since I saw a news article about him a year to eighteen months ago. It appears now that he won’t be there, even if he makes the qualifying times. See: Pistorius’s unfair…
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The article Wired: The World’s Most Advanced Bionic Arm précises the work being done to create “an artificial human arm that acts, looks and feels to its user like his native arm, and to do it with astonishing speed by the end of 2009”. I can hear the Six Million Dollar Man theme music in…
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Firstly, a (mini) colloquium on Media and Religious Authority on Tuesday, which included some of the Virtual Theology colloquium participants from a while back, along with Heidi Campbell. A good time to catch up with people, to meet Heidi in person for the first time, and to start to thrash out some ideas I’m interested…
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Books on the go at the moment. Writing at the Edge of the Universe Published by Canterbury University Press (2003), it’s a collection of essays, interviews, reflections and talks from the ‘Creative Writing in New Zealand’ Conference. Covers everything from politics, young adults fiction, comics, hypertext, and definitions of ‘cultural’ within the NZ writing scene.…