Page 40 - 201011 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - November 2010

Visions of the Future – Sim Card Man Visions of the Future – are going to happen anyway. There is nothing pervasive enough and powerful enough and Sim Card Man with its finger on the pulse, quick enough, to Continued from Page 38 stop it all happening with the power to advise to the contrary. So everyone get in line. I believe no greater horror lies in wait for our human Are we being conned by a huge condition. If I am wrong, in my point of view conspiracy controlled by a small hidden and the extrapolation of my ideas, I hope I have powerful cartel of alien sponsored genotypes just given you an interesting read. But what if I within the governments of superpowers? A am right! Has the genie carrying our futures as cartel that reaches past presidents and prime an artificial facsimile of our natural selves, one ministers? What a chilling thought this is! we may call SIM CARD MAN, already escaped I do not want to hedge this with an from the bottle? appeal to the emotions. But I cannot help feeling that each time I look into the eyes of my children, as all parents do with their own, and I SIM Card Man Even extrapolate their futures with a hope of Closer beneficence and well being, an army of unseen agents is creeping into the planet's information Sources: 'Part moth, part machine: disseminating portals and the power points of Cyborgs are on the move' 'Cyborgs walk human society, to steal from them their like a lamprey, dance like a moth' by individual scope for a naturally contrived Duncan Graham - Rowe New Scientist controlled zap to the brain. eternal existence. Incidentally, an eternal 3rd November 2010 Piggy-backing a live organism on a scheme of existence was the only exigency the robot is less than ideal, so the goal is to recreate great teacher Jesus Christ thought worth biological circuits in silicon, says Mussa-Ivaldi. promising during his sojourn in a physical life By tapping into the mind of a sex-mad This is difficult, as it is not clear how individual on this planet, when he said, "Believe in me and moth or the spine of a lamprey, robots neurons work, let alone vast circuits of them. I will give you eternal life." These unseen can track scents or walk like a living But some progress has been made, in particular human agents that are themselves perhaps organism. with central pattern generators (CPGs): self- genetically loaded with the contrived juice of an contained oscillating circuits that exist in the artificially machined alien, are unknowingly A MALE silk moth gets a whiff of spines of many vertebrates and which are themselves setting in train an inertia that will pheromones and begins a complex search involved in locomotion. CPGs are among many claim the most precious natural factorisation we pattern to track down a potential mate - a brief types of behavioural circuits in the brain and all have of ourselves – a soul: The only and surge forward, an intricate zigzag, a sweeping spine that carry out routine tasks for us, exclusive means to an eternal life. loop. For this deluded moth there is no female to allowing us to walk or grasp an object with little It is easy to get paranoid about find, and its movements are enacted by a or no conscious input. technological change. But when we deal with wheeled robot plugged into its lovesick brain. Ralph Etienne-Cummings at Johns the radicalisation of our very existential base we This cyborg moth is the latest Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, better be darn sure there is no component of our demonstration of how scientists coax complex has used recordings of CPGs taken from a individuality that continues past death. If there behaviour from robots by tapping into the lamprey to generate walking motions in a pair is such a component, we cannot get paranoid nervous systems of living organisms, co-opting of robotic legs, which he calls RedBot. While enough. algorithms that already exist in nature. lampreys can't walk themselves, of course, their I have to say I hold no truck with "Biological organisms can solve problems that CPGs are similar to the human CPGs that create organised religion. But I have the greatest and are too difficult for computer engineers," says rhythmic commands to drive our leg muscles. In deepest respect for the beautiful minds that Ferdinando Mussa-Ivaldi, a pioneer in the field RedBot, Etienne-Cummings has demonstrated authored the great faiths. Jeshua Ben Joseph at Northwestern University in Evanston, that lamprey CPG signals can be used to create (Jesus Christ), Gautama Buddha, the great Illinois. natural gaits - walking, running and going up prophet Mohammed of Islam, and so many The mothborg's dance is a strategy to steps, adapting in real time to a changing other visionaries of a myriad faiths who saw the locate the source of the pheromone. Chemical environment. grand wonder of the natural sense of the natural plume tracking, as mathematicians call it, could However, for Etienne-Cummings and world and held it precious. prove very useful for sniffing out explosives. colleagues, RedBot is merely a stepping stone. I believe the authors of the great Programming machines to track a chemical Their aim is to replicate the circuits in a chip religions came to this planet and the materially plume efficiently is still too challenging, says and implant it into people with spinal injuries so living process to warn us that artificially created mothborg creator Atsushi Takashima at the that they can walk again. They have already life and intelligence is the curse of our Universe. Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan. He shown this is possible in paralysed cats. A curse that can take away the most significant recently presented the research at the While reproducing human brain component of our individual selves. One that is International Conference on Intelligent Robotic circuitry in any detail is still a long way off, not of atoms and survives beyond the Systems in Taipei, Taiwan. "Chemicals do not Shigeru Sakurazawa and colleagues at the contrivance of atoms. We turned these great make a smooth gradient in the air," he says. But Future University Hakodate in Hokkaido, visionaries into religious tribal leaders with our these insects have evolved mechanisms for Japan, have found a way to tap into the human own social and psychological invectives and solving the task even when the weather is nervous system as a whole, and without so poisons. We hitched them up to our gross self windy. much as a scalpel. An on-screen robot centred interpretations and grotesque distortions Takashima and colleagues immobilised navigating a simple maze takes inputs from skin and claimed these as their teachings. Any their moth on a small wheeled robot and placed sensors worn by an observer. scholarship into the books and authorities two recording electrodes into nerves running As the robot bumbles about its simulated thrown out of the religious lexicons by our down its neck to monitor commands the moth environment, the skin sensors detect when the forefathers amply demonstrates the lies and uses to steer. By rerouting these signals to person anticipates an impending collision, and misinterpretations that were made of their motors in the robot, they found that they could the software uses these signals to alter the thoughts and deeds. Sometimes deliberately. Is emulate the moth's plume-tracking behaviour. robot's behaviour. it any wonder that Science sees these great Over the last decade similar techniques have The distinction between first-person and teachings as irrelevant. I wonder why! been used to create a menagerie of cyborgs, third-person becomes very confusing for the I suppose the point the progenitors of the from fish-brained bots that can follow a light volunteer who is rigged up to the robot, says new world are making is that their virtual source to living automata, such as rats and Sakurazawa. To anyone else watching, the worlds, their virtual truths, and virtual solitudes cockroaches, that can be steered with a remote- "skin-bot" seems, well, less robotic. []