Brent Kearney

The BrainGate Neural Interface System was implanted into the brain of Matthew Nagle, a 25-year old Massachusetts man who suffered a spinal injury in 2001 that left him paralysed from the neck down. The implant allowed him to manipulate a computer to play a video game, operate a robotic limb to grasp and move objects, and to perform other basic tasks by thought alone.

BrainGate was developed by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc., of Foxborough, Massachusetts. The implant chip is 4 x 4 mm, and has 100 tiny electrodes, each thinner than a human hair. It is implanted above the motor cortex, the region of the brain responsible for movement. The electrodes penetrate 1mm into the brain to receive electrical signals from neurons, and transmit the signals to the outside of the patient’s skull via a system of gold wires and a protruding titanium pedestal. From there the signals can be captured and analysed by computers.

The current BrainGate system is still a prototype that, after promising research with monkeys, has just begun human trials. Nagle has been the most successful patient so far.

“We believe these advances could ultimately enable a paralyzed person to control communication devices, medical devices, computer-controlled robotics, wheel chairs – and even their own limbs,” said Cyberkinetics’s Surgenor.

More adventurous technology pundits believe that this technology is the first small step to non-therapeutic cybernetic enhancements in the near future:

Cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University predicted there would be a rapidly growing market for a range of cybernetic improvements such as memory enhancement, an increased range of senses, dieting control and thought communication.

To that end, researchers in Glasgow and Berlin have developed a mind-controlled typewriter that relies on slight electrical impulses read from the scalp using non-intrusive sensors. Their system learns to interpret brain signals much more quickly than the implant system by Cyberkinetics, but it is currently not nearly as sensitive.

While these sorts of technologies will have enormous benefit to humanity, ethical concerns have been raised around its potential for abuse. A greater understanding of brain physiology has enabled scientists at the State University of New York to remotely control rats. “Roborats” may soon be used to find survivors in buildings destroyed by earthquakes or munitions. How long will it be before humans can be remote controlled as well?

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. of Japan has been developing non-intrusive technology that can manipulate human balance to cause left or right turns. As journalist Yuri Kagayama puts it:

Prepare to be remotely controlled. I was… I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right.

The prospect of remote-controlled assassins is not very comforting, but the vast potential for enhancement of human life, especially for those who have lost natural function of their bodies, is exciting. The next 20 to 50 years will bring very interesting developments in cybernetics!

In 1961, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark proclaimed, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Magic, of course, is a facade, and is the specialty of the Hollywood movie industry. Today magic-grade illusions are now available for your own home, thanks to Theme Addicts, Inc.’s new product, “The Magic Message Mirror.” The company is self-described to be, “composed of a team of seasoned professionals from the theme park attraction and feature film special effects industries.”

The mirror looks like a normal mirror until events are triggered by a sensor system installed throughout your property, whereupon a surreal face appears in the mirror and gives you some news in a snooty British accent. “A car just pulled into the driveway, sir.” That type of thing. It would be really cool if they could integrate it with an Internet connection, so that it could tell you when you have new messages, when your favorite blog is updated, when your eBay auction has ended, etc..

Company principal Craig Barr is still working on the pricing scheme, and says, “it won’t be cheap.” How much would you pay for a magic mirror?

It’s never too late to become active, and strive to get fit. According to this article, from Nubella Health & Nutrition:

You can still improve your heart health by up to 90 percent by starting or increasing physical activity later in life, regardless of your age.

The article cites a study from German researcher Dr. Dietrich Rothenbacher. Thats good news for anyone who suffers from heart problems. Nubella has been on a role lately, as they also posted an article citing a different study on the benefits that exercise has on preventing dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and general cognitive impairment. Notably:

Middle-aged people who were physically active at work and leisure more than twice a week enjoyed a 50-percent and 60-percent lower risk than sedentary people of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s respectively.

Nubella followed up with a few bits of advice, "10 Ways to Get Moving". It has some pointers for sedentary folks who would like to change their ways, but aren’t sure where to start.

All of these new studies on the benefits of exercise are interesting, in that the researchers have come up with numbers and facts to support the widely known common sense platitude, that exercise is a healthy thing to do. They’re finding out just how healthy it is. If one takes a moment to consider from where we came, how we evolved, it is no surprise that disease and illnesses often go hand in hand with lack of exercise. For millions of years, survival was a struggle. Movement was a prerequisite to staying alive. Had we evolved to sit around, our bodies would probably look more like plants. Potatoes, perhaps. However, thats not how we turned out — we are designed, via natural selection, to move, to use our muscles, to run, to sweat. To stop doing these things is to deny ourselves of that which makes us human, that which makes us alive.

Now this is funny. Although, also scary. You be the judge.

Debate has been raging over "Net Neutrality" recently, since it has come under attack from large telecommunications companies and mindless politicians. Large telcoms such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have been spending millions to lobby (bribe) U.S. politicians to implement laws which would allow them to break the Internet into tiers, so that they may give better access for sites who pay them more money. So websites from big TV networks, Hollywood studios and other large entities with deep pockets would get a lot more bandwidth, and would therefore work a lot faster and reach more people. On the other hand, you and I, the consumers, would get whatever meagre bandwidth that the big telcos feel like allowing us. This represents a fundamental shift in the way that the Internet works: the empowering thing about the Internet is that it allows anyone with access to become a publisher of information, everyone’s voice can be heard with equal opportunity. That is a bit of an idealization, but its close enough for our purposes. The new regulations would remove all of that, and make the Internet more like the cable TV networks – consumers pay for content, and publishers pay for bandwidth.

Even though this is only in the United States, the change would be profound for the world. The DNS root domains are located in the USA, for now, and a large portion of the content of the Internet lives in the USA. So breaking ‘Net Neutrality there would be a very bad thing. Luckily, those in charge really have a good understanding of how it all works! :P

Chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Ted Stevens, gave a public address to explain how he understands the Internet to work, and why breaking ‘Net Neutrality would be a good thing. If you want the whole story, listen to the speech here. If you want a summarized, and much funnier version of the now infamous “Series of Tubes” speech, see below.

If you’re not familiar with Ted Stevens, representative from Alaska, you may recall his successful lobby for the Bridge to Nowhere, a $233 million dollar bridge to a town of 50 people, so that they don’t have to ride the ferry that comes every 15 minutes. The bridge will cost $4.5 million per resident. I guess in a country whose government cooks its books to the tune of $2.3 trillion, anything goes.

Getting back to the funny part, since the Series of Tubes speech, ridicule on the Internet has been intense. It started on the super popular Daily Show, with Jon Stewart, which provided some excellent coverage of the speech, complete with explanatory diagrams directly from Ted Stevens’ mind. Its a great summary if you’re not interested in listening to the whole rambling, stuttering, almost incoherent speech.

Then came the techno remix of the speech, “DJ Ted’s Techno Tubes”, in mp3 format, which you can download here. It captures some highlights of the Series of Tubes speech: “Tubes! Tangled up tubes! The Internet is not a truck! Its a series of tubes!” Hilarious.

The latest incarceration is the Series of Tubes video to go along with the mp3. Watch it here, on YouTube. Another great contribution to the Internet culture.

Inside sources at The Stupidity Awards tell me that Ted Stevens is a nominee for the forthcoming 2006 World Stupidity Award. He has my vote!

Last year on Canada Day, I hiked from Banff up the west end of Mt. Rundle. This year, it was the other end, also known as “EEOR”, the East End of Rundle, just outside of Canmore. Rundle is indeed a huge mountain with many peaks, stretching from Banff to Canmore. We scrambled to the eastern-most peak. According to the Calgary Outdoors club, EEOR is a 6 to 7 hour difficult hike, to an elevation of 2700m. Maybe we found an easier route — it took us 1:40 to get up, and about the same to get down, even though we got a bit lost near the bottom. Although short, it was a sweet day! Check out the pix!