Tag Archives: human enhancement

Growing into your prosthetics

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Fusing skin to metal is the secret to making prosthetics more comfortable and usable. In a July 13, 2011 posting, GrrlScientist at the Guardian Science blogs highlights this pioneering research,

… thanks to the work of Professor Gordon Blunn, Head of University College London’s Centre for Bio-Medical Engineering, and his colleagues, including Dr Noel Fitzpatrick, a veterinary surgeon. Professor Blunn has been developing groundbreaking metal prosthetic implants that provide comfort and improved mobility for amputee humans and animals.

… They found that in antlers, the bone structure under the skin is very different to that of the exposed bone.

“It was very porous, with lots of tiny holes, which the dermis [the inner layer of skin] webs its way into”, explained Professor Blunn. [emphasis mine]

This observation led to their breakthrough development, known as Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP), which uses a layer of porous and bioactive (hydroxyapatite-coated) surfaces that encourage adhesion by living tissues. This living “seal” prevents bacterial infections, thereby allowing surgeons to provide amputees with securely-attached limbs that carry weight in a natural way.

Currently, battery-powered sensors allow human amputees to consciously control the movement of downstream portions of the prosthetic limb, such as flexing the hand on a prosthetic arm.

As an excuse for including this item here on the blog and until I hear otherwise, I choose to think of those tiny holes as being at the nanoscale . Plus, I’ve written about prosthetics and human enhancement a number of times.  Here’s the first in a four-part series on Robots and Human Enhancement, July 22, 2009 posting.

As for Blunn’s work, GrrlScientist includes a video and pictures as well as more details about it.

Blood, memristors, cyborgs plus brain-controlled computers, prosthetics, and art

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The memristor, a circuit element that quite interests me [April 7, 2010 posting], seems to be moving from being a purely electrical engineering term to one that’s used metaphorically to describe biological processes in a way that is transforming my understanding of machine/human (and other animal) interfaces from a science fiction concept to reality.

March 2, 2011 Kate McAlpine wrote an article for the New Scientist which suggested that skin has memristive properties while noting that the same has been said of the brain. From Sweat ducts make skin a memristor,

Synapses, junctions between neurons in the brain, display electrical behaviour that depends on past activity and are said to behave like memristors. This has raised the prospect of using memristors as the basis of an artificial brain.

Now, by re-examining data from the early 1980s on the electrical conductivity of human skin in response to various voltages, Gorm Johnsen and his colleagues at the University of Oslo in Norway have uncovered a more prosaic example of memristive behaviour in nature.

They found that when a negative electrical potential is applied to skin on various parts of the arm, creating a current, that stretch of skin exhibits a low resistance to a subsequent current flowing through the skin. But if the first potential is positive relative to the skin, then a subsequent potential produces a current that meets with a much higher resistance. In other words, the skin has a memory of previous currents. The finding is due to be published in Physical Review E.
The researchers attribute skin’s memristor behaviour to sweat pores.

More recently, there’s been some excitement about a research team in India that’s working with blood so they can eventually create a ‘liquid memristor’. Rachel Courtland wrote a brief item on the ‘blood memristor’ on April 1, 2011 for the IEEE Tech Talk blog,

S.P. Kosta of the Education Campus Changa in Gujarat, India and colleagues have published a paper in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics showing that human blood changes its electrical resistance depending on how much voltage is applied. It also seems to retain memory of this resistance for at least five minutes.

The team says that makes human blood a memristor: the fourth in the family of fundamental circuit elements that includes the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor. Proposed in 1971, the memristor’s existence wasn’t proven until 2008, when HP senior fellow Stanley Williams and colleagues demonstrated a memristor device made of doped titanium dioxide.

There was also a March 30, 2011 news item about the Indian research titled, Blood simple circuitry for cyborgs, on Nanowerk, which provided this information,

They [the research team] constructed the laboratory-based biological memristor using a 10 ml test tube filled with human blood held at 37 Celsius into which two electrodes are inserted; appropriate measuring instrumentation was attached. The experimental memristor shows that resistance varies with applied voltage polarity and magnitude and this memory effect is sustained for at least five minutes in the device.

Having demonstrated memristor behavior in blood, the next step was to test that the same behavior would be observed in a device through which blood is flowing. This step was also successful. The next stage will be to develop a micro-channel version of the flow memristor device and to integrate several to carry out particular logic functions. This research is still a long way from an electronic to biological interface, but bodes well for the development of such devices in the future.

Kit Eaton in an April 4, 2011 article (Electronics Made from Human Blood Cells Suggest Cyborg Interfaces, Spark Nightmares) on the Fast Company website gives more details about possible future applications,

Ultimately, the fact that a biological system could be used to interact with a hard semiconductor system could revolutionize biomechanics. That’s because wiring devices like cochlear implants, nerve-triggered artificial limbs and artificial eyeballs into the body at the moment involves a terribly difficult integration of metal wiring–with all the associated risk of infection and rejection. Plus it’s really a very promising first step toward making a cyborg. Countdown to military interest in this tech in 5…4…3…

It should be noted that the team in India is working towards applications in neuroprosthetics. As for the Norwegian team with their ‘sweat duct/skin memristor’, the article did not specify what types of applications, if any, their work might lead to.

As evidenced by the research covered in these news items, the memristor seems to be drifting or, more accurately, developing a second identity/ghost identity as the term is applied to biological processes.

The body as a machine is a notion that’s been around for a while as has the notion of combining the two. The first notion is a metaphor while the second is a staple in science fiction which, in a minor way, has found a home in the real life practice of body hacking where someone implants a magnetic or computer chip into their body (my May 27, 2010 posting). So the memristor becoming a metaphor for certain biological processes doesn’t seem something new but rather the next step in a process that’s well on its way.

Two students at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada) recently announced that they had developed a brain-controlled prosthetic. From the March 30, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

Two Ryerson University undergraduate biomedical engineering students are changing the world of medical prosthetics with a newly developed prosthetic arm that is controlled by brain signals. The Artificial Muscle-Operated (AMO) Arm not only enables amputees more range of movement as compared to other prosthetic arms but it allows amputees to avoid invasive surgeries and could potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars. The AMO Arm is controlled by the user’s brain signals and is powered by ‘artificial muscles’ – simple pneumatic pumps and valves – to create movements. In contrast, traditional prosthetic limbs – which typically offer more limited movements – rely on intricate and expensive electrical and mechanical components.

Developed by third-year student Thiago Caires and second-year student Michal Prywata, the AMO Arm is controlled by the brain and uses compressed air as the main source of power. The digital device makes use of signals in the brain that continue to fire even after a limb is amputated. Users wear a head-set that senses a signal – for example, the thought “up” – and sends it wirelessly to a miniature computer in the arm. The computer then compares the signal to others in a database. The resulting information is sent to the pneumatic system, which in turn, activates the arm to create the correct movement. Simulating the expansion and contraction of real muscles, the system makes use of compressed air from a small, refillable tank in the user’s pocket.

I think what they mean is that the components are not traditionally electrical and mechanical but in fact informed by emerging technologies and the science that supports them. After all, the computer must run on some kind of electricity and brain activity (wireless signals from the brain will be controlling the prosthetic) is often described as electrical. The result is that the human and the machine are effectively made one since the prosthetic arm is controlled as if it were ‘biological’ arm.

On another part of the spectrum, Iraqui artist Wafaa Bilal made headlines recently when he had a camera implanted into the back of his head creating a third eye. Designed to be a one year project, the artist had to remove the camera when he developed an infection at the site of one of the metal posts used to anchor the camera to his head. From the Feb. 11, 2011 BBC news item,

An artist who had a camera implanted into the back of his head has been forced to remove it after his body rejected part of the device.

Iraqi-born Wafaa Bilal had surgery last week to remove one of three posts holding the camera in place as it posed a risk of infection.

The camera had been taking a photo every minute as part of a year-long project.

Wafaa Bilal and camera (image downloaded from BBC website)

(The artist would like to try it again but, in the meantime, has slung the camera around his neck as a substitute.)

In Bilal’s case, the body is being significantly altered as the machine (camera) is implanted in a place (back of head) where no animal has them located.

What I’m getting at with all of this is that at the same time we seem to be expanding the memristor’s meaning from a term used to describe a concept in electrical engineering to include biological processes, we are exploring new ways of integrating machinery into our bodies. In effect our relationships to our bodies and machines are changing and that change can be traced in the language we use to describe ourselves.
 

Nanotechnology-enabled mineral foam wins Cleantech award

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The award is for developing a product which uses waste materials such as mine tailings, “high carbon” fly ash, etc. to create a composite which provides an alternative to cement. From the news item on Azonano,

ATI-Composites focuses on the development of light weight concrete or mineral foam which has the potential to impact the Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) market, the Structural Insulated Panels (SIP) market, as well as the pre-cast industry. The technology utilizes waste materials such as mine tailings, Class C, class F or “high carbon” fly ash, and/or agricultural waste such as rice hulls. The high strength, Fire Resistant nano-technology-based binder products (alternate to cement) can include ocean water use with no compromise in strength and performance. This is extremely significant with regard to water conservation and the reduction in GHG emissions as the emerging world transitions from rural to more urban population distribution.

You can find out more about the company here at its website. From the front page,

ATI-Composites is a privately owned, Canadian company dedicated to the research, development, production and code approvals of unique building products, systems and (fire retardant) components.

The company has operated in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for over 12 years; the principals have been involved in product development, marketing and building code approvals for more than 20 years.

As for the competition (from the news item on Azonano),

The Clean 15 cleantech competition connects visionary large companies with Canadian cleantech opportunities. The relationships are intended to facilitate commercialization for Canada’s cleantech researchers and developers, as well as support and stimulate the country’s cleantech economy.

Human enhancement movie: Fixed

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Gregor Wolbring’s blog name really does say it: Nano and Nano- Bio, Info, Cogno, Neuro, Synbio, Geo, Chem… The more I’ve investigated nanotechnology, the more I’ve come to realize that all the sciences are connected.

I have touched on human enhancement issues before (May 27, 2010 most recently) since prosthetics are increasingly made of nanomaterials. Coincidentally or not the notions about being human are changing as prosthetics become increasingly sophisticated and are seen as enhancements rather than as inferior replacements or aides.

This morning I found, on Gregor’s blog, a documentary movie trailer that raises some of these questions and which features him amongst other philosophers and grade schoolers discussing human enhancement. The movie is titled, Fixed,

From the About page on Gregor’s blog,

Hi everybody, My name is Gregor Wolbring. I am an Ableism ethics and governance scholar, a biochemist, ethicist, governance of science and technology scholar , ability studies and governance scholar, disability studies,health research, implications of Nanotechnology, Converging Technologies, Synthetic Biology scholar. Beside that I am interested in social entrepreneurship, working with youth, social implications, human rights.

As for the film, I found this (ETA Aug. 24, 2015: The link is no longer  anchored to a ‘Fixed’ webpage) at the University of California, Santa Cruz,

Fixed is a video documentary that explores the burgeoning field of “human enhancement” technologies from the perspective of individuals with disabilities. Fixed uses the current debates surrounding human enhancement technologies (i.e. bionic limbs, brain machine interfaces, prenatal screening technologies such as PGD or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, etc.) to tackle larger questions about disability, inequality, and citizenship. This documentary asks the question, “Will these technologies ‘liberate’ humanity, or will they create even more inequality?”

I wasn’t able to find much about Regan Brashear, the filmmaker.

Researcher infects self with computer virus

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It’s called body hacking—the practice of adding a magnetic chip or computer chip to your body—and a UK researcher recently became the first person to deliberately infect a computer chip he’d previously inserted into his body. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Dr Mark Gasson, from the School of Systems Engineering [University of Reading], contaminated a computer chip which had been inserted into his hand as part of research into human enhancement and the potential risks of implantable devices.

These results could have huge implications for implantable computing technologies used medically to improve health, such as heart pacemakers and cochlear implants, and as new applications are found to enhance healthy humans.

Dr. Gasson goes a little further than pacemakers and the like in his speculations,

“I believe it is necessary to acknowledge that our next evolutionary step may well mean that we all become part machine as we look to enhance ourselves. Indeed we may find that there are significant social pressures to have implantable technologies, either because it becomes as much of a social norm as say mobile phones, or because we’ll be disadvantaged if we do not. However we must be mindful of the new threats this step brings.” [emphases mine]

An interesting contrast to last week’s discussion of synthetic biology (on the occasion of Craig Venter’s May.20.10 announcement) where the focus is on creating new life forms, this more closely resembles the biotech discussion with its emphasis on genetic modifications and transgenic organisms although in this case, it’s not two biological organisms which are being grafted together but a biological organism and a machine.

I first came across body hacking last year in Tracy Picha’s article in Flare magazine’s August 2009 issue (blog entry here and here in my series on human enhancement and robots) but was focused on related questions.

This time after doing a little research about body hacking specifically, I found the queen of body hackers, Quinn Norton who is an early adopter (she hacked herself in 2005), a journalist, and a public speaker on the phenomenon. There’s a 2007 article by Cory Doctorow in Boing,  Boing (here) which leads you to a slide show put together by Norton, there’s a YouTube clip (here) of a talk Norton gave at the 23rd  (2007?) Chaos Communication Congress (Wikipedia entry about this hacker’s conference). If you’re squeamish (I am), you may not want to view Norton’s slide show or talk as she mentions there’s blood. From the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress webpage about Norton’s presentation,

What happens when we leave behind cosmetics and start to modify our bodies and minds to enhance who we are and what we can do? In this talk, journalist Quinn Norton explores how technology and flesh are coming together.

She’ll explain what’s possible and what people are doing, inside the established medical system and in the growing grey and black markets of body hacking. She’ll touch on her own experiences and talk about what’s coming next- and the ethical questions we will soon face as people choose to become something post human.

In September of 2005 journalist Quinn Norton began to explore the world of functional body modification with an implanted rare earth magnet that gave her a sense for Electro-Magnetic fields- until it began to go wrong. Since then she’s research the edges of what’s currently possible and what’s likely to become possible in the near term. Technology that was the traditional purview of the medical establishment is migrating into the hands of body hackers, and the medical establishment itself is finding ways to enhance humans, not just cure disease, and faces a new dilemma about whether and who should be enhanced. All of these advancements come with health dangers and unanticipated possibilities, as well as an ethical debate about what it means to be human. This talk will touch on the latest medical advances in neurological understanding and interface as well as physical enhancements in sports and prosthetics. But more time will be given to how the body hackers and renegades of the world are likely to go forward with or without societal permission. Quinn will touch on sensory extension, home surgery, medical tourism, nervous system interfaces, and controlling parts of our bodies and minds once thought to be nature’s fate for us.

How society is likely to react to enhancement technologies or enhanced humans? Early adopters face dangers including pain, disfigurement, and death- how will that shape progress? Technology and flesh are going to come together, but will they come together in you? Bring your own stories of modification, and you own ideas about what constitutes post human- and whether that’s a good or bad thing.

I don’t know if a practice that was transgressive in 2005 has become ‘normalized’ in 2010 such that an academic, Dr. Mark Gasson, can choose to study a hacked body (his own) as part of his research but it seems to have been rapidly adopted. Even Vancouver (which I consider to be a bit of a backwater) had body hackers by January 2006 as Gillian Shaw of the Vancouver Sun notes in her article,

Amal Graafstra and his girlfriend Jennifer Tomblin never have to worry about forgetting the keys to her Vancouver home or locking themselves out of Graafstra’s Volkswagen GT.

They can simply walk up to the door and, with a wave of a hand, the lock will open. Ditto for the computer. No more struggling to remember complicated passwords and no more lost keys.

As Graafstra puts it, he could be buck naked and still be carrying the virtual keys to unlock his home.

“I did it for the very real function of replacing keys. …

Think of the tiny ampoule that your vet implants under the skin of your dog or cat for identification if the animal is lost. All it takes is a special reader flashed over the skin and Fido can be on his way home.

Graafstra did much the same, only the three-by-13 millimetre chip was put under the skin of his left hand by a surgeon. A second one, measuring two-by-12 millimetres, is in his right hand.

Using his computer skills, Graafstra was able to modify the locks on his car and his house so they would be activated by a built-in reader.

There is a picture that goes with the story if you want to see what Graafstra’s ‘chipped’ hand looks like.

Dr. Mark Gasson’s chip, like Graafstra’s, gives building access but also includes mobile phone access and allows Gasson to be tracked and profiled. As for what happened when Gasson’s chip was infected—two things,

Once infected, the chip corrupted the main system used to communicate with it. Should other devices have been connected to the system, the virus would have been passed on.

[and]

While it is exciting to be the first person to become infected by a computer virus in this way, I found it a surprisingly violating experience because the implant is so intimately connected to me but the situation is potentially out of my control. [emphasis mine]

If you want to know more about the experience, Gasson will be presenting at the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] International Symposium on Technology and Society in Australia next month (June 2010).

ETA May 28, 2010: Amal Graafstra will be at the IEEE meeting (aka ISTAS 2010) to offer his thoughts about it all. I’m not sure if he’s presenting or if this will be done on a more informal basis. If you want a preview, you can read this posting on the Amal Graafstra blog.

On a related note, I have previously posted on the idea of implanting devices in the brain:

Stephen Fry, Cambridge University, and nanotechnology (read the part about the video and Mark Welland’s speculations about a telephone in your brain)

Nano devices in your brain (a device that could melt into your brain)

Drawing pictures with your eyes at FutureEverything digital celebration

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The title is meant literally, i.e., drawing pictures using your eyes only. What makes the feat even more extraordinary is that the designers hacked a Playstation 3 webcam to create the Eyewriter and (from the BBC article by Zoe Kleinman) “You could put it together at home without a soldering iron for about £30.”

The project won first prize at the FutureEverything festival in Manchester, England. From the BBC article,

Artists, musicians, engineers and hackers from around the world recently descended on Manchester for a three day celebration of digital culture.

Now in its 15th year, FutureEverything (previously called Futuresonic) has quietly established itself as an annual gathering for the technology avant garde.

With a £10,000 prize up for grabs for the best innovation, the stakes were high for the exhibitors at a local pop-up art gallery called The Hive.

…

The first prize went to Eyewriter, a team who developed a pair of glasses designed to track and record eye movement, enabling people to draw pictures using their eyes.

It was designed for Californian graffiti artist Tony Quan, who has ALS, a form of motor neurone disease. His eyes are the only part of his body that he can move.

Kleinman’s article features details about other projects that were shown at the festival as well as a video which features the artist, Tony Quan, putting the Eyewriter to the test, and an interview with the festival founder and organizer.

Something like the Eyewriter points to exciting possibilities for leveling the playground so everyone (no matter what physical limitations they may have) can participate. It also points to the benefits of hacking.

Life extension as human enhancement

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On the heels my recent posting about human enhancement (here), I found an item on the Foresight Institute website about life extension. The poster, Christine Peterson, is responding to an article at The Mark (from their About page) “…  Canada’s daily online forum for news, commentary, and debate.” The article, Nanotechnology and Life Extension; 70, 80, or 90 could be the new 64; but is living longer necessarily a good thing?, is by Kerry Bowman and Alan Warner. From the April 14, 2010 article,

It may sound like science fiction, but with innovations in medical nanotechnology, human beings could be looking at a life extension of years or even decades. Nanotech involves microsystems that work on a microscopic scale to potentially alter our physiology and drastically improve our immune systems through improved diagnostic and surgery techniques, gene therapy, cell repair, and more. In the future, we may even be able to use implanted devices to physiologically monitor our bodies – a breakthrough in disease prevention and treatment.

I find the piece a little problematic since these writers don’t seem to know much about nanotechnology or clinical medicine. As you can see in the excerpt that follows, they seem better versed in history,

Life extension is not new. In ancient Rome, the average lifespan was around 23 years; today, the average global life expectancy is 64 years. Demographers tell us there has been an average gain in life expectancy of about three months a year for the last 160 years and that this is steadily increasing. To date, life extension has not necessarily been intentional, often the by-product of our efforts to improve medicine or quality of the life of the elderly.

As far as I can tell, the writers don’t really need to mention nanotechnology as it’s irrelevant to their main topic, life extension which has been occurring and is continuing to do so for reasons entirely unrelated to nanotechnology. Christine Peterson offers a different perspective in her May 10, 2010 response,

There is a simple answer to this debating. Boomers should stick around, keep working, and help pay off the national debt(s). And while we’re at it, we can help clean up the environment. It’s not fair to leave these tasks as burdens on the next generation.

I applaud the sentiment. I’ve never understood why people so proudly proclaim  the next generation as ‘hope for the future’ and then announce that the newbies will be responsible for fixing the previous generations’ mistakes.

May 2010 issue of The Nano Bite, the NISE Net newsletter

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It’s National Children’s Book Week in the US this week which I know because of the NISE Net (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) May 2010 newsletter. From the newsletter,

→ What’s Smaller than a Pygmy Shrew? by Robert E. Wells An examination of the very small, down to molecules, atoms, electrons, and quarks.  In addition, the University of Wisconsin-Madison MRSEC developed a lesson plan for middle schoolers based on the book.
→ Is that Robot Real? by Rae Ostman, Catherine McCarthy, Emily Maletz and Stephen Hale. Learn what makes a robot a robot, then step down in size and find out which robots are real and which are science fiction.  You can download Is that Robot Real for free from the nisenet.org catalog here or purchase it from lulu.com or amazon.com.   In other robot- and children’s book-related news: Kim Duncan adapted the NISE Net’s Shrinking Robots! program for Story Time Science at the Madison Children’s Museum.  The adaptation includes a reading of Hello, Robots by Bob Staacke.  You can find the full adaptation in the comments section of the Shrinking Robots! program on nisenet.org.
→ How Small is Nano: Measuring Different Things by Catherine McCarthy, Rae Ostman, Emily Maletz and Stephen Hale. This book can also be downloaded for free from the nisenet.org catalog or purchased at lulu.com or amazon.com.

For interested parties, NISE Net offers a program complete with lesson plan and images called Shrinking Robots, from the Shrinking Robots program,

Stickybot, photo and video: Mark Cutkosky, Stanford University

They have added something new to their catalog,

We recently posted a new program to the nisenet.org catalog: Nanosilver: Breakthrough or Biohazard? The presentation guides visitors through the questions What is nanosilver? Why is it used in consumer products such as teddy bears and food containers? and How safe is nanosilver, and how might it affect the environment?

This month’s Nano Haiku seems more like a NISE Net haiku,

Nano Haiku

Network friends, hello.
Are you social? Tell us where!
In your profile, please.
By Karen Pollard of the Science Museum of Minnesota.

One last item, Clark Miller has posted about human enhancement on the NISE Net blog. Miller is the Associate Director of the Arizona State University (ASU), Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. From his April 27, 2010 post,

The pursuit of science to enhance human performance raises profound questions for society. Yet, according to a recent study we conducted at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU, knowledge about nanotechnology and human enhancement is extremely low. This suggests the topic might be a good one for science museums to tackle. The full results of our survey will be published soon, but if any of you would like to find out more about the findings or are thinking about developing an exhibit or program around human enhancement, I’d be glad to talk further.

Perhaps the most important finding from the study is that the US public is, overall, quite skeptical regarding the prospect of human enhancement. This might be expected of sports, given the negative press that steroid use has gotten in recent years, but survey respondents also strongly objected to the use of enhancement technologies that would help in getting a job, taking a college entrance exam, or running for public office.

I have posted on this topic most recently here and in a four part series July 22, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 24, 2009 and  July 27, 2009. Gregor Wolbring at the University of Calgary writes on this issue extensively (from his blog called: Nano and Nano- Bio, Info, Cogno, Neuro, Synbio, Geo, Chem…),

Hi everybody, My name is Gregor Wolbring. I am an Ableism ethics and governance scholar, a biochemist, ethicist, governance of science and technology scholar , ability studies and governance scholar, disability studies,health research, implications of Nanotechnology, Converging Technologies, Synthetic Biology scholar. Beside that I am interested in social entrepreneurship, working with youth, social implications, human rights. My webpage is here; My biweekly column at innovationwatch.com is here ; My new blog on Ableism Ethics and Governance; A blog to which I also contribute called What Sorts of People

Andy Miah from the University of the West of Scotland also writes extensively on the topic of human enhancement here. From his About page,

“Andy Miah is the Renaissance man of the enhancement enlightenment”
Kristi Scott, H+ Magazine, 2009

My research is informed by an interest in applied ethics and policy related to emerging technology. I have spent considerable time researching the Internet along with human enhancement technologies. This includes the implications of pervasive wireless connectivity and the convergence of technological systems and the modification of biological matter through nanotechnology and gene transfer. Many of these studies are increasingly transdisciplinary and being characterised as NBIC (nano-bio-info-cognitive) inquiries. Recent work has particularly examined the role of art and design in an era of biotechnology, often described as bioart or transgenic art.

I have published over 100, solo-authored academic articles in refereed journals, books, e-zines, and national media press, recently including Bioethics and Film, Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity, and Politics and Leisure. I also write for leading newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, the Times Higher Education Supplement. …

Both Gregor and Andy offer some thought-provoking perspectives for anyone interested in the area of human enhancement.

Miah and the Olympics; birth of the buckyball

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Given that the Winter Olympics are due to open later this week in Vancouver (Canada), there is a  flurry of interest in gene doping and other means of enhancing athletic performance. (I’m mentioning this because developments in elite athletics find their way into consumer markets and because of my interest in human enhancement.) For example, the University of British Columbia (UBC) is hosting,

Sport, Ethics and Technology: Is High Performance Sport Inconsistent with Ideals and Ethics?

Date/time: Monday, February 8, 8 p.m.

Location: Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
University of British Columbia
6265 Crescent Road, Vancouver
For a map and closest parking, visit: www.maps.ubc.ca?130

As the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games approach, Olympic athletes will come under close public scrutiny.  New technology will offer unexpected advantages that will challenge the boundaries of what is considered a level playing field.

And given those challenges, how do we determine what is ethical and fair? These questions are explored with Richard Pound followed by a panel discussion with Jim Rupert, Beckie Scott and other participants.

*Richard Pound is a former Olympic swimmer, McGill Chancellor and World Anti-Doping Agency Chairman.

*Jim Rupert is an associate professor in the School of Human Kinetics at UBC. His research looks at future trends in doping and doping control as it pertains to genetics and “gene-doping.”

*Beckie Scott is a former Olympic cross-country ski racer who currently serves as a member of the IOC.

This event is one of five provocative dialogues presented by UBC’s Sport and Society series during February and March. Find details at: http://bit.ly/9LuMXO

Friday, Feb. 5, 2010, the lead article in Section B of The Vancouver Sun by Margaret Munro was (print version), Gene Doping; The latest way to boost performance. The article noted that Andy Miah, at the University of the West of Scotland, in contrast to Olivier Rabin and Theodore Friedmann, the experts (whose study was just published in the journal Science) quoted in the article, suggests that gene doping may be safer than current methods of enhancing performance.

I have mentioned Andy before (here in my series on human enhancement and here regarding a book he edited on art and the future). His response to the Rabin/Friedmann concerns is here. An abstract of Rabin and Friedmann’s article is available here but the full article is behind a paywall.

Andy was also featured in an article in The WestEnder (a Vancouver community newspaper) by Jackie Wong titled (in the print version), New-media [sic] centre seeks to democratize Olympic coverage. From the article,

“We can say that Vancouver 2010 is the first truly digital Olympic Games,” says Andy Miah, chair in Ethics and Emerging Technologies in the School of Media, Language, and Music at the University of the West of Scotland. Miah has been researching new media and the Olympics for 10 years, at six Olympic Games.

Andy has written an essay about new media and its role at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics at Huffington Post. From the essay,

…. perhaps the most interesting dimension of Vancouver’s media culture is the rise of three other media entities, the first of which is the W2 Centre on Hastings, led by Irwin Oostindie. W2 is a cultural and arts infrastructure, serving the independent sector. It will run an extensive programme of art, debate and cultural experiences, some of which will have buy in from the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), while other elements will be more independent. To this end, W2 will serve as a bridge between the privileged participants and the critical commentators around Games time. For example, they will host the Legal Observers programme, headed up by the Pivot Legal Society and BC Civil Liberties Association, which will monitor the operations of Olympic security during Games time. It will also host a cultural collaboration between the London 2012 and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiads, as part of the UK’s Abandon Normal Devices festival, led by England’s Northwest.

You can read more here.

I’ve now mentioned the two areas that Andy sees as the two major controversies from the Vancouver Olympics, doping and new media activism.

One final note on this, Andy will be bringing a team of about 10 students from his university in Scotland who will be blogging from this site, Culture@tO Vancouver 2010. I’m not sure what the start date will be, presumably Feb. 12, 2010 when the games open.

Bucky balls are the popular name for the buckminsterfullerene (aka fullerene). Named for Buckminster Fuller, the molecule resembles one of Fuller’s geodesic domes. (There’s a geodesic dome in Vancouver which houses our local science centre and during the Olympics it will be home to the Sochi [host for 2014 Olympics], Russia pavilion.) The fullerene was first discovered at Rice University in Texas and this year marks its 25th anniversary and what many describe as the birth of nanotechnology. In celebration, the university is hosting a technical symposium.  From the news item on Nanowerk,

On Oct. 11-13, the best minds in carbon nanotechnology will gather at Rice University for a technical symposium during the Year of Nano, a series of events at the university celebrating the 25th anniversary of nano’s big bang.

Hmmm … I may have gone a little ‘link happy’ today. Tomorrow I should be looking at nano sponges and patents. Later this week I expect to be posting my interview with Dr. Cheryl Geisler, the new dean for Simon Fraser University’s new Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT).

nanoBIDS; military robots from prototype to working model; prosthetics, the wave of the future?

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The Nanowerk website is expanding. From their news item,

Nanowerk, the leading information provider for all areas of nanotechnologies, today added to its nanotechnology information portal a new free service for buyers and vendors of micro- and nanotechnology equipment and services. The new application, called nanoBIDS, is now available on the Nanowerk website. nanoBIDS facilitates the public posting of Requests for Proposal (RFPs) for equipment and services from procurement departments in the micro- and nanotechnologies community. nanoBIDS is open to all research organizations and companies.

I checked out the nanoBIDS page and found RFP listings from UK, US (mostly), and Germany. The earliest are dated Jan.25, 2010 so this site is just over a week old and already has two pages.

The Big Dog robot (which I posted about briefly here) is in the news again. Kit Eaton (Fast Company) whose article last October first alerted me to this device now writes that the robot is being put into production. From the article (Robocalypse Alert: Defense Contract Awarded to Scary BigDog),

The contract’s been won by maker Boston Dynamics, which has just 30 months to turn the research prototype machines into a genuine load-toting, four-legged, semi-intelligent war robot–“first walk-out” of the newly-designated LS3 is scheduled in 2012.

LS3 stands for Legged Squad Support System, and that pretty much sums up what the device is all about: It’s a semi-autonomous assistant designed to follow soldiers and Marines across the battlefield, carrying up to 400 pounds of gear and enough fuel to keep it going for 24 hours over a march of 20 miles.

They have included a video of the prototype on a beach in Thailand and as Eaton notes, the robot is “disarmingly ‘cute'” and, to me, its legs look almost human-shaped, which leads me to my next bit.

I found another article on prosthetics this morning and it’s a very good one. Written by Paul Hochman for Fast Company [ETA March 23, 2022: an updated version of the article is now on Genius.com], Bionic Legs, iLimbs, and Other Super-Human Prostheses delves further into the world where people may be willing to trade a healthy limb for a prosthetic. From the article,

There are many advantages to having your leg amputated.

Pedicure costs drop 50% overnight. A pair of socks lasts twice as long. But Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, goes a step further. “It’s actually unfair,” Herr says about amputees’ advantages over the able-bodied. “As tech advancements in prosthetics come along, amputees can exploit those improvements. They can get upgrades. A person with a natural body can’t.”

I came across both a milder version of this sentiment and a more targeted version (able-bodied athletes worried about double amputee Oscar Pistorius’ bid to run in the Olympics rather than the Paralympics) when I wrote my four part series on human enhancement (July 22, 23, 24 & 27, 2009).

The Hochman article also goes on to discuss some of the aesthetic considerations (which I discussed in the same posting where I mentioned the BigDog robots). What Hochman does particularly well is bringing all this information together and explaining how the lure of big money (profit) is stimulating market development,

Not surprisingly, the money is following the market. MIT’s Herr cofounded a company called iWalk, which has received $10 million in venture financing to develop the PowerFoot One — what the company calls the “world’s first actively powered prosthetic ankle and foot.” Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs recently gave Brown University’s Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine a $7 million round of funding, on top of the $7.2 million it provided in 2004. And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) has funded Manchester, New Hampshire-based DEKA Research, which is developing the Luke, a powered prosthetic arm (named after Luke Skywalker, whose hand is hacked off by his father, Darth Vader).

This influx of R&D cash, combined with breakthroughs in materials science and processor speed, has had a striking visual and social result: an emblem of hurt and loss has become a paradigm of the sleek, modern, and powerful. Which is why Michael Bailey, a 24-year-old student in Duluth, Georgia, is looking forward to the day when he can amputate the last two fingers on his left hand.

“I don’t think I would have said this if it had never happened,” says Bailey, referring to the accident that tore off his pinkie, ring, and middle fingers. “But I told Touch Bionics I’d cut the rest of my hand off if I could make all five of my fingers robotic.”

This kind of thinking is influencing surgery such that patients are asking to have more of their bodies removed.

The article is lengthy (by internet standards) and worthwhile as it contains nuggets such as this,

But Bailey is most surprised by his own reaction. “When I’m wearing it, I do feel different: I feel stronger. As weird as that sounds, having a piece of machinery incorporated into your body, as a part of you, well, it makes you feel above human. It’s a very powerful thing.”

So the prosthetic makes him “feel above human,” interesting, eh? It leads to the next question (and a grand and philosophical one it is), what does it mean to be human? At least lately, I tend to explore that question by reading fiction.

I have been intrigued by Catherine Asaro‘s Skolian Empire series of books. The series features human beings (mostly soldiers) who have something she calls ‘biomech’  in their bodies to make them smarter, stronger, and faster. She also populates worlds with people who’ve had (thousands of years before) extensive genetic manipulation so they can better adapt to their new homeworlds. Her characters represent different opinions about the ‘biomech’ which is surgically implanted usually in adulthood and voluntarily. Asaro is a physicist who writes ‘hard’ science fiction laced with romance. She handles a great many thorny social questions in the context of this Skolian Empire that she has created where the technologies (nano, genetic engineering, etc.)  that we are exploring are a daily reality.