"We can dominate this naturally-occurring silo." Nope, not an insidious, self-perpetuating business-model at all. :-P
Seriously, though, they're unrelated so I'll stop with the jokes about "synergies". They're both clever designs catering to a specific purpose. Part of me really admires the ingenuity it takes to think-up such machines, build and test them. But, despite arguments that one of them is saving lives by removing human occupants, I have some serous moral hangups.
WRT the legs, they're nice but there's a couple of more innovative approaches. One uses implanted nerve-sensors to get signals from now-redundant nerves. Eg: if you lose an arm but the nerve-fibres terminating at your shoulder still work, they can now make use of 'em. Another possibility I'd like to see explored would use non-implant brain-sensors. As with all the best new tech these days, the "serious" research has chimps doing one or two things and but the "fun" stuff allows humans to play console games. In 20 years' time, your prosthetic legs will be powered by a Sony PS7.
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Date: 2009-12-17 02:51 am (UTC)Nope, not an insidious, self-perpetuating business-model at all. :-P
Seriously, though, they're unrelated so I'll stop with the jokes about "synergies".
They're both clever designs catering to a specific purpose. Part of me really admires the ingenuity it takes to think-up such machines, build and test them. But, despite arguments that one of them is saving lives by removing human occupants, I have some serous moral hangups.
WRT the legs, they're nice but there's a couple of more innovative approaches. One uses implanted nerve-sensors to get signals from now-redundant nerves. Eg: if you lose an arm but the nerve-fibres terminating at your shoulder still work, they can now make use of 'em.
Another possibility I'd like to see explored would use non-implant brain-sensors. As with all the best new tech these days, the "serious" research has chimps doing one or two things and but the "fun" stuff allows humans to play console games. In 20 years' time, your prosthetic legs will be powered by a Sony PS7.