The Bionic Maaaaan~
 

Source.

Bionic Commando coming in 2015.

The beginnings of cyberbrain technology are here.

Yar ;D 'Tis cool stuff, no? This'll be really kickass in a decade or so.

Uhm... Care to expand some more on that? I trust you don't mean ESP?

this is totally cool. Finally we see a hope for people with disabilities to function properly. CMIW, but I think Stephen Hawking is also a "bionic man" since the equipment of his wheeling chair is quite advanced.

This involves a microchip inside of his brain. I don't think Hawking has anything that advanced. He's got a pad which he types on using his one finger that works along with some other gizmos. This is a result of surgery and technological advances.

Yeah, cyberbrains, decked out military cyborgs/prosthetic bodies, etc..

That's actually pretty interesting, and I remember hearing something like this a while back. It was controlled by the people looking at a cursor on the screen and actively moving it around, while having probes/sensors stuck to their head.

This is an amazing advance in technology and medicine. There was a show about it on the Discovery Science channel about how man and machine are slowly becoming one. It had a scientist saying how he was born a man, but will die a cyborg. I'm still waiting for someone to say how the Government could use this technology to control people, but for this purpose I think it is amazing that science is making this kind of breakthrough.

Hmmm... this is one of those things that has the potential to be very good or very bad. Either we'll see something great medically to come out of this (i.e. real working thought-controlled prosthetics), or we'll see it used for destruction and warfare (i.e. soldiers able to operate weapons from a long distance using only their brains),. Maybe both. Who knows? This is one I'll be interested to see as it unfolds!

-Adam

Nothing new. Just a reminder of where we're headed. I'm sure we're in for a world of ethical warfare when cybernetics, genetics, and other technologies enter the mainstream. No doubt about that.

But I'm not dumb enough to think this kind of stuff is new by a long shot, though. I just think those who've made the major discoveries with it are being kept in secrecy and under control, for either ethical reasons or by those who wish to use them for their own gain and are waiting for the right time and avenue to bring about their use.

I'm not talking about conspiracy drivel here, I'm just saying if you made a potentially world-changing technological discovery, would you be so keen on letting it out before you could properly secure control, rights, and use of it? At least, that's what I think is what's going on.

This wouldn't help all disabled people in any case. Take the example of my father. There's no cybernetic technology in the world that could make him able to use his right arm and leg again, and there never will be.

The reason for this is because his case actually involves damage to the part of the brain responsible for moving those parts of your body. I admit that it's going to help a lot of people, and it's a very interesting discovery, but unless I'm mistaken, there's no way it could help people who are disabled for reasons similar to my dad. I wonder just how many disabled people are similar to him, and just can't be helped in this way?

That's not a reason to not develop this technology, but it might not be as big of a deal as it seems, if it can only help a small percentage of people with disabilities. I'm only using a personal example because it's the easiest way for me to describe what I'm talking about. It also seems as though this will only help people who are relatively young and robust, since it involves invasive surgery.

It's significance is not specifically so much about who it can help, but whom it can empower. Think of military applications, for example: If you could replace human eyes with IR cameras, use robotic limbs instead of flesh, or hell, even take a brain completely out of a body and operate it by remote (or simply use RC infantry altogether)... but that's a bit down the road. This stuff will be big, when it comes to fruition.

And brains are complex, but I have no reason to believe we won't start seeing prototype medical technology for 'patching' missing or damaged portions of a person's neuralogy in the coming years. Even people disabled on that end might stand a chance eventually.

Ah, Templar, your probably right about the actual technology being farther along than what we're seeing now. Aren't most inventions, or a good bit of them, the result of military research? Things like this hold immense promise.

And if we get nanomachines sophisticated enough, couldn't we get them to patch certain parts of the brain? Or some sort of stem cell delivery system to the brain?

Cyborgs and androids are no longer myth. I read the entire particle in the New York Times.

There's also an interesting article in American Science about prosthetics technology. Amputees can now get arms that are connected directly to the severed nerve connections and with the addition of brain implants can use their new fake arms just as good if not better than real arms. Without physical limitation the arms themselves could be better.

Somehow that article made me think of Jet Black.