We Have the Technology to Rebuild Ourselves

Julian Smith has penned an excellent overview of prosthetic technologies for New Scientist. Smith describes the current state-of-the-union as far as assistive devices goes and looks at the potential for these devices to not just mimic normal human functioning, but to surpass it as well.

...

Complete entry

Posted by Joseph Jackson  on  01/15  at  08:50 PM

Interesting article but I fear that the reporting may over-hype some of the progress while understating the economic difficulties involved in prostheses development. At August when I attended SciFoo, I met Johnathan Kuniholm who lost his arm in Iraq. He started the OpenProsthetics Project to spur innovation in a field that has done nothing in 30 years (as noted in the article, arm prostheses are especially crude). http://openprosthetics.org/ Transhumanists continually underestimate how soon these technologies will be developed. The market for these replacements is often not sufficient to induce companies to invest. An "open-source hardware" approach such as that taken by the above project, is key for speeding progress and making the technology affordable for patients. I am looking at starting a venture to create an open-source cochlear implant (which would essentially be the first brain-computer interface as well). It is extremely important that consumers/patients/citizens demand and receive what I call "technological freedom" with respect to emerging medical devices--the equivalent of digital rights management for your brain-computer interface will be a disaster. http://freedomofscience.org/?p=7 Hackability, user-driven customization, and transparency is the only viable option.

---

Add your comment here:

Name:

Email:

Location:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below: