When we think of cyborg , we run to think of the images we eff from democratic acculturation . But because movies and television have to be visually entertaining , they tend to draw mainly the kind of cyborg ascent that just look flashy – humankind with golem arms and wooden leg , prosthetics , etc .
And of course , that sort of cyborg is increasingly present in reality , from cochlear implants to Oscar Pistorius . But mechanical modifications to the human consistence are in reality the least of import way that we are about to acquire to modify ourselves . Far more transformative will be the ways in which we elevate our mind .
On that note , here is a story from Natureabout a company that take to be selling a engineering that permit you to shock your brain to make you a better video gamer . The gadget use tDCS , or trans - cranial Direct Current Stimulation , which seems to me to be the very first fundamental form of Machine - Mind Interface . From the clause :
For US$ 249 a company in the United States is promising to institutionalize queer and competitive histrion of computer secret plan an unusual headset . The equipment , the caller claims , will change electronic gamers into electronic - gamers . At the trace of a button , the headset will institutionalize a surge of electrical energy through their prefrontal lens cortex . It promises to increase brain plasticity and make synapsis fire faster , to help gamers repel more distance encroacher and raid more tomb …
Would it work ? It might or it might not . Nobody have it off . All we know for sure is that the technology , known as transcranial direct - current input ( tDCS ) , is probable to soon get into the hands , and onto the heads , of many more people …
The recent surge in interest in tDCS piggybacks on an increasing number of academic field of its potential drop to boost cognitive power , which themselves build up on decades - old workplace using electric stimulation of the learning ability to treat ailments such as depression … Last calendar month , researchers at the University of Oxford , UK , published a subject suggesting that random electrical stimulation of the mentality could improve mathematical ability [ . ]
Whether or not tDCS twist out to be much useless , or too life-threatening to use , the swelled content here is clear . Scientists and the world have turn their attention toward cognitive boost cyborg engineering , and the combine weight of scientific inquiry and consumer demand normally proves to be an irresistible force .
In other word , the cyborg revolution is underway , and it ’s all about the mental capacity and the mind .
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