MetaFilter posts tagged with cybernetics

Please don't post comments about the terminator or the borg.

idiopath — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:57:09 -0800

You probably think you know what cybernetics means, you are probably wrong. Has the field of cybernetics been discredited, or just mostly forgotten? It has been variously described as the science of communication and control, the art of defensible metaphors, and used in pop culture as a root word for cyborg. Try googling about cybernetics or anything related, and you will get noise (cybernetics is biological-mechanical interface the same way that neuropsychopharmacology is snorting coke off a prostitute's erect penis with a rolled up $100 bill), cutting trough this noise for others interested in the subject is a major motivation in making this post. As a "theory of everything" discipline, it may look like crackpottery at first glance, but it has had real results. Cybernetics has been used to connect a number of academic disciplines:

for starters. Its tangible discoveries include anti-aircraft weapons, the concept of an ecosystem, and your home thermostat.

Locked-In Syndrome

homunculus — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:17 -0800

The Unspeakable Odyssey of the Motionless Boy. "How much of our humanity are we prepared to cede to machines? This is a dilemma of the future, but it's not much of a concern for Erik Ramsey. Erik can't move. He can't blink his eyes. And he hasn't said a word since 1999. But now, thanks to an electrode that was surgically implanted in his brain and linked to a computer, his nine-year silence is about to end." [Via]

Dalek prototype

homunculus — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:50:28 -0800

Rise of the rat-brained robots. [Via]

Getting the bugs out (and about.)

cenoxo — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:58:22 -0800

Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robots — Overview: an experimental mechanism that uses a living Madagascan hissing cockroach atop a modified trackball to control a three-wheeled robot. If the cockroach moves left, the robot moves left. Infrared sensors also provide navigation feedback to the cockroach, striving to create a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as the CPU. Garnet Hertz, creator of Fly with Implanted Webserver and Cockroach with Wireless Video, has used Gromphadorhina portentosa on three generations of autonomous roachbots (YouTube video and Ars Electronica 2005 gallery).

How much RAM would you like with your brain, sir?

zerofoks — Thu, 13 Mar 2003 01:05:03 -0800

World's first brain prosthesis revealed. Well, first hippocampus replacement at least. If this is not a dead end for science (which I doubt), I am gonna get my soul fully digitalized in 2020, then spreading it on the whole net with some new version of a code-red virus. :-)

Tarrama — Fri, 22 Mar 2002 01:00:54 -0800

Professor becomes world's first cyborg Surgeons have carried out a ground-breaking operation on a cybernetics professor so that his nervous system can be wired up to a computer. It is hoped that the procedure could lead to a medical breakthrough for people paralysed by spinal cord damage, like Superman actor Christopher Reeve. Prof Warwick believes it also opens up the possibility of a sci-fi world of cyborgs, where the human brain can one day be upgraded with implants for extra memory, intelligence or X-ray vision. The medical possibilities with this are amazing, so why does it make me feel so uneasy?