OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

Could use some ideas on the following:

1) What kinds of h2oi might be useful?
Example: electronic to nerve cells

2) What practical uses could be found?
Example: improved artificial limbs

Prefer ideas that are based in reality (no X-men, please) and that would likely be acceptable to people (no Borg, please). But doesn't need to be currently "do-able."

TIA

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

obviously, interfaces for operating all sorts of complex machinery. Large ammounts of effort go into making effective manual interfaces for things like attack helocopters, jet fighters, and main battle tanks. if there were direct mind-machine interfaces, they would become much more effective.

I am sure that new vistas would also open up for computer operating systems and interfaces, and related technologies.

If you would like something less far-out, then artificial limbs are probably the leading example. also, things like chemical dispensors that can be implanted and will regulate the distribution of drugs or enzimes that the body needs.

an example of this, is a recent development in the treatment of diabeties. insulin producing cells have been developed that can be injected into the blood stream, and produce regulated ammounts of insulin, feeding off the nutrients in the blood of the subject. problem is, white blood cells tend to kill them off. so they are encased in a microscopic 'cage' (think wiffle-ball) which has openings large enough for nutrients to be absorbed and insulin to pass, but small enough to block white blood cells.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

This recent pop sci article on the subject blew me away. I think we are very close to practical applications. It's life altering stuff. I think it's especially cool the way the brain can "remap" itself and get to the point where it treats the machine parts as part of the body. Very cool.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">bob: 'man, that sergeant is a jerk. maybe i should hit him with this jeep.'

bob: 'oops.'

bill: 'what's the sergeant doing now? thirty?'

fred: 'yeah, i gotta get me some cybernetic upgrades'

30 minutes later, commander's office: 'did you have to wreck the jeep?!'

yeah, there could be a few problems.

and this looks like it could really do the sci-fi horror and let the government actually read and maybe control your thoughts.

tinfoil helmet, anyone? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

qoute from that page: 'DARPA is famous for funding futuristic technology of all sorts, from the precursor to the Internet to the ill-fated terrorist futures market, which was attacked by Congress Last summer.'

WHAT??

[ February 05, 2004, 21:32: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

you dont remember the terrorism futures market? some cockeyed idea that abstract chaos-theory organic entities like the stock market are better predictors of economic trends than professional economists are. therefore, setting up a futures market on the likelyhood of terrorist activity will be a better indicator than professional inteligence analyists.

riiiiight.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

Thanks for the feedback so far. For the record, "mind-reading" interfaces are total fantasy (at least at this point). I'm looking for ideas that might reasonably be implemented in 10 years or so.

Another example: Researchers have already steered cockroaches and rats using brain implants. So, how about remote-controlled animals (dogs, pigeons, rats) equipped with cameras?

Another example: Monitoring actual cells exposed to the environment, as detectors for harmful agents.

Another example (that is already in use): cochlear implants to restore hearing

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good one. I hadn't thought at all of that kind of distributed h2oi.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">uh...methinks my point you have proven.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

I remember a few years back, Russian inteligence declasified documents on a cyber cat they had built, for survailance. they could steer through implants in the poor thing, record video and audio (god knows where they put the sensors) and it had an antenna burried under its skin. poor thing cost MILLIONS.

honest to god, i read this in the news - and you can probably dredge it up on the web. according to the report the day they were going to field test it, they let it out of their van and watched in horror as it was run over by a car.

in unrelated news, there is also some fierce competition between companies developing ocular implants to restore sight to the blind. some of them tap directly into the occular nerve, and the one that has gotten the most press coverage is able to deliver a 100 pixel (10x10 field of dots) display, enough to enable the subject to destinguish shapes, or read very large block lettering.

Artificial Muscle is a big thing, not only for medicine but for robotics and small motors. nanotubes are all the rage right now, but I saw one interesting report a few months back, about using very fine and very poreous strands of platinum that can contract by huge ammounts, because of all the holes and pores.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

wow, i was WAY off. first, it was ours and not theres. second, we couldnt steer it - which was part of the problem. third, no video, just audio.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/an...00/1638924.stm

They say your memory is the second thing to go. Heck if I can remember what the first thing was, but I guess its not as necessary as I must have thought, back when I had it.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

What a terrible thing to do to a cat... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

MY THOUGHTS ON THIS SUBJECT:

1. Hmm in my experiance the biggest problem in getting any cyber-implant to work for a long time is the human immune system. Even the simplest artificial heart valve causes MAJOR problems because its pLastic negatively charged surface triggers the complement system and activates Neutrofiles and a whole bunch of other immune cells to attack it. These people have to eat huge ammounts of immuno-suppressors just to prevent their own body killing itself.

2. The neural-machine interface is not as easy as it is portrayed in some popular pseudo scientifical articles. Controlling a cats muscles with electrical impulses and trying to hook up a nerve and an electrical wire are two very different things. Our nerves don´t conduct electrical currents in a manner even remotely simmilar to an electrical conductor. Triggering a nerve impuls by hitting a nerve with an electrical charge is one thing... but being able to induce controlled impulses in a nerve and/or read the output of a nerve is very difficult and for the most part impossible for now.

3. Apart from that just trying to for example reconnect say your Nervus Radialis (a nerve that controls some muscles in the hand) after a 1cm gap in it occured after an injury is not even remotelly possible because of the simple fact that a nerve is composed of millions upon millions if neural axons that twist and spiral inside of it and trying to get the right ends to meet for the greater part of these is science fiction for now. Not to mention that even if you could figure out which axon connects where we just don´t have the nano technology to reconnect them in a manner that would be preceise enough.

4. Any kind of limb re-attachment sugery is very difficult and almost always leads to rejection by the host. And even if it does not the host never gets any kind of good motor control back in that limb (even if it is his/her own limb that is being reattached). Some struggle for years to even get a reattached hand just to close under their own will.

5. Although the prospect of attaching electrodes to the visual cortex in the brain and having them input impulses into it for vision might seem simple it is far from that. You see our brain doesn´t process images like a computer. We have several regions that perform different "calculations" like: shape, color, movement, seeing edges etc. And we are a loooooooong way from being able to input the right impulses into the right areas of our brain to restore vision. The people that got these implants for the most part weren´t able to see anything. SOME saw vague flashes of light... naturally as someone was sending electrical impulses into their visual cortex;) But for them to be able to really SEE and COMPREHEND color, movement, shapes etc. hehe, well that is PURE science fiction for now and will remain that for a long time.

6. Recently advances were made and as far as I know the US airforce was trying to figure out a way for their pilots to control aircraft by thought only. Perhpas you saw these experiments: a guy sits in front of a computer with a whole bunch of wires comming out of his head and then he "thinks" about the mouse moving in RIGHT and the mouse moves right.... These results are based on our brain generating area-specific electrical charges when we are thinging of the thing over and over again. And using this technique they were never able to get any fine control... if the subject trained for months he was able for example to move the mouse up, down, left and right; nothing more.

In conclusion:
Scifi makes it look easy but hehe, its really very difficut and we won´t be able to produce any meaningful H2Oi-s any time soon... say in the next 2 or 3 decades. For us to be able to do useful H2Oi we need:
- vastly superior computers... think 100-1000x faster than today
- improved knowledge of the human immune system
- a huge leap in neurology & neurochemistry
- at lest basic nano-robots to complete the fine machine-organism connections for us

I´d sure like to get to know the borg queen;) I´m sure she´d have some interesting info to get us started in the right direction;)

[ February 06, 2004, 13:28: Message edited by: JurijD ]

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

while all those things are obsticales, your list of required technology for surmounting them is just way off.

the computers we use for existing implants, including the ones that can restore partial vision, are quite rudimentary. the computers used to design them are advanced, but what we have seems sufficient.

we already have some level of advanced nanotech, but certainly dont require any 'nanobots' to work with small items. as i said, we are already incaseing little clumps of microscopic cells in little microscopic cages, and I have seen photos of individual neurons grown onto tiny little circuit Boards with itty-bitty little electrode pegs to hold it in place and stop it from growing away from (rejecting) the electronics.

its not as far fetched as you'd like to think.


one 'art' project i read about recently, involved hooking up a slice of goldfish neurons to input and output electrodes. the input sent in impulses based on a very low resolution web cam. the output sent a data stream that controlled a multi-armed plotter that would draw pictures in a handfull of colors. one of the kickers was that the brain cells and the plotter were on different sides of the planet - but thats not as impressive as having goldfish brains drawing pictures in response to stimuli.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, that's what I meant. You're not going to be able to think your thoughts into Office 2010. (Good thing, too. Imagine doing a report that way with your boss looking over your shoulder!) But speech-to-text should work by then, and maybe the grammar checker will be worth using.

I did read the article, and it was helpful, just the kind of thing I was asking for. Thanks.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

JurijD:
Thanks, lots of good points.

The immune system certainly is a nuisance! (Not one I want to do without, though.) I think that you are right to be pessimistic about replacement parts that are anywhere close to the original equipment. But I think that some primitive stuff is not quite as far off as you imply. For instance, one expt on replacement retinas worked well enough for the patients to distinguish between circles and rectangles. They couldn't leave it in -- it was too big, and the immune system would have rejected it anyway. But it did show that interfacing to the optic nerve was sufficient -- you don't have to interface to the brain directly.

Repairing severed hands....always makes me think of the ST episode where McCoy suddenly loses his alien-machine-induced knowledge right in the middle of the operation to re-attach Spock's brain. "My God, Jim, there are millions of connections! Nobody can re-attach a brain!" But they are making progress with "scaffolding" that encourages various kinds of cells to grow.

Certainly you are right that the problem is not so simple as we often think.

dmm

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">someone posted a link a while ago about a company that's developed an 8000GHZ optical computer. the article said about ten years to get it into mass production.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">ugh. borg is bad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">wonder if they could use electromagnets and not interface directly to get around that.

[ February 06, 2004, 19:45: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

I think that what will be a big help to the problem with the body rejecting the implants will be to not use implants. Right now we have to use implants because we don't have transmitter/receptors sensitive enough to get the signals though the skin. A little bit more advancment in that area and you will be able to have a device on the surface, or maybe just below the surface of the skin, that can do the job. Less intrusive then sticking little wires in the brain tissue right next to the neurons.

The popsci article mentions some research in small scale devices that work like an MRI using some of the new fangled superconducting materials that are being developed.

Geoschmo

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

Geez, everyone always brings up the Borg. The main problem with the Borg wasn't their bioelectronic interfacing, rather it was forced integration into a collective with loss of individuality. (Ed: Sort-of like high school.) Mutilating healthy bodies to allow for implants just emphasized their lack of feeling (not to mention aesthetics).

But if I had NO eyes, then I'd gladly take an implant (e.g., Jordi LaForge). Same with no arm -- prefer to have my own arm sewn back on, even with some loss of function, thanks anyway -- but if that's not possible then I'd take a Borgish arm over nothing. Well, OK, maybe not that drill thing! But how about one of those android bodies that Harry Mudd was going to get? (OK, now I'm drifting off into total fantasy.)

The point is: prosthetics =/ borg

[ February 06, 2004, 21:49: Message edited by: dmm ]

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ummm, no, not total fantasy. Well, maybe "mind reading" as in, hook someone up and see what they are thinking, like in that Natalie Wood movie. But they already have had some success with interfacing the mind with simple machines and getting them to respond to direct mental impulses. Don't know if we are talking practical applications in less then ten years, but it seems entirely possible given the progress they have already made. Did you read the article I linked to? Here it is in case you missed it in my first post. http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicin...576464,00.html

[ February 06, 2004, 12:25: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Drat, foiled again!

I thought about making artificial eyes for the blind. Those would need to be wired to intact ocular nerves, and in theory at least should be possible. I had considered making a higher density of photoreceptors to give the recipient eagle-vision (since the smallest CCD cells can now be made the size of a human cone cell,) but realized that human brains probably weren't even "wired" for any more cones and rods than were already in place. So an additional circuit to handle the additional information from the photoreceptors might be needed before interfacing with the brain. I say might because the hypothesized "vision area" of the human brain is huge. It might be capable of more than I think. What such a pre-brain vision circuit could do for example would be to filter and focus a part of the picture and in effect allow the recipient to zoom in and out on a part of the image that his or her brain is able to handle at once (I would think this could be wired to the nerves that now control the lenses in functioning human eyes, with actual focusing done automatically in the prosthetic eye.) The circuit could also quite easily be made to record the full video information in such a way that it could be read out into a computer or video system. Spy of the future?

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">HA! HA! HA! HA! HA HA! Since when has ethics ever been a roadblock to military technology? It would be no problem to find a hundred fighter pilots and commandos who'd volunteer to have their brains drilled into.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

i know, but it has the potential. and someone has to bring up the problems, just to make sure we aren't doing lemming imitations.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

New developments in this area...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/fun.gam...eut/index.html

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

The first one that occurred to me regards eyesight.

How about an artificial lens implanted in the eye. Take out the organic lens, connect the new one to the muscles and it should work as is.

A step further, small camera in place of the eye. This would need muscle and nerve connections to work the way we want it to.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

As DMM said the first thing that came up was the borgs, but i think it can be usefull as long we don't end as the borgs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif jajaj

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

The problem I see (as a 16 hour a day Internet worker) would be the dangers from the temptations involved with direct neural feeds. Sure Id love to talk around and do my internet job, but Id probably just veg out on the couch and later the bed. Eventually the machines would have to feed me. Eventually they may have to get power from me to keep taking care of me to keep me in the virtual world... seeing the path? I always said the Matrix didnt have to be forced on people, it would have made alot of sense if they had said we went to it voluntarily.

I never did think the BORG was realistic. The idea of pursuing perfection by putting more and more people into a collective mind. I have internet. I can SEE that doesnt work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ June 15, 2004, 21:11: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And what, as they say, is wrong with that?

Although my own belief structure is centered around being actually uploaded into a machine, i see nothing at all wrong with relying on machines to keep us alive.

They have kept us alive for millenia, after all - from the first time one of our ancestors picked up a stick and whacked one of his enemies half way across the clearing with a skull fracture, we've relied on machines to keep us going, and just not realized it.

Alot of people talk about us becoming cyborgs or such as if it's some sci-fi concept. But we've been cyborgs for our entire history as a species; when it was cold we wore fur. When we had to travel great distances we invented cars and trains and ships and planes. We're already cyborgs, we just need to take the next bold step of getting the technology implanted within us, instead of laying around outside of us.

Though i'm not fond of the matrix, i must also bring up a truth that it revealed: if it tastes like a steak, smells like a steak, looks like a steak, and behaves just like a steak: it's a steak, man. Imagine if no one went hungry, or ever felt sick, or ever got tired. It's impossible in the flesh world - but it's possible in a digital one. That's a big part of why i push so hard for it as a transhumanist.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I saw a documentary on spys hosted by Roger Moore a week or two ago. A bit of it was this story but it was americans and they only put a transmitter on the cats collar. Cat ended the same way though. The funniest bit of the Documentary was when Roger Moore, wearing a dinner suit, informs us that real spys don't go around wearing dinner suits ("Where would you get such an idea")

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

I dont think wetwiring is all that far off, I would jump at the chance to be able to sit in a chair and just "plug in"
but yes, as gandalf parker has stated - there are MASSIVE problems with people who cant control themselfs, hell we have enough couch potatos as it is!
the only way I can think of around that would be to have you strung up like a pupet and have you excersizing as you are 'playing' round in ciberspace...

and then there are problems like you had in the matrix, would you realy die if you died while you were in there?
I would not be suprised if that were the case, the brain is a powerfull thing and capable of deceving even itself.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, you wouldn't necessarily die. Do you die every time you get shot in {insert favourite fps game here} As long as you know it's just a simulation it would be no different to playing games today, just more realistic.

If someone were plugged in without knowing it was a sim, they might well be traumatised somewhat, and ppl with weak hearts etc might even get heart attacks etc, but thebrain stopping the heart becasue it "thinks you are dead" is stupid. Even the most suicidal brain wants the body to live, and the body itself will just keep on working and healing for as long as it possibly can, no matter what trauma- real or artificial- is inflicted upon it.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

wasent there an experiment where they injected a guy on death row with water and it killed him?
or was that just one of those urbane miths...

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

I don't know of the myth or not, but it would seem to me that injecting water is as bad as injecting air. It will kill you anyway.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

Distilled water is pretty harmless, it's often used as solvent(sp?) for injections. But if it was mineral water injected.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

It's hard to say if it is a myth or not, between the placebo effect and the note that the injection location is missing from the story. The brain controls a lot - if he truely believed he was going to die, he could have (especially as by the time many death row inmates reach the execution chamber anymore, they are old enough for heart attacks to be a serious risk). Injected into the right (wrong?) place, water could harm you - water injected into the spine (called a spinal tap) interferes with nerve function, and blocks pain. Injected into a place where it would interfere with the nerves going to the heart, and it might be able to stop a man's heart that way.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

Typically lethal injection is a drug injected into the bloodstream. Injecting water, assuming it's just water with no contaminants, into the bloodstream isn't going to interfere with any nerve functions. Your blood is mostly water to begin with, the body already knows how to process it and take just what it needs from it. I suppose you could inject enough water in a short enough amount of time to dilute the blood to a point where the body can't get the things it needs to makes the cells function. If that happened your kidneys would probably fail before your heart from working overtime as one of their jobs is regulating the amount of water in your bloodstream. And I doubt it would happen in seconds or even minutes.

You could also die of internal bleeding if you thin the blood out too much. Parts of your circulatory system are wearing out and breaking all the time. The system is self-repairing and patching these tiny tears. If the blood gets too thin though it can't do this efficently. Actually this could trigger a heart attack if this occurs near the heart and the bleeding collects in the pericardial sack that surrounds it. The pressure would build and cause the heart to fail. Wouldn't happen instantly though.

If this story is true it's got to be a guy with a pre-exsisting heart ailment that was sent over the edge by the stress of the situation.

Geoschmo

[ June 16, 2004, 20:10: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

In the Matrix, I never understood why you would die if somebody unplugged you while you were in there. I would think that being unplugged would kind of be like waking up from a dream.

Re: OT: Hardware-to-Organism Interfaces (h2oi)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Because the film would have sucked otherwise :-D :-D