The Science Fiction Review Technology Kevin Warwick wants to be a Cyborg

Kevin Warwick wants to be a Cyborg

Remember at the end of The Empire Strikes Back where Luke gets his hand chopped off by Vader? During one of the closing scenes, a robot doctor finishes up installing a replacement hand for Luke.

Luke Skywalker's Cyborg Hand

Luke Skywalker's Cyborg Hand

Kevin Warwick did something similar as an experiment, but without the whole getting his hand chopped off step. Instead he put an electrode in his hand that could transmit commands to a robotic hand through radio waves. This was done back in 2002, and somehow I never heard of it. I’m sure Ray Kurzweil would be proud. Check out the video below for more information about how he did this, and some other advances like using rat brain cells to power robots. If you are at all interested in robotics, cyborgs, or AI, you’ll be in for a treat.

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Isaac Asimov introduces the Radio Shack TRS-80 pocket computerIsaac Asimov introduces the Radio Shack TRS-80 pocket computer

I ran across this ad recently for an amazing new product, promoted by my own favorite science fiction author, Isaac Asimov.

Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Pocket Computer turned my dreams into a reality. Now I can take the power of a true computer with me wherever I go.
— Isaac Asimov

The marketing guys chime in a few paragraphs later.

And it can also function just like a calculator — something a desktop computer can’t do.
— Radio Shack

Wait, what!? With a standard calculator included in just about every phone that I can think of, it is hard to imagine a desktop computer ever existing without that ability. Crazy, right? Now that I think of it, it wasn’t too far in the distant past that desktop computers couldn’t be used for voice communications, something a simple phone could do. So what does $169.95 actually get you?

From Dave Dunfield’s old computer page:

The machine was actually a Radio Shack branded version of the Sharp PC-1211, which features:

  • Sharp SC43177/SC43178 4-bit CPU running at 256khz
  • 1×24 character LCD display
  • 57 key “Qwerty” keyboard
  • 1.5k of RAM for user program storage
  • Pizoelectric buzzer

Be sure to check out the full breakdown at Dave’s TRS-80 Pocket Computer page

As a point of comparison, here are a few highlights of Motorola’s Droid 2 tech specs:

  • 1 GHz processor
  • 480×854 Pixel display (Characters displayed depends on the font)
  • QWERTY keyboard
  • 8GB flash (expandable to 32GB)
  • Support for stereo bluetooth (not sure if actual speaker is stereo or not)
  • 100’s of other features like camera, video capture, streaming video, and get this includes the ability to make phone calls. Sadly though, it can’t make you breakfast… yet.

Let me whip out my calculator on my i7 Desktop Computer! The Droid 2 has a 3,906.25 times faster processor (just based on clock rate, not actual computational power) and has 5,592,405.33 times more storage. That seems crazy right? The TRS-80 pocket computer came out in 1980, about 20 years ago. I wonder how people will feel about our state of the art smartphones in 2020? That is assuming we haven’t been taken over by robots gone wild, destroyed ourselves with nukes, or succumbed to a raging nano-plague. But that is all just science fiction.

Isaac Asimov promotes Radio Shack's TRS-80 Pocket Computer

Isaac Asimov promotes Radio Shack's TRS-80 Pocket Computer

Happy Birthday Isaac Asimov – plus predictions for 2014Happy Birthday Isaac Asimov – plus predictions for 2014

I just ran across an article on Isaac Asimov’s predictions for 2014 from 50 years ago. I was thinking of a blog post to start out the year, and this popped out as a good opportunity. As anyone that reads this blog should know, Isaac Asimov is my favorite writer. His birthday is unknown for certain, but he chose to celebrate it on January 2nd. More information here. Anyway, back in 1964 at The World’s Fair, he made a few predictions. Some of the more accurate ones are below describing video phones, Robots, vehicular robots (Google car?), “Wall Screens” (not quite yet but very close), and a eerily accurate population estimate.

“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica.”

“Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.”

“Vehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for particular destinations … that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.”

“Wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible.”

“The world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.”

Some of the more comical misses are below:

“Mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.”

“The most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!”

I also have a prediction for today, the birth of a friend’s baby that is now one week overdue. It would be awesome to share a birthday with Isaac Asimov, right?

For the complete list and link to the original article, click the links below.

Via Open Culture

New York Times

Luke Skywalker bionic arm waiting on green light for clinical trials.Luke Skywalker bionic arm waiting on green light for clinical trials.

I noticed today on my RSS feed for TheForce.net there was a news blurb about Luke’s prosthetic hand from Star Wars might soon become a reality. I tried clicking on the full article located at MSN but for some reason it didn’t come up for me. After a google search I found an article located on the IEEE Spectrum site that had more information. The prosthetic arm was nicknamed “Luke Arm” by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway. An interesting video found via Engadget shows the arm in use and explains the modular approach used in manufacturing. It looks like the project’s fate lies in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which has funded the first two phases. If clinical trials are approved, it is possible that veterans could have access to these as early as next year.