This is awesome!
Watch this little girl unwrap her 3D printed prosthetic arm!
Category: cyborgs – Page 133
The human being — especially in so-called “advanced civilizations” — is the animal that molds itself into its own pet.
Peter Sloterdijk is Germany’s most controversial thinker and media theorist. He has dared to challenge long-established divisions in traditional philosophy of body and soul, subject and object, culture and nature. His 1999 lecture on “Regulations for the Human Park,” in which he argued that genetic engineering was a continuation of human striving for self-creation, stirred up a tempest in a country known for Nazi eugenics. At the same time, he himself has concluded that “the taming of man has failed” as civilization’s potential for barbarism has grown ever greater. His seminal books include “Critique of Cynical Reason” and his trilogy, “Spheres.”
At a recent Berggruen Center on Philosophy and Culture symposium on humans and technology at Cambridge University’s St. John’s School of Divinity, The WorldPost discussed with Sloterdijk the end of borders between humans and technology, the cloud, singularity and identity in the age of globalization.
For years now, you have been arguing that a new type of being was coming into existence, as the human species fuses with its technological prosthetics — “anthropo-technology.” In this new being, man and machine are becoming one integrated, operative system linked by information.
Mark Pollock and trainer Simon O’Donnell (credit: Mark Pollock)
A 39-year-old man who had been completely paralyzed for four years was able to voluntarily control his leg muscles and take thousands of steps in a “robotic exoskeleton” device during five days of training, and for two weeks afterward, UCLA scientists report.
This is the first time that a person with chronic, complete paralysis has regained enough voluntary control to actively work with a robotic device designed to enhance mobility.
Soldiers often have to carry over 100 lb (45 kg) of gear in a backpack, for several hours at a time. That’s why engineers at the Australia’s Department of Defence have developed a new exoskeleton, that diverts two thirds of pack weight directly to the ground.
The stock market is tanking, North and South Korea are on the brink of war, and a cartoon character from a dystopian future is the most popular candidate for US President at the moment. But don’t despair. While most things are garbage, there are some things in the world that aren’t. Like this adorable kid who just got his own high-tech bionic hand.
Nine-year-old Josh Cathcart was often bullied in school for having just one hand. But he’s about to become the coolest kid in school, thanks to his new i-limb, developed by a company called Touch Bionics. The hand can be programmed via an iPad app.
“I made myself a bagel yesterday. I can open bottles and packets with it. I can stack up blocks, I can build Lego with it and I can pull my trousers up,” he told The Guardian. While he’s not the youngest to ever get a bionic hand, he’s the youngest that this company has fitted the device for. He’ll grow out of it in about a year and need a new one, and his parents have started fundraising to pay for it.
By now, the stories of humans transcending their limitations in space have become pretty much ubiquitous. We’ve had space cyborgs, space immortals, and tons of other posthumans in space. But the new novel Edge of Dark by Brenda Cooper still represents a fascinating new approach. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00?tag=lifeboatfound-20…
Biohackers are installing USB drives in their fingertips and growing third ears on their arms. Welcome to the world of DIY cyborgs.
You may remember neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis — he built the brain-controlled exoskeleton that allowed a paralyzed man to kick the first ball of the 2014 World Cup. What’s he working on now? Building ways for two minds (rats and monkeys, for now) to send messages brain to brain. Watch to the end for an experiment that, as he says, will go to “the limit of your imagination.”
