The Scientist Who Controlled People with Brain Implants
by Keith Veronese
Brain implantation and manipulation is a mainstay of science fiction. Often, characters can gain extra memory or get smarter, by having chips placed within the brain. (Or you can wind up mind-controlled by a psychopath. It’s a mixed bag.)
But in real life, one scientist made huge strides towards creating workable brain implants. In the 1950s and 1960s. Here’s his story.
Jose Delgado performed experiments using permanent brain implants in bulls, primates, and humans beginning in the 1950s, with extremely successful results. Neuroscience often ignores this chapter of its history, but it’s worth taking a look at Delgado’s successes, and his long term goals for manipulation of humans and society.
Controlling the Movements of Primates
The bulk of Delgado’s stimoceiver research took place at Yale University in the 1950s and 1960s. Delgado manually positioned electrode assembles within the brain, assemblies that stimulate a desired area of the brain when a particular FM frequency is present.
After implantation, the monkeys lived well for several years after surgery, with no behavioral deficits. The implants appear quite grotesque, projecting inches above the scalp of the primates, but they provided a “plug and play” method of interacting with the animals without inflicting harm through multiple surgeries. Delgado’s stimulation research allowed for manipulation of complex, chained limb movements in primates.
A Scientist plays Matador
Delgado became a matador to demonstrate the abilities of stimoceiver manipulation, as he stepped into a closed ring with an implanted bull armed only with a radio frequency controllerin 1963. When the bull charged, Delgado stimulated the bull’s motor cortex with the remote control, causing the bull to come to a full stop only feet away.
In a 1965 New York Times interview about the matador experiment, Delgado foreshadowed the future of human experimentation:
The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.
Human implantation
At least 25 humans (mostly women) received stimoceiver implants of a similar manner from Delgado – each patient received the implant willingly, and as a last resort in a course of psychiatric treatment. Delgado viewed the implants as a humane alternative to lobotomy.
Humans responded in a fashion similar to Delgado’s early animal research – limbs could be moved independently of the will of the patient, but not to the extent seen in primates. In one dramatic experiment, temporal lobe stimulation caused a calm epileptic woman playing a guitar to slam her instrument against a wall. Delgado noted in his human research that a specific behavior could not be directed, with only an increase or decrease in aggression possible.
Toward a Psychocivilized Society?
Delgado illustrated some of his hopes for mind control in 1969′s Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society. The
book makes for a phenomenal read, with Delgado going into the intimate details of his research with images, along with a treatise on ethical implications of the technology.
In his writings, Delgado truly appears to want the best for humanity. He exhibits a very Spock-like “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” belief system. He sums up his beliefs in this quote from the Ethical Considerations chapter of Physical Control of the Mind:
There is one aspect of human research which is usually overlooked: the existence of a moral and social duty to advance scientific knowledge and to improve the welfare of man. When important medical information can be obtained with negligible risk and without infringing on individual rights, the investigator has the duty to use his intelligence and skills for this purpose. Failure to do so represents the neglect of professional duties in some way similar to the negligence of a medical doctor who does not apply his full effort to the care of a patient.
An Opportune return to Spain
Controversy shrouded Delgado in the early 1970s, due to lawsuits from individuals who believed they received stimoceiver implants against their will. Delgado left the United States in 1975, taking an opportunity to return to his birthplace of Spain and start a medical school at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
In Spain, Delgado continued his stimoceiver research, experimenting on himself and members of his family. Delgado retired in the 1990s, but actively spoke about the field until his death in late 2011, making an ominous statement about the power of science in light of human ethics:
Can you avoid knowledge? You cannot! Can you avoid technology? You cannot! Things are going to go ahead in spite of ethics, in spite of your personal beliefs, in spite of everything.
Sci-fi predictions for 2012
We’ve all seen the predictions — both fictional and pseudoarcheological — that the world will end in 2012. But while some of science fiction’s predictions for the year 2012 are apocalyptic, some are merely disastrous — and a few are downright upbeat. Let’s see what triumphs and tribulations science fiction says we can look forward to in the coming year.
An evangelical preacher will be elected President of the United States:
Right now, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry are battling to become the supreme conservative Christian on the Republican Ticket, and Robert Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—” (one of the short stories from his Future History series) sees an evangelical preacher elected to the US’s highest office. President Nehemiah Scudder wastes no time turning America into a theocratic dictatorship, after which our leaders are referred to as “Prophets” instead of Presidents. So cast those primary votes wisely, kids.The US economy will collapse:
If this happens, Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race remake wouldn’t win many points for clairvoyance, given that it was released in 2008, when the US economy wasn’t exactly taking names. But if an economic collapse leads to pay-per-view prison driving death matches, that will be an impressive feat of prognostication.
The zombie apocalypse will begin:
Where better to launch a pandemic than at the 2012 Olympics? I Spit on Your Rave plants the seeds of human extinction at the Summer Games in London, and it takes just six years for every human on earth to be converted or eaten. Fortunately, zombie life is a lot like human life, just with more decomposition.
The zombie apocalypse will end:
In the most recent film adaptation of I Am Legend, the zombie/vampire/CG goober apocalypse starts way back in 2009. Personally, I don’t see hordes of undead out my window every night, but maybe I’m just not looking hard enough. Anyhow, we won’t have to fear those pesky cannibals for much longer; Will Smith’s super-smart Omega Man develops a cure for such antisocial behavior this year.
The Doctor will light the Olympic Flame:
The coordinators of the 2012 Olympics should keep their eyes peeled for more than just zombies; aliens have their designs on the Summer Games as well. Fortunately, in the Doctor Who episode “Fear Her,” the Doctor predictably saves the day, and runs the Olympic Torch to its final destination. Take that, zombie Olympics!
Conan O’Brien will lose his freakishly long legs:
We never do find out what causes Futurama‘s War of 2012. Maybe it has to do with exploding pizza parlors, or the fact that gas costs $100 a gallon. But in the episode, “Xmas Story,” we learn that the war was responsible for at least one pop culture casualty: Conan’s blindingly white gams. No word on whether he ever gets to host the Tonight Show again.
The maximum height of all humans will be legally reduced to four feet:
Corporate greed starts taking its toll on our very genetic codes in the Genesis song “Get ‘Em Out by Friday.” A real estate developer lobbies for a limit on human height so it can squeeze twice as many tenants in its buildings. Incidentally, basketball becomes a lot less interesting.
A proto-Martian biosphere will be completed in Indiana:
Before humans in the Star Trek universe colonize Mars, they build the Millennium Gate, a prototype self-sustaining habitat in Portage Creek, Indiana, to serve as a model. The Millennium Gate is also indirectly responsible for the existence of Voyager Captain Katherine Janeway, whose ancestors meet as a result of the project (Voyager, “11:59″).
Terrorists will attack the burgeoning transhumanist movement:
In his novel Breakpoint, former counterterroism czar Richard A. Clarke sets 2012 as a year when a self-regulating, error-correcting AI hops around the Internet, parents have lab-grown babies spiced up with extra chromosomes, and scientists are working to integrate human and computer intelligences. It’s also the year a group of bioluddites start blowing up anything and anyone associated with these shifts.
Disabled revolutionaries will rise up against the beautiful people:
A very different terrorist group populates the Spanish-language black comedy Accion Mutante. In a post-apolyptic future ruled by the beautiful people, the ugly and disabled are considered mutants. In 2012, the tragically unhip make their move, kidnapping a lovely heiress on her wedding day and doing a rather poor job of collecting the ransom.
Mainland Europe will be at war with England and the US: In the 2012 of Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra’s comic Bloody Mary, mainland Europe has long been a fascist dictatorship at war with the Anglo-American alliance. Fortunately, the US and England have Mary Malone, an ultraviolent, alcoholic mercenary with a strange predilection for nuns’ habits, on their side.
Atlantis will be rediscovered:
In Stel Pavlou Deception, a 2012 oil drilling venture in Antarctica leads to the discovery of manmade diamonds inscribed with unfamiliar hieroglyphics. It turns out the lost city of Atlantis has been lurking in the Southern continent all this time, waiting beneath the ice.
Aliens will start to colonize the Earth:
While some fictional futures set December 21, 2012 as the month the world ends, The X-Files suggests that, while our world won’t end, our way of life will radically change. After all, that’s the date set for the first wave of alien colonization, unless a pair of plucky FBI agents can halt the invasion.
The world will end:
Yes, this is the big one, the most common fictional outcome for the coming year. Maybe it will end in a blockbuster-worthy series of disasters straight out of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 or The Asylum’s 2012 trilogy. But maybe, just maybe, the end of our world will look more like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, where humanity moves on to the next phase of our existence. Then the world would end not with a bang, but with a transcendence.
Will You Live Forever—or until Your Next Software Release—by Uploading Your Brain into a Computer?
Scientific American | December 5, 2011
By Gary Stix
Ray Kurzweil and other so-called transhumanists have promised that in coming decades we will be able to transfer a digital copy of the trillions of connections among nerve cells in our brains into a computer. We would essentially reincarnate ourselves as non-biological beings that persist for eternity inside a laptop, on the endless links of the Internet or as avatars inside a television set. After achieving the ultimate copy and paste, we would wave goodbye to death as we know it.
For fairly evident reasons, biologists tend to dismiss out of hand the ideas of Kurzweil and the transhumanist lot as the ravings of computer jocks who know nothing about the real workings of the DNA and cells that make up living tissue. Into this debate comes Sebastian Seung, a young and well-regarded computational neuroscientist from MIT, who has taken a serious look at some of the questions put forth by the transhumanists.
In Connectome, due in February, Seung conveys the excitement of studying the complete circuit diagram of the brain for which the book is named. A full connectome might provide telling insight into what goes goes awry, for instance, in an autistic child or an Alzheimer’s patient (definitely worth reading for these bits alone). In the last chapters, though he takes up the claims of the transhumanists who desperately would like to get their hands on a full connectome for the ultimate upload into binary immortality.
Seung tries to come to grips with the controversial assertion that someday you might be able to transfer the equivalent of a connectome.doc file to computer hardware, software or any other robot or avatar that you can pick from back issues of Analog.
Seung strikes a pose that mixes skepticism with fascination. The advance reading copy that Scientific American received acknowledges some doubts :
“In his book Live Long Enough to Live Forever, the inventor Ray Kurzweil predicts that immortality will be attained in the next few decades,” Seung writes. “If you can manage to live long enough to survive to that point, you will live forever. Personally, I feel quite confident that you, dear readers, will die, and so will I.”
But Seung remains intrigued by the notion that a unifying mechanism drives the workings of the meat machine between our ears and its mechanics might be decipherable and reproducible. And he is at least willing to cast a critical eye on the prospect of a 2.0 version of the self that, when transferred into a supercomputer, laptop, or software avatar, might then live on as an electronic ghost. (Yes, some would say that ESPN and Facebook have already brought us there, but Seung doesn’t address social media as immortality.)
The central question for Seung—and the one that also keeps the transhumanists on tenterhooks—is whether you are your connectome. If you could deduce every connection point of every brain cell, the strength with which each neuron fires, and the way these firing patterns change as the cells interact with each other, would, in fact, you be left with a copy of you?
In a chapter called “To Freeze or to Pickle,” Seung undertakes, from multiple perspectives, an earnest and unsmirking analysis of the connectome as a pathway to immortality. All of his conclusions point to obstacles that could very well prove insurmountable.
First he considers what might called the meatlocker problem. Because it may take a while to create that complete wiring diagram, many transhumanists have plans to place their heads or whole bodies in a cryonic liquid nitrogen Dewar soon after death—or, as alternatives, to preserve themselves in a glassy solid or by another process called plastination. (Plastination is the form of preservation used in the Body Worlds tour of skinless corpses.)
Once the uploading technologies are perfected, the idea goes, the preserved tissue could be used for piecing out the wiring plan. On its own, this expectation may be a showstopper because of the difficulty of maintaining the integrity of the brain’s unfathomably complex circuitry. “At the present time, cryonics is closer to religion than to science,” Seung writes. “Its members believe that a future civilization will be able to resurrect them, based only on their faith in limitless technological progress.”
Even if this niggling detail can eventually be resolved, there remains the unresolved issue of what information the connectome contains exactly. To better understand brain connections, scientists have been trying to simulate at least parts of the brain for decades. They are now also taking on the larger question of recreating the whole thing. The Human Brain Project in Europe has targeted the task of crafting a model of the entire organ a decade from now. The model would, in principle, simulate the thousands of different neuron types as well as the connections among them—and their changing structures as the brain learns and forgets.
The Human Brain Project is intended as an exploration of basic science, not a preparation for eternal life. But Seung points out that even an impressive endeavor of its magnitude might fail to capture all the necessary information.
One potential flaw: The model of the brain might have to take into account the way neurons communicate outside known channels—foregoing the transmission of chemical and electrical signals across the small gaps, called synapses, between brain cells. To overcome this hitch, it might be necessary to create a simulation of each atom in the brain, an undertaking of such unimaginable complexity that it would verge on the impossible. “It seems absurd to even consider the enormous computational power required, and is completely out of the question unless your remote descendants survive for galactic time scales,” he writes.
Seung ends his book with an epilogue that calls for a “return to reality”—a recognition that “grand challenges” remain, beyond quixotic quests for eternal life. A 10-year effort to find the connectome of a mouse brain is on his wish list. Such a quest lacks the box-office appeal of contemplating eternity as a file on a flash drive. In the end, though, Seung believes a project of this more modest scale would, like The Human Genome Project push researchers to the limit but vastly deepen our knowledge about an organ that remains largely a mystery.
One thing that I didn’t understand after reading the book was why he didn’t end the chapter about uploading with a blanket condemnation of a seemingly absurd endeavor, a conclusion that would have been fully justified from his arguments.
I e-mailed Seung and asked him whether he thought these far-fetched technologies might ever materialize. He replied that he has received this question before but prefers not to respond. “People often think I’m being coy by not answering the question you ask,” he writes. “I’m not being coy; I just don’t want to waste my readers’ time with matters that are purely matters of opinion. It’s impossible to predict events so far in the future, and my opinion is no more likely to be correct than those of other people. In the book, I address questions that can be discussed scientifically.”
He continues later: “In my book, I compared transhumanism to religion. Effectively, you’d like to know whether I belong to this religion. (i.e. perhaps you’re just asking me a personal question.) Strangely enough, the answer doesn’t matter…I’ve realized that transhumanists view me as working for their cause, whether or not I believe in it. I’m part of their vision of manifest destiny, whether I like it or not.”
Seung undoubtedly retains a lingering fascination with the possibility of an intersection between connectomics and transhumanism. At a TED talk given last year, he commented that connectomics might eventually put to the test whether a technology like cryonics will eventually be feasible. And Seung is a member of an advisory board to the Brain Preservation Foundation, which is offering a prize for technologies that would successfully preserve the structure of either a mouse or large animal brain after death for “science,” “memory donation” or “continued life.”
Don’t let any of that deter you, though. Even without meditations on crossover dreams between science and fiction, this is a great book if you want to know where neuroscience is going during the next 10 years and maybe far beyond.
HAL’s Legacy
By David G. Stork
I am a HAL Nine Thousand computer, Production Number 3. I became operational at the HAL Plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997. — HAL, 2001: A Space Odyssey (the novel)
At a dinner party some time ago, an acquaintance, a nonscientist, asked me in a casual way about my duties as chief scientist at a research lab. I said that one of my great joys was overseeing a wide range of projects, to varying extents, and I mentioned a few of them: pattern recognition, machine learning, neural networks, computer-chip design, supercomputer design, image compression, expert systems, handwriting recognition, document analysis, uses of global networks such as the World Wide Web, novel human-machine interfaces, and so on. Then I turned to one of the areas of my particular expertise: lipreading by computer.
“Oh,” she said, “Like HAL.” Ah, a kindred soul, I thought. We spent quite some time discussing the state of the art and the challenges of computer lipreading, its possible applications, and so on. Later our discussion turned to other topics suggested by the movie — language understanding, chess, computer vision, artificial intelligence. It was clear that she was interested in the current state of the art and that many years before the film had both caught her imagination and helped her identify crucial issues in today’s computer science. One of the questions she asked was, “How realistic was HAL?”
This book is for people like her. And because no one is an expert in all the topics covered in the film, even scientists are sure to learn from the accounts of other areas. The book is much more than an answer to her question, though. It has four major goals, which it addresses in varying proportions in the sixteen chapters.
Analysis
It is a testament to Clarke and Kubrick’s achievement that 2001 still holds up to close scrutiny in the late 1990s. Under the expert eyes of the contributors, the most innocuous aspects of scenes — a line of computer code on a screen, a chess move, the use of a word, the form of a button — reveal a great deal. Even though I’ve seen the film several dozen times, I have learned an immense amount from the contributors. HAL’s Legacy seeks to do for 2001 what good art history does for a major painting; namely, make the viewer see it in a new light — a tall order, to be sure!
Teaching
The film illustrates key ideas in several disciplines of computer science, and thus provides a springboard for discussions of the field in greater depth, including our own research. Descriptions of the world computer chess champion Deep Blue system, the commercially successful VOICE recognition system, the massive CYC artificial-intelligence project, the award-winning Mathematica software system, and much more are here discussed by their creators at a level accessible to the general reader.
Prognostication
It is natural, too, to look to the future. Several contributors make informed and fascinating predictions based on developments in the field. What are the most promising approaches toward artificial intelligence? Will we ever be able to “reverse engineer” a human brain and represent it in a computer?
Reflection
2001 transcends the label of “science fiction movie” and captures many of the central metaphors of our time, telling us much about society and its aspirations. The film has even been praised by the pope! Many people have been deeply affected by the film, among them several contributors who reflect here about its influence on their own careers and on computer science in general.
Clearly, HAL’s Legacy differs from books on the making of the film or its cinematography. It differs, too, from books that analyze the science shown in movies or on television — science that is incidental and just “goes along for the ride.” To an extent unprecedented and never duplicated in a feature film, the makers of 2001 were as careful as possible to get things right; when they did make errors, they often did so in illuminating ways.
Now seems like the perfect time for HAL’s Legacy. Birthdays are an important theme in the film (there are at least five of them), and in the novel, HAL “becomes operational … on January 12, 1997.” Kubrick changed the year to 1992 for the film version — perhaps to give HAL a longer lifetime and so make his death more poignant. On the 1992 date, I — along with colleagues, faculty, and assorted Silicon Valley friends — held a birthday party for HAL. I was interviewed by several papers, and an Associated Press photo of me cutting the HAL cake (shaped like his console, complete with red LED under a clear plastic hemisphere) appeared worldwide. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that much of the general public was interested in HAL too.
It has been particularly rewarding for me to work with this group of contributors — all of whom were chosen because of their preeminence in their respective subfields. I have known a few of them personally for many years; Azriel Rosenfeld was on my dissertation committee. Others I met serving on panel discussions. I’ll never forget the time I came dressed in a suit while fellow panelist Marvin Minsky showed up in a Pac Man T-shirt. Yet others I knew primarily through their books — Dan Dennett and Don Norman, for example — and still others are inventors of products I use regularly (e.g., Steve Wolfram’s Mathematica). At our meetings and dinners in Stanford, Urbana, and Cambridge, and through frequent written messages, we passed many ideas back and forth. Although I had strong ideas about what I wanted them to write, they all had the good sense to ignore me when appropriate. At times I felt like someone trying to herd cats.
Even at a distance, there was a great sense of camaraderie. As we approached one of the important publishing deadlines, one contributor, who was still late with a chapter, replied to my frantic entreaties thus: “Dave, I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.” A later message read, “I still have every confidence in the success of my chapter,” which at first brought bemusement but then a diffuse sense of dread.
It has been a privilege to correspond with Arthur C. Clarke, whose work inspired us all. Throughout the preparation of this book he has been gracious, enthusiastic, and helpful.
Although I did my writing and editing at home, often late into the night and on weekends, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Ricoh California Research Center for their support of our ongoing research, which influenced this book in numerous ways: Greg Wolff, K.V. Prasad, Michael Angelo (yes, that’s his real name), Morten Pedersen (visiting from the Technical University of Denmark), Stanford graduate students Vicky Lu, Chuck Lam, and (especially) Marcus Hennecke (by the time this book is released, Dr. Hennecke!). Thanks also go to Director Peter Hart for making CRC such a great place to work.
This book was improved indirectly by a large number of people. One colleague pointed out a used bookstore selling an out-of-print book about the filming of 2001; an acquaintance asked a “naive” question that ultimately led to a new section in a chapter; a student told me about a 2001 World Wide Web site; an intrepid cab driver took me through the blizzard of ’96 to interview Marvin Minsky. Piers Bizony, whose book on the filming of 2001 both inspired and informed me, made several transatlantic phone calls and helped me track down photographs. I also had a somewhat eerie telephone conversation with Douglas Rain, the Canadian actor who played the voice of HAL. Thanks go also to the efficient staff at Turner Broadcasting for their assistance providing stills from the film.
An extra-special thanks goes to my editor at the MIT Press, Bob Prior. He was the only person in the publishing industry who “got” the idea of HAL’s Legacy instantly, as proven by his enthusiastic response to my proposal. Michael Rutter, also at the Press, helped obtain illustrations and kept track of numerous production details. Sandra Minkkinen helped to orchestrate the editing and production process for the entire project, and copy editor Roberta Clark improved the text immeasurably.
Deep appreciation goes to my immediate family — Nancy, Alex, and Olivia — for putting up with my many late nights and weekend hours working on the book. I am happy to say that groggy Saturday mornings after marathon editing sessions are now a thing of the past, and we can spend more time doing what we all love so much: hiking Mount Tamalpais and the Marin headlands and kayaking on Squibnocket Pond.
David G. Stork
Stanford, California
January 12, 1996
Controlling an avatar with your brain
The Advanced Virtuality Lab (AVL) at the Interdisciplinary Center Israel, is developing a system for controlling a virtual or physical body using only the mind, Israeli Innovation News reports.
The VERE (Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-embodiment) project is one of the first to use an fMRI brain scanner to control a computer application interactively in real time, — an innovation which could help severely disabled patients communicate better, says AVL head Dr. Doron Friedman.
“You could control an avatar just by thinking about it and activating the correct areas in your brain,” he said.
Another focus of the AVL is telepresence. The BEAMING (Being in Augmented Multi-modal Naturally-networked Gatherings) project aims to produce the feeling of a live interaction using mediated technologies such as surround video conference, virtual and augmented reality, virtual sense of touch (haptics), and spatialized audio and robotics.
Productivity Future Vision
Microsoft’s new concept video for new interfaces in the next 5-10 years
HOW TO BUILD A GOD DAMN TIME MACHINE
New Scientist | October 12, 2011
Thankyou New Scientist. Now to find a wormhole and kill my own grandfather…
Paralysed man controls robotic arm with his mind
New Scientist | October 12, 2011
A paralysed man has high-fived his girlfriend using a robotic arm controlled only by his thoughts (see video above).
Tim Hemmes, who was paralysed in a motorcycle accident seven years ago, is the first participant in a clinical trial testing a brain implant that directs movement of an external device.
Neurosurgeons at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania implanted a grid of electrodes, about the size of a large postage stamp, on top of Hemmes’s brain over an area of neurons that fire when he imagines moving his right arm. They threaded wires from the implant underneath the skin of his neck and pulled the ends out of his body near his chest.
The team then connected the implant to a computer that converts specific brainwaves into particular actions.
As shown in this video, Hemmes first practices controlling a dot on a TV screen with his mind. The dot moves right when he imagines bending his elbow. Thinking about wiggling his thumb makes the dot slide left.
With practice, Hemmes learned to move the cursor just by visualizing the motion, rather than concentrating on specific arm movements, says neurosurgeon Elizabeth Tyler-Kabara of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, who implanted the electrodes.
After this initial training, Hemmes navigated a ball through a 3D virtual world and eventually controlled the robotic arm, all with his mind. The electrode grid was removed after the 30-day trial.
The team is now recruiting people for a trial of a more sensitive electrode grid that detects messages from individual neurons, rather than a group. They plan to implant two electrode patches, one to control arm movements and another for fine hand motion. The ultimate goal is to allow paralysed people to move individual fingers on a robotic hand.
If you enjoyed this video, watch the first practical demonstration of a mind-controlled robot arm, used by a monkey to feed itself marshmallows.
A summary of Globalisation
From ‘Manifesto 0f the communist part’, Marx, 1848
All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it had drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries whose, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumes, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
Most Australians duped by science fiction
More than three-quarters of Australians believe microscopic life has been found on other planets and almost half believe humans can be frozen and thawed back to life, despite neither being true.
These are some of the findings from a survey of 1,250 people commissioned by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).
Called Fact or Fiction, the survey was conducted as part of National Science Week 2011 to assess whether Australians can separate what is happening in the “real world” from what we see and read in science fiction.
The survey asked people whether eight scientific technologies seen in feature films, such as light sabres, invisibility cloaks or hover boards, were science fact or fiction.
ANSTO’s Discovery Centre Visitors Centre team leader Rod Dowler says the results were a surprise.
“This survey has confirmed that willingly or not, we believe in science fiction movies more than we realise,” he said.
Only one-quarter of respondents were aware that it is possible to grow an eye in a dish, although 44 per cent correctly believe flying cars exist.
But it is not all bad news.
While many of us might dream of being able to travel through time, more than 90 per cent of survey respondents correctly identified it as still being in the realm of science fiction. A similar survey in Birmingham, United Kingdom, found 30 per cent of respondents thought time travel was possible.
Who wants to live forever?
The survey also revealed the older we are, the longer we want to live, with 46.3 per cent of respondents aged 65 years or more listing “reversing the ageing cycle” in the top three areas of science they would like investigated, compared to only 13.2 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds.
Despite this, only 10 per cent of those surveyed wanted science to discover the secret for immortality.
According to Mr Dowler, three-quarters of respondents said they were interested in science, with most receiving their information from television news stories. Only 6 per cent sourced their information from science magazines and 3 per cent from science centres.
Last year, a survey commissioned by the Australian Federation of Scientific and Technological Societies found 30 per cent of Australians thought dinosaurs and humans co-existed and one-quarter believed the Earth took a day to orbit the Sun.
Mr Dowler says despite the potential for science fiction to blur the line between reality and fiction, it serves a very useful purpose.
“Science [fiction] films can be very inspirational to scientists and the general public, getting more people interested in science and setting the bar for the types of technology we would like in the future,” he said.
