New Scientist reports that researchers at Duke University
in Durham, NC have enabled Macaque monkeys to control a robotic
arm with nothing more
than their brain waves. According to the project leader Miguel
Nicolelis, the monkeys control the robotic arm with the same
dexterity as their own limbs.
The problem with the world we live
in is that it straddles the realms of the boring and fantastic.
With a single tiny
step one can leave behind mundane surroundings and find ourselves
untethered in the hurricanes of imagination. The challenge
we face in imagining what this means to the world, is not
a lack of possibilities but an inability to stop thinking about
innovations.
Here's what technically enabled telekinesis (TET) gives us:
we can control, with our thoughts, any properly designed device
in the world. Our thoughts can move the world.
The first to benefit are those who have lost control of their
limbs, either through disease or accident. If TET does nothing
else but this, then it has changed the world forever and for
the better.
From there, everything is an afterthought, no pun intended.
The next area that comes to mind is the handling of hazardous
materials. A robotic arm (or artificial body?) located at some
distance from the TET operator, makes it possible to handle
everything from Biohazardous waste to radioactive materials
and explosives.
Removing the very notion of "disabled" from the
world and making it unnecessary to place people in harm's way
are both wonderful advances, but would affect relatively small
numbers of people.
What if everything in your home was under mind control? Think
at any object in your home and it does your bidding. TV On!
Radio Off! Alarm Off! House set all Alarms on!
I never was much of a typist, and I feel a bit silly talking
to my computer... except of course when I'm cursing at it for
some reason. Wouldn't it be nice to just think at the screen
and have this article appear as if by magic?
Of course, all of this is kid stuff. Given that TET has arrived...
that's the difficult part in this little exercise isn't it?
Accepting that TET has arrived? Yet the evidence is here. Macaque
monkeys are, possibly as you read this, thinking their robotic
fingers into peeling a banana. Just thinking about it makes
the brain spin while we make little whimpering sounds.
Where do we go from here? How about a new form of entertainment?
Have you ever wanted to go diving but can't swim? What if you
could rent time on a submersible off the Great Barrier Reef
in Australia, while sitting in your living room in North America?
With a mental link established and then transmitted from you
to the submersible by radio, you could control the submersible
and have the High Definition Images sent back to your Television.
At about this point, if not already, most readers are saying
to themselves, "This is all too much like Science Fiction
for me!" That's the problem with any big new idea; it
leads us with a chain of logic directly out of our comfort
zone.
What will TET bring about? Ironically... it all depends on
where we allow our thoughts to move us.
© 2003, Peter de Jager. Peter is a keynote speaker
and consultant. Visit him at www.technobility.com or contact
him directly at
pdejager@technobility.com
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