Get ready, it’s all coming together and now is the time to gently prepare the normals for what’s next; even if it’s by way of the equivalent of visual nursery rhymes and benign Olympic sideshows, for now.

Winter Olympics to demo lighting controlled by thoughts

So imagine what we’re not showing you, yet.

Image: Kotaku

One of the projects being developed by the group is a form of assistive technology they call a brain co-processor. This system, also referred to as a cognitive assistive system, would initially be aimed at people suffering from cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. It would monitor people’s activities and brain functions, determine when they needed help, and provide exactly the right bit of helpful information at just the right time. It could also find applications for people without any disability, as a form of brain augmentation.

SOURCES: MIT via KAI

“Who knows? Maybe, in another ten years, we’ll be here with the ultimate sixth sense brain implant.” — Pattie Maes

Is it merely cheesy pop pseudo science …

“The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” Since Einstein uses the term particle to represent “matter,” he is acknowledging that the field controls our physical reality.

… or a somewhat useful intermediate abstraction on the way to more precise understanding …

“Epigenetics has become much more interesting because it allows us to look at how gene expression is changed by environmental events, explainable in part by histone modifications.”

Wired:

The researchers’ algorithm is composed of a series of five equations through which data from cameras can be run. Each equation represents tricks used by fly circuits to handle changing levels of brightness, contrast and motion, and their parameters constantly shift in response to input. Unlike Lucas-Kanade, the algorithm doesn’t return a frame-by-frame comparison of every last pixel, but emphasizes large-scale patterns of change. In this sense, it works a bit like video-compression systems that ignore like-colored, unshifting areas.

Embedded in Contact Lenses with Built-In Virtual Graphics might minimize power requirements:

One obvious problem is powering such a device. The circuitry requires 330 microwatts but doesn’t need a battery. Instead, a loop antenna picks up power beamed from a nearby radio source. The team has tested the lens by fitting it to a rabbit.

One of the limitations of current head-up displays is their limited field of view. A contact lens display can have a much wider field of view. “Our hope is to create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to 1 m away,” says Parviz.

… and just perhaps, they will help to define the most familiar and comforting path toward substrate-independent posthumanity …

SmartHand device. (Credit: Image rights American Friends of Tel Aviv University)

Ekenstam told a television interviewer, “I am using muscles which I haven’t used for years. I grab something hard, and then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don’t have them anymore. It’s amazing.” The team first chose to build a hand, however, because of its unique challenges. “The fingers in the hand are the most complex appendages we have,” Prof. Shacham-Diamand observes. “The brain needs to synchronise the movement of each digit in a very complicated way.” While the prototype looks very “bionic” now, in the future SmartHand scientists plan to equip it with artificial skin that will give the brain even more tactile feedback.

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Imagining an unequalable, universally contiguous, extended human cognition substrate; a phenomenologically consistent and sustainable epi-neocortical architecture, intrinsically obviating corporation and nation; diverse, progressive, transparent, authentic, open, extensible. Observe, interpret, forecast, design, build, uplift.

What is it?

On Thursday, November 12, 2009, sponsored by The Rock Center for Corporate Governance and Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology, Legal Challenges in an Age of Robotics:

Once relegated to factories and fiction, robots are rapidly entering the mainstream. Advances in artificial intelligence translate into ever-broadening functionality and autonomy. Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of robotics in warfare, medicine, and exploration. Industry analysts and UN statistics predict equally significant growth in the market for personal or service robotics over the next few years. What unique legal challenges will the widespread availability of sophisticated robots pose? Three panelists with deep and varied expertise discuss the present, near future, and far future of robotics and the law.

It’s important now to recognize that nowhere in the concept of sentience is there a mention of mind, intelligence, or self-awareness.

In fact, much of what we perceive is irreducibly complex, as our emotions cannot be broken up into their constituent chemicals nor our music into its disparate vibrations while still maintaining meaning.

SOURCE: MachinesLikeUs

Stanford CodeX: “Human brainpower as purchasable and fungible as additional server rackspace.” File under Augmented, Extended, Emergent Cognition Grid.

Technology Review (via KAIN):

Oh, there’ll be no body category, class, or type limits — within the bounds of the laws of physics — for your inevitable substrate independent migratory path; just one niggling little problem holdin’ up the show: spec’n out the I/O ports.

PhysOrg, (via KAIN):

Stanford engineers are developing the first autonomous racing car to climb Pikes Peak, a challenging 12.4-mile ascent in the Rocky Mountains, at 130 mph, as a way to create and test safety systems they hope one day will be used in all vehicles.

“If we can design a car that can autonomously go up Pikes Peak, we can design a car that can take over when a driver falls asleep,” said Kirstin Talvala, one of the students.