motherfucking teamwork
so, with my electrical incompetence on display for the world to see, Unqualified and others have suggested a far better way to power the Northpaw; inductive power transfer, something about which i know very little and will hopefully know a lot more by the end of tonight. i have a paper to read and a lot of 'pedia to peruse.
i'd just like to get lame for a second here and remind you all that this is precisely the sort of knowledge-sharing or idea teamwork that i have really, really been wanting to see more of in this field. thankyou all for your improvements, questions and suggestions. i would not have gotten so far without you. if any of you are ever in the Silver City, come meet me and we'll share a dram or two.
L
18 comments:
Aye, well I'm moving through soon so we shall have a dram! I may have a present for you too - a testing unit for control algorithms for your northpaw :)
BTW I have moved my blog to http://sillyskynet.blogspot.com
...present? i'll definitely trade you whiskey for that.
L
We better make sure we give VAT to the government on this transaction!
You're going for the Wireless power transfer? Awesome! Would you mind mailing me that paper that you have there? As mentioned elsewhere, it's shiny and new tech, so I'm highly interested in seeing an actually useful application.
I'm still trying to find out which city you mean by 'Silver city', as it's probably not Silver City, New Mexico. Aberdeen, maybe?
If I ever become interesting enough to allow myself to waste your time, I might just stop by (provided I'm in the area... or continent)
I would also appreciate links to any shiny things you find, only having a passive familiarity with this coolness.
Another thought, remembering when you lost that glue ball under your skin when testing the sugru. I was wondering if the neuroelectrodes you are using to stimulate the nerves for the northpaw might move about or wander underneath your skin. Perhaps a method for holding them in place might be needed, maybe a sub-dermal anklet with short tethers to the stimulators. Something along these lines if the gems were replaced by electrodes and the chain by wiring is what i am thinking. http://www.lapislazuliworld.com/store/files/images/large/lapislazuliworld_1782_40133539.jpg
I may well be wrong, my talents are more conceptual than yours and i really got no clue whether the neuroelctrodes will move about or not under the skin, i suspect they will for the first week or two.
@H+ Guy: the great thing about brain plasticity is, it doesn't matter where they end up! (",)
@Unqualified:
that's only half true. While the brain doesn't care much whether stuff moves around in the beginning, if the electronic compass ends up wandering around the ankle, or the 'chain' of electrodes move about too much, what happens is that the northpaw will report false directions, as the electrodes won't be where they're supposed to be, relative to the electronic compass.
Also, this is purely hypothetical, but I don't think the brain 'likes' it too much when different nerves get triggered for a given sense (after having accustomed to another group of nerves). Imagine the electrical signals from your eye coming into the brain from nerves from your foot one day. :/
tl;dr:
As long as it all stays stationary relative to the rest of its components and doesn't move too far up into your groin, it should be fine.
I have a somewhat philosophical question to pose. At what point does enhancement cease to be enhancement and become an addiction? How can we tell the difference? At what point does it become a kind of creepy Micheal Jackson effect?
Kafka:
I'm somewhat unqualifued to speak, being both a bodymod-virgin and never having been addicted to anything, really, but here's my take:
It's a creepy micheal jackson effect from the get go, if you listen to most people. It doesn't have to be an addiction for people to freak out at the mere thought of a body mod that changes something in your mind (something always changes, even with such a thing as an eyebrow piercing, though)
I'd say it's an addiction when you start undergoing procedures that are extremely dangerous to you and others, and when the ongoing enhancement is something you take for granted, when not the gain of the enhancement is the goal, but the enhancement itself.
Enhancements of this kind are always egoistic in nature, maybe it's easier to get addicted to them because society doesn't understand it anyway.
Go Lepht, disemvowel this post and crush my misconceptions!
Sup Kafka:
Addiction seems like an odd choice of word to describe a pattern of chronic self-enhancement. To frame your question in such a way seems (to me) to imply that the social alienation due to the aesthetic or functional differences (what I think of when you say the MJ effect) of transhumanists is due to their alterations, rather than being due to the intuitive and exclusive definitions of "human" in use by various cultures.
Regardless, I would say that while one might become addicted to pain or modifications or practically anything else in a way which impedes function, an addiction to improvement is a beautiful thing. If acting on this belief marks me as a cultural outsider then I'm okay with being avant garde, but I have yet to meet many people who are prejudiced or hateful toward me or my ideas. Granted, once more extraordinary mods are in the wild, questions of collective safety and social order might arise, in addition to (hopefully) fresh debate on what constitutes a human being (or sapient entity), and what such status entails... but these are good things, I think.
Not sure if I really answered your question... poke me if you want and I'll try again >.<
tl;dr: Socrates is a better role model then the Athenians of his time, but we're a long way from the hemlock. Gadflies represent!
@Max: so long as the electrodes fix in a position (i.e. don't continue to move after healing, kinda shi') and the same one is pulsed to mean the same direction, the brain will learn which electrode means which direction. One could implant electrodes vertically up the shin, and they would work just as well...
I think. I'm working from theory and analogy with "seeing-eye tongue" type devices, here. ",)
Unqualified:
the device you're referring to, that's an array of electrodes installed on the surface of the tongue in a square pattern, triggered by some sort of black and white camera... Right? I vaguely recall reading about such a device that enables blind people to 'see'.
The point here is that the electrodes are in a square configuration, and form an image. Generally, the more the configuration makes sense geometrically, the faster and better the brain should respond to the stimuli.
With those tongue devices, the brain can correct its assumptions based on the feedback from seeing the movement of the patients own hands etc., but there's no natural way for the brain to correct its assumptions on a sense like the magnetic one the northpaw provides. If you stick the electrodes on the shin vertically, while the brain will be able to differentiate between the electrodes, a vertical configuration just doesn't make as much sense as a circular with north being triggered. A bad analogy: a compass with a 'progress bar' that fills as you get closer to north is less useful than one that just points towards north
@Max: that's the one.
Yeah, the missing link in all that would be the feedback loop for training... I suppose you could wear a Northpaw or belt for a week or so, if you really wanted to try it.
The narrower point about electrodes moving being survivable should still stand, though.
holy fucking shit, look at all these mufuggin' comments. okay, i'm gonna try and wade my way through here:
yes, i am going for a lithium cell and an inductive charging system. more in a real post.
the Silver City, or the Granite City, is Aberdeen, my adopted home. i would never consider any of you to be wasting my time, and you are all free to contact me if you'd like to meet up.
anyone who wants the inductive power transfer paper, send me an email and i will get a copy to you.
H+ guy - migration is not a problem with such large objects. it only happens with little tiny things placed in loose skin; the site's nice and stuck-down in this case, and the electrodes are too big. the others raise good points though.
Max - actually, electrical signals are signals to the brain. that's how we can replace blind eyes with crude cameras.
(let us not get into speculating about this biohacker's groin.)
Kafka - hell, son, an addiction is a chemical thing. if you're gonna speculate otherwise, anything could be considered an addiction, and the term becomes meaningless; fact is, half the world's gonna think i'm creepy, and i just don't care.
or, what malces said. they see us rollin'.
L
@Lepht: actually, I slightly misrepresented the device to Max. Unintentionally, I promise (fucking brain reading what it expected to see, rather than what's there...).
It's a dot-matrix printer-style thing that mechanically interacts with the wearer's tongue. It lets brain plasticity (I'm starting to get a little monomaniacal-sounding, here...) re-map pre-existing wiring to mean something completely different. Thus the use of it as an example, really...
ah, i was thinking of a different device that aims to correct diabetic retinopathy by restoring vision: poor, low-range, granulated black and white vision, but vision nonetheless. still, your point stands.
L
Right-oh, learn something new every day :)
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[pls no ask about the vodka. debate is always welcome. remember, Tramadol fucks you up]