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Hacking Health in Hamilton Ontario - Let's hear that pitch!

What compelled me to register for a weekend Health Hackathon? Anyway, I could soon be up to my ears in it. A pubmed search on Health Hack...

Showing posts with label nanotechnology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nanotechnology. Show all posts

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Perception ethics and machine brain interfaces

Melanie Swan, aka, "La Blogga", has a great article/video on her blog which was also listed on the Institute for Ethics of Emerging Technology website entitled "Killer Apps of Cognitive Nanorobotics". The title alone is enough to suggest what is out there these days and what is someday possible, and thus having a remote semblance to ehealth and the purpose of my blog. She made the video in French and Spanish as well. The YouTube talk is called the "Introduction to Ethics of Perception in Nanocognition".  There is a longer, and I think much greater, version < here >.

The YouTube video is kind of fun because if you don't want to try and listen to the lecture in the different languages, you can also click the Icon for Transcript on the youtube dashboard (beside Statistics and Reports) and see a line number machine translation output of it, which is almost accurate. I say almost because the machine algorithms pick up "epic" instead of "ethic" frequently. It also transcribed "Azimovs Robotic Laws" as "Mom's Law of Robotics" (in the shorter Introduction video).

I liked the references to philosopher Henri Bergson who's ideas about creativity I have always valued. "Machine Ethics Interfaces"? In the realm of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI), the nanorobotic and perception technology is a little advanced or science fiction-like. You need to get some background in nanomedicine or reading Ray Kuzweil's articles about how nanorobotics injected into the brain will be able to alter perception, if not entirely create alternative virtual realities. On the other hand, current BCI (Emotiv, Personal Neuro, Muse, etc.) might be able to augment a kind of ethical space. My 2 bit intellectual comments on the article and the video lecture would be a waste of your time (and probably a challenge to your wit) so I recommend going to the source.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Trying a Dyson Sphere on for Size

Futurist and ethicist George Dvorsky wrote this article about how to build a Dyson Sphere. He makes nanotechnology robots building solar panels in the solar system by totally mining Mercury (and then Venus) for materials sound simple. I like the comment on the article by the guy who asks if mining Mercury - every last bit of it - is ethical. This reminds me to try and find a post on nanomedicine and ehealth - another subject to be considered by futurists and ethicists.
The wireless transmission of electricity from the solar arrays is a vision Nicholas Tesla would be proud of. How better to get the electricity to the Nissan Leafs we will all be driving, without waiting to plug in and recharge.