When I woke up, I immediately flipped open my antiquated  workstation from where I lay in bed. It sprang to life with renewed vigor, a needlessly complex reformatting was still treating the Z-140x as well as one would expect within the first week. All that mattered was that I could access a network again, and within seconds I was connecting to the Magnate family’s portal. Though Allan and Rikka’s terminals were silent, and Ploki was still asleep, his porti was downloading a large file, so there was a little latency in the sphere.

After sliding through the various social webs I keep a profile in, checking my multiple inboxes and even the dashboard control panel for this tlog, finding no new messages in each, I hovered purposelessly in the internet for a few moments, idly rapping my fingertips on the case of the computer. I’d hoped by then I would have at least received word back from Olympus Coast College about my application or student financial aid. Not knowing what else to do, I brought up a window from an interplanetary newsource, probably based on Earth. The stark headlines it launched at me in grim menacing boldface startled me at first.

– [FLU DEATH TOLLS IN THE UNITED TERRITORIES ESTIMATED AT 3,900] –

– [NEPTUNIAN PIRATES FAIL TO CAPTURE IONIAN CARGOSHIP SECOND TIME] –

– [TIPS TO SURVIVE BLACK FRIDAY AND SHOPPING BATTLEGROUNDS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON] –

Suddenly concerned for my health, and worried that all those months of not worrying weren’t going to pay off, I thumbed over the article. I truly detest the tricks these fear mongering, ad-savvy newsources use to optimize search results to generate some more hits each day. The report is contrary to the one just a couple of days ago which calculated deaths to be closer to 130, so I just figured they wanted to claim that all of the regular annual flu deaths had been attributed to the H1N1 virus. I closed the window before I could see how many of those confirmed deaths were on Mars, lest I become a victim of the pharmaceutical industry’s scare tactics.

The next window informed me pirates had been thwarted in their attempt to gain control of a ship leaving the orbit of Galatea. Either by coincidence or the attractiveness of the damn thing, it was the same ship hijacked last spring near those same waters. These marauders from the sixth moon of Neptune have reportedly captured over 50 vessels, and seemed to have a pretty good reputation until the Euxine Carolina was rescued by UT marines earlier this year. This time, the enhanced security placed onboard the hundred-ton spacefreighter was able to resolve any issue before it even developed into one.

I didn’t care about holiday bloodbaths or a house with a bunch of dead people in it. I couldn’t be compelled to look too deep into the stories reported by the Ganymedean newsource or an associated feed I’d brought up in the background while I digested these either. I really didn’t care about Earth’s prison camp or the election being gorked up on Ceres, or any of the other news they don‘t often openly address in Earth media. I’m usually enthralled with that sort of stuff.

I brought SpaceBook, my main social network, back into focus and updated my status to something disparaging to human nature for letting the media get so commercial, and closed my clunky old porti.

As if stirred by a ripple in a pond, Ploki Magnate rolled over in his bed. As he rested, he’d probably been able to sense so many similar, relatively tiny waves just and slept right through it. But a rock being thrown into the pond from so close may have felt like a surge against the barriers of his constant digital stream. He sat up, rubbing the side of is head.

“Oh, good morning, Ploki,” I said, realizing I hadn’t actually spoken a word to anyone when my voice cracked. The name already sounded a little strange to the tongue since it was a throwback to old hacker slang from days when a keyboard similar mine would still have been used. It was the handle that he chose to go by in all of his social avenues, virtual or not.

“Morning,” he said, not looking up from the glow of the button already alight in his hands. It illuminated his sharp face and the accentuated Ganymedean features. If he had antennae or pointy ears I would have seen them in the wash of blue light, but his head was framed only by a short haircut and a little scruff of beard.  “What’s this about the news?” he asked me, responding to the notification that woke him.

“Huh? Oh, well ther-” I began before he cut me off, he’d obviously brought up the headlines.

“Pirates…prison camp…experiment demonstrates possibility of life in Centauri?” he read aloud, a questioning tone as he wondered if he’d already heard that somewhere.

I was rising off my futon bed and walking as I replied. “I think that whole thing’s a ruse to get more scientific funding for exploration,” I grumbled as I stepped into the kitchen to scrounge up something.

“So it’s better we don’t find life outside the Solar system? You’re so cynical, Klay.” He was beginning to wake and warm up, getting out of bed only to settle into his computer chair.

I spoke to him over the kitchen counter, his workstation setup just on the other side. Anyone who used this kitchen couldn’t help but feel watched if he was seated there, though his eyes hardly rose from his screen. “No, I just think it’s going to be a huge bust if it turns out we went all the way there again and didn’t find anything … again,” there was little I came across in the fridge that screamed edible to me.

“Well it won’t be any bigger of a waste than if that money went to the defense budget,” his sleek porti connected to the portal the second he touched it, and in moments he was tangled in his various webs. “They got something like 700 bil for the military, just for a single year. That calculates to almost 2 billion a day.”

“Gork,” I exclaimed, slamming an unyielding cupboard. “Nothing’s looking appealing to me in here, wanna start the vaporizer?”

He glanced at the time and yelled “Fire it up!”

«←→»

Hunger was of the few things that could involuntarily force someone out into the big, scary world; and even then there are the options of fast food, take-out and delivery services to minimize a given human’s exposure to the outside as much as possible.

Ploki and I trod along the broad walkways of Newport’s Style Isle. Fashioned by The Caspian Company after a cookie-cutter Ionian Mission, it was a way to disguise their corporate headquarters as an outdoor shopping mall and gain a little extra revenue. It’s not actually an island, just a small mesa overlooking the Amazonian Ocean, and was used by natives in the past for their jamborees. Glancing back over my shoulder, I could see it twinkling like a thousand diamonds in the midday light, beyond the rows of fancy crawlers, oily parking spaces and pristine, artificial palm trees.

I used to work here. Tucked away in the digital media section of Style Isle’s outdated bookstore, I toiled the first year I lived on Mars. The commute to Newport from Fender was treacherous at the least, a whole 30 minutes. It was enough to make the job feel not worth it to me, spending the entirety of my only raise on the fuel it took just to get to work late every day.

We wove amongst the flow of shoppers, consisting mostly of wealthy women who didn’t need to be making any more money. It always felt a little strange, walking amongst the same people I used to serve, calmly passing them decked out in their most splendid weekday attire. From the hottest trends off the runways in Mihr Patera to soft velour sweat suits encrusted in rhinestones. Large embellished sunglasses, gaudy jewelry and any number of insanely eye-catching accessories glinted and dangled in the red sun.

Anything they could afford to distract or cover up the seams between cosmetic surgery and plastic treatments. Neck-tucks and antenna-removal scars can still be tricky to hide, and that’s where expensive bronze and ivory make-up assisted. They perfectly mimicked the exemplary mannequins, stiff in the windows beside them but so posh. I cringed to think what these reptiles would look like without any mods.

Just a few minutes there and I’d already seen  too many aged women showing off their new breasts and arms, many of which still needed some tightening and laser treatments to erase the damage of decades of sun exposure. Gray roots hid under platinum blonde, deep crows feet under cakes of eye shadow, and I’m sure I would have noticed the stench of death if it weren’t for the aroma of nail polish and hair products. I just wanted to find the cheapest place to grab a bite, then get the hell out of this commercial trap.

“I’m so excited for my appointment next week!” Ploki said, grinning ear to ear. “I’m going to get my license, and then my new toy will be completely legitimate,” there was so much glee behind his eyes as he said this.

“I just hopes it work’s out for you, it would suck if you were denied cause you didn’t qualify,” I pointed out, though that would be just as upsetting to all of us.

“Seriously,” he replied and winced with his blue eyes, tryinag not to imagine that possibility.

I turned to my Martian friend as we rounded a corner near the geyser fountain. “Hey, Ploki, can you look something up for me real quick?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, slid his button out of his pocket and unlocked the palm-held device. The flat, blue screen lit up in broad daylight, appearing a few inches above his hand.  It rested on a faint laser cone, projected from the solitary LED eye; simplicity was the only identifying feature of an AM-3Gi button. He called up a search application, and looked at me, asking “What do you need?”

“Gork, that was fast. Don’t you still have to connect to a network with that thing?”

“No, I canceled that basic service that came with it.” He pointed to his temple with his free hand, saying “I’ve been auged.”

“Ahh, now it makes sense, you are your own sphere,” I looked at him again as if I’d be able to see it’s sheen around him now. “That’s astro, I’d love to get a chip one day,” I said quietly.

The cyborg’s eyes locked on me in disbelief. “What? You haven’t been auged?” the question rang loud here, even outside. Any sort of alterations, whether internal or external, are regarded highly by those of status, and I’m sure any of the women who could afford a boost in confidence could pay an extra few thousand to have a little silicon implanted in their heads, too.

I looked around at no scowling faces or judging eyes, surprisingly. “No, what makes you think I have?”

“I totally thought you were. You don’t have extra memory in there?” he asked, genuinely amazed I hadn’t undergone any sort of capacity upgrade.

“No, not at all,” I said with as little pride as I could show these technophilic Newpsies.

“Huh, I could have sworn. Hmm…well I guess you just have a good memory then,” he said, adjusting to the idea of my head being emptier than his.

“Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment…especially coming from a machine,” I said facetiously.

He protested “Hey, I’m still mostly human!”

“Whatevs, Robot. Find me the cheapest food around,” I commanded.

He grumbled, and returned his gaze to the screen, manipulating the flattened beam that the browser was illustrated upon with the swish of his fingertips. He looked up, over to the other side of the food court we had just meandered into. “There. The pizza place has the lowest cost here,” he said at once.

“Wow, you found it that quick?” I said, astounded by his technology again.

“No, I just remembered,” he said with a grin, adding “Gorker.”

After we finished our two-dollar slices of pizza pie, and made our way back through the mess of grotesque human facsimiles, we found ourselves at his little, cerulean crawler. The two-door hatchback always reminded me of my elusive vehicle, though his wasn’t built on Ganymede.

His Saturnian-made Polaris was probably of a finer construction than my rodent. The interior had been optimized for comfort and visibility, so much so that even the HUD cowling had been displaced to the center of the dashboard, creating more storage areas.

At the press of the ignition switch, the engine whined and instruments illuminated with bright blue light, similar to the glow of the Ploki’s button, which now rested in a crèche on the center console. It supplied music from it’s harddrive to the entertainment system, and the driver or passenger could easily control media with the interface on either end.

We hurried home, where Allan waited for our return. He’d sequestered himself into his room, determined to make full use of his burgeoning class-load by doing everything he could to pass them all. Little had been seen of him, except when he needed transit to and from campus, or when there was a bi-weekly jam, or if Nymh had come over to lure him out, though she just as often did nothing to make him want to leave the room.

Similar could be said of the youngest of the Magnate siblings. Rikka was often out of the house since she was usually working one of her two jobs, and only appeared in sharp, semi-formal outfits when she was home from either, or on her way to an interview for a third. Attention seeking and a hypochondriac, she was currently fighting a bout with the deadly flu upstairs in her quarters, and no one could tell if she were actually sick or not.

I’d become good friends with Ploki over the previous weeks, finding similar interests was easy for us; or something like that. It could have been something to do with being the same age as me, or that he was easier to tolerate for an entire day than his often boisterous older brother. Perhaps it was because we had planned to move to that ski resort in Cyane this winter and had begun pre-roommate rituals of bonding. But it’s probably just because we both share the ground level of the house, he and I sleeping in the living room and family room, respectively.

We arrived back at his house in the mid-afternoon and immediately return to our positions in front of our workstations. Using some sort of control on his terminal, he remotely activated his brand new vaporizer, allowing it to warm up the 600 seconds so it will work properly. He then sent a message through the sphere to let Allan know he’d have about ten minutes to find a stopping point.

By force of habit, I brought up the newsources again with my renewed net connection, feeling warm with this novelty: the privilege of fresh information afforded only to those who have the technological means. By the look of the new banners, it seems healthcare reforms were stagnated by both sides of UT government, Earth’s new president visited Titan, and strife continued between warring factions on little Davidia.

A terrorist plot on another Earth skyscraper was foiled, a fusion plant in New Ganymede almost meltdown again and AM would probably release a new model of the button over the holidays. Students protested an increase in tuition rates at University of Mars campuses, a ferry crash in The Rings left 26 dead and the sequel to that stupid teenage-heartthrob-vampire movie broke box office records this weekend.

I closed all the windows at once and brought up one of my bookmarked links: a streaming, real-time image of the star Sol. I zoomed in partway, only until I spotted the well recognizable shapes of the gas giants, the thin haze of asteroid belts and the glint off the terrestrial worlds orbiting close the yellow main-sequence star. If it weren’t for a ticker running the time at the bottom you would have sworn it was just a still image, captured by a traveler from some rocket’s window.

I attempted to imagine for a moment that I was peering out of that porthole at the static but majestic view. I tried to picture myself away from any apprehensions of holidays, pirates, finances or vaccinations. It wasn’t working.

I collapsed the screen of the outdated porti. “Hey Ploki,” I called as I stood up, “I’m getting Allan whether that machine of yours is ready or not.”

]]> http://tsalawaly.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/de-camino-hacia-los-cyborgs/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:19:08 +0000 tsalawaly http://tsalawaly.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/de-camino-hacia-los-cyborgs/

Hace algún tiempo conocíamos los resultados de las investigaciones con monos en el control de brazos robóticos:

Con los sorprendentes resultados sobre la mesa, se pusieron en marcha nuevos estudios que desembocaron en imágenes como las siguientes:

Así, se comenzaron a abrir las puertas para el implante de este tipo de herramientas sobre los seres humanos donde en el día de hoy se ha conseguido perfilar hacia un nuevo nivel. Unos investigadores de la Universidad de Tel Aviv han creado una mano biónica que no sólo recibe información del cerebro y opera según ella, sino que además envía impulsos de tipo táctil al sistema nervioso central. Ekenstam, sujeto de estudio, hablaba así del experimento: “Estoy utilizando músculos que no había usado en años. Agarro algo con fuerza, y entonces puedo sentirlo en las yemas de los dedos, lo que es extraño, porque ya no las tengo. Es asombroso”.

Con todo esto, parece que cada vez están más próximos los cyborg de la ciencia ficción. Creo que no cabe duda al respecto. En cuestión de pocos años estemos ante una nueva revolución tecnológica de la especie humana.

El científico Kevin Warwich

Posiblemente ese momento esté llegando poquito a poco de la mano de personas como Kevin Warwick. Este científico es conocido por experimentar con su cuerpo al implantarse diversos chips con los que puede controlar los aparatos de su casa. Incluso su esposa ha aceptado participar implantándose un chip que les permite a ambos estar en conexión empática. Algunas discotecas también se han sumado a la iniciativa. Ofrecen el implante de un chip con el que poder pagar las copas (a modo de tarjeta de crédito) sin tener que llevar una cartera encima.

El primer cyborg reconocido, Neil Harbisson

Si os siguen quedando dudas sobre si la ciencia ficción se está haciendo realidad, hablemos de Neil Harbisson. Este hombre es pintor y músico, y ha conseguido que el gobierno británico lo considere directamente como un cyborg. Al sufrir una enfermedad que le hace ver el mundo en blanco y negro, se le ocurrió inventar e implantarse lo que se ha dado a conocer como eyeborg. Este aparato capta los colores de las cosas que Neil está viendo y se los traduce en notas musicales que él interpreta como una escala de colores.

Son pequeñas gotitas, pero así empieza el chaparrón.

Fuentes:

Solociencia

Wikipedia

Una discoteca catalana implantará un chip bajo la piel de personajes famosos.

Green Arrow & Black Canary #26
Written by Andrew Kreisberg
Art by Mike Norton and Renato Guedes

Not going to lie, I have no idea who those guys were at the end of this and why they are putting Everyman in as Green Arrow again or what not. Was it even Everyman? We never saw any proof of that. This storyline is already annoying and we are only one issue in. The art in this issue was just awful. Why can’t this book get good art? Both Norton and Guedes are better artists then this crap. This book has just gone down hill.

Research is currently being performed with artificial limbs that would allow individuals not only to control those limbs but also to receive accurate feedback, sensations, from the prosthetic limb by utilizing lasers as a transmitter to individual nerves.

It is the year 2023. Hundreds of elderly people have undergone elective surgery in order to replace non functional or weak limbs with superior mechanical ones. However these same individuals are facing hard times as society begins to exponentially increase health and life expectancy. The elderly are perceived as unneeded group, leftovers from centuries past. The majority is simply waiting for the last of them to pass so that the age of endless youth can begin.

Tensions build as two retirement homes are attacked by young white males eager to find some remaining group against which to commit hate crimes and prove whatever if it is they hope to prove to one another. The government does little to compensate or protect those retired communities which are at greatest risk. In fact retirement as we know it is expected to be legislated out over the next two years.

The elderly are forced to take up action on their own. They alter their artificial limbs into powerful weapons. The old people cyborg uprising is begun.

weleh-weleh… perkembangan teknologi semakin ekstrim saja. cyborg yang ada di film-film fiksi dan film kartun kini telah hadir. Amerika dan china telah berhasil membuat cyborg dari binatang-binatang mungil nan lucu menjadi senjata perang yang berbahaya sekaligus mengenaskan (sangat kejaaam.. )

coba liat beberapa foto2 binatang yg telah dijadikan cyborg.

1. cyborg merpati

2. cyborg kupu-kupu

3. cyborg tikus

bagaimana cara memasangnya? jadii.. sebuah alat ditanamkan ke tubuh si korban (di implan) gak tau caranya yg jelas alat itu mampu merangsang cyborg untuk bergerak sesuai yang diperintahkan pemiliknya. lebih hebatnya lg, alat ini memperoleh sumber energi dari si korban, sehingga tidak perlu susah susah pergi ke pom untuk ngisi bahan bakar.

waduh.. klo begini Robocop  akan segera hadir untuk memberantas kejahatan di muka bumi hahahaha… ^_^”

source : http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/for-years-now-p/

Na, das ist ja mal genau der richtige Film für mich jetzt nach der OP. Der Computer in meinem Kopf, der bald mein linkes Ohr ersetzt, ist so groß wie eine halb aufgerollte Lakritzschnecke. Und teurer als ein Mini Cooper. Keine eingebauten Waffen, leider. Und auch kein direktes Interface zum Bloggen. Ist nach wie vor alles Handarbeit

Der Film ist gut, so eine Art Amélie in der Irrenanstalt, sehr asiatisch. Guckt den mal an. [trailer]

Outsiders (Volume 4) #24
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Fernando Pasarin

The penultimate issue of Tomasi’s run may be the strongest issue of his run yet. That could be due to the strength of the Blackest Night concept or because Tomasi get the character of Terra – the evil girl who infiltrated the Teen Titans and betrayed them. She was not duped or drugged by Deathstroke – she was a bad person. It’s pure and simple. I love that Krul and Tomasi are acknowledging this as for a while DC seem to be heading in the direction of ignoring the intent of Marv Wolfman when he created her and pretending that she was this sweet girl who got corrupted. I love how Black Lantern Terra is just as manipulative as she was in life. She acts all sweet and kind to her brother even with that horrible zombie look – and he believes her! It was awesome. You know she is setting a trap for the Outsiders. It was great to see Katana and Halo’s close friendship acknowledged (Although she calls her Violet again ahh!) and Katana’s family who I hadn’t even predicted would show up as black lanterns.

Si fuera un cyborg:

Si fuera un monstruo:

Y el que me denomina de origen (o sea sexy):

Been thinking about Jackson Pollock, and Pollock’s interest in Jungian psychology. Reading around some of Jung’s ideas and considering Pollock as an archetypical hero in Jungian terminology.

Here is a web definition of Jung’s archetype of the hero:

‘The hero basically represents the ego. The hero is something we all identify with, something we all want to project to the world: a balanced, gallant personality with the ability to face obstacle with grace and strength. However, the hero is very ignorant of the unconscious, just like the ego is. The hero archetype seeks to battle these shadows, unaware of the fact that itself is created from the same thing. In other words our egos often seek to individualize ourselves, to make decisions with as little consequence as possible, yet it’s still connected to a collective psyche that includes hidden motives and drives. In Jungian psychology, the hero represents a self-sacrificing character that faces great adversity for some greater purpose.’

Collective consciousness how does it function on the web/ Cyberspace?

If archetypes are rooted to a shared consciousness what happens when that shared consciousness becomes a mechanical/electronic structure rather than an organic structure as it has previously been? Is this the reason for the rise in much negative human experience: cyber bullying/sense of isolation/ our need for rapidly changing identities?

According to Jung we are born with a psychological heritage as well as a biological heritage. Both according to Jung are important determinants of behavior and experience:

“just as the human body represents a whole museum of organs, each with a long evolutionary period behind it, so we should expect to find that the mind is organized in a similar way. It can no more be a product without history than is the body in which it exists” (Jung 1964, p. 67).

Komisches Gefühl. Heute ist Dienstag. Mittwoch, Donnerstag. Und Freitag vormittag. Noch zweieinhalb Tage, in denen ich ein normaler, organischer Mensch bin.

Ab da höre ich dann auf dem linken Ohr erst einmal gar nichts, oder kaum was, bevor im Dezember my new cyborg life beginnt. Bevor ein Computer an meinem Kopf die Umgebung analysiert und aufgrund seiner Programme berechnet, welchen Strom das Gerät in meinem Kopf an die Nervenbahnen abgibt, die zum Gehirn führen.

Mein Hirn wird ein Weilchen brauchen um daraus seinen Sinn zu machen….

The human body is an incredible complex machine that combines mechanical pumps, filters, electrical networks. As all machines, the human body’s building parts need maintenance or even replacement. Today, replacement parts exist for many bones and joints, but not for body organs.

But, it will change, soon. Scientists are working with the most advancing technology to develop the most advanced medical devices that will enable humans and robots to merge, perhaps signalling the dawn of a technological singularity.

How close are we now?

Actually, we are already there!

IEEE Spectrum has come up with their own futuristic vision of a medically advanced future where future citizens can go and upgrade themselves. Thus, if one or two of your bones or an organ has been damaged, due to an accident or an illness, you can go at the Bionic Body shop and pick your replacement cyborg parts. The parts which are bionic – engineered to mimic real body parts – would help you function more normally and live – maybe – forever.

Er på konferencen New Media Days. Dagens indtil videre suverænt bedste session var med Rob Spence. Manden der mistede et øje og erstattede det med et kamera. Ud over at være vanvittig charmerende med virkelig god komisk timing slog Spence benene væk under mig med kombinationen af sci fi, M.I.T nørderi og superheltevisioner. Så bliver det næsten ikke bedre i mit univers. Historien om den dag hvor han satte en voldsom cyklist på plads med en lysende rød diode i øjet var historien om hverdagens (lidt ynkelige men sjove) helt.

Spence greb livet som enøjet mand helt alternativt an. Når man nu ikke lige har et øje, så kan man lige så godt smide noget ind i hullet som kan endnu mere end et øje kan. Et rigtig cool cyborg. Og Spence bekræftede at et af verdens ultimativt bedste party tricks er at hive et glasøje ud til en familiefest og vise det til børnene.

Ifølde Spence vil teknologien i 2044 overgå mennesket og vi vil alle have muligheden for at forlænge/forstørre/forbedre/augmente vores krop til noget mere og bedre end den er nu.

Spence har endnu ikke frigivet dokumentarfilm filmet fra øjet, men der er ingen tvivl om at det kan bringe ganske andre vinkler og fortrolighed (spionage) end før set.

Qu’est-ce que le philosophe Alain peut nous dire sur cette merveilleusement niaise série Chuck ?

A priori, pas grand chose à voir entre l’histoire d’un apprenti espion malingre et maladroit et le digne prof de khâgne d’Henri IV.

Chuck, c’est le génie malchanceux à qui l’on “implante” dans la mémoire des informations classées secret défense. Le bon répérateur de chez Buy More est alors capable de “flasher” sur des formes (symboles, chiffres, visages) qu’il voit et de se “souvenir” des terribles secrets de la CIA qu’il garde en lui.

Comme le fait comprendre la photo, Chuck est donc un super-ordinateur, ou plutôt, il remplace un super-ordinateur précédemment piraté par de Grands Méchants. Chuck est un être exceptionnel, parce qu’il est un humain qui peut se remémorer des choses de façon aussi exacte qu’un ordinateur. C’est à ce moment que l’on se souvient (sisi) d’Alain demandant à ses élèves s’il connaissent le nombre de colonnes du Panthéon, bâtiment devant lequel ils passent chaque jour. Vous pouvez faire le même exercice avec le nombre de portes entre votre maison et votre boulangerie. Réponse? … Personne, du moins chez les préparationnaires d’HIV. Quel enseignement? La mémoire ne fonctionne pas de façon automatique, elle n’est pas homogène et oublie plus qu’elle ne se souvient, à l’inverse d’un système informatique.

Il est alors amusant de voir que dans notre monde, où l’on craint toujours une attaque cyber-terroriste (comme cette mesure du gouvernement US), cette série aborde le sujet traumatisant de la dépendance à l’ordinateur en créant un personnage-machine. Notre bon Chuck est tout ce qu’il y a de plus humain : fragile, émotif, sincère, altruiste… il est même amoureux et rêve de vivre comme un bon américain moyen. Or, il possède ce cerveau qui, programmé par les services secrets, devient aussi puissant que les réseaux informatiques de l’État. Chuck est donc le plus humain des disques-durs, un héros pas méchant pour deux sous mais qui est aussi capable que le dernier Mac Book Pro.

Cette série surfe donc sur le fantasme d’une mémoire humaine à l’image de celle des machine, infaillible et automatique. Sans doute une manière de penser que la dépendance à la machine n’est pas irrémédiable, et que l’Amérique a toujours ses héros en chair et en os. Disons plus en neurones qu’en muscles, pour la recette exacte du cyborg.

Pour ceux qui persévèrent à voir en Chuck autre chose qu’un robot dépourvu d’humanité, allez directement à la fin de la vidéo pour vous rassurer : perso, j’ai la première fois donné de la larmichette. Alain ne pourra pas vous blâmer pour ça.

Heres some “Things” that have come out of my head last week.

Cyborg

Tiger Face

Winged Beast

Thought by many to be lost to the sands of time, archaeologists recently unearthed the body of the first president of the United States, George Washington. For hundreds of years, the disappearance and presumed death of the first president was shrouded in mystery, but now it appears that many shocking details are finally coming to light. Groundbreaking as this discovery is, it appears that for the scientific community, there are now more questions than answers.

Professor Keith Buhrningman, head of the American History department at Stanford University, has openly stated that he “will never think of ol’ Georgie boy the same again.” When pressed for actual details, prof. Buhrningman declined to comment further. However, a factual rumour overheard in the lab stated that the famous legend of the late president’s wooden teeth was grossly understated and perhaps even downplayed.
Doctor Thomas Wūdstock, Harvard drop-out, is soon to release a book, The Six Hundred Dollar Man, detailing the scientific community’s findings.
“I can’t give too much away, but I will say that from our early observations, it appears that his teeth weren’t the only wooden part of George Washington. Over two-thirds of Washington’s body was replaced with rich, polished wood! And not just bones; a few major organs were replaced with extremely intricate wooden cogs and machinery. Buy my book.”
When asked which organs were replaced, and what powered the wooden machinery, Wūdstock replied,”It’s easy to get swept up in all this “wooden man” hooplah, but people are forgetting the most important mystery of all: what kind of wood it is. My money is on mahogany. Keith and most other scientists have bet on oak, so if I’m right, more winnings for me! Oh, also, his body was riddled with bullet holes, which is important to historians, but not important to scientists. Buy my book.”

Secret reports passed between scientists contain Da Vinci-esque diagrams of what can only be described as a half-human, half-wooden cyborg.
This new information has sparked endless speculation, not only in the scientific community, but also in popular online chat communities or “chatmunities”.

Self-named “Doc” “Reginald” “McSteamery” runs the website Steampunkjunkie.com, where chat topics have ranged from the light-hearted “Washington costume ideas!” to the cryptic “Ye olde conspiracie? WTF?!”
Doc McSteamery states, “This is so totally awesome! Did you see the gears and machinery? Made of REAL WOOD?! God, that’s just so… I mean the craftsmanship… wow! If they find out he has brass parts too or was steam-powered, I’ll die. I’ll literally die. This is truly another great first for America; we’re the greatest great in the entire great!”

The implications this information has for America’s- and even maybe the world’s- history, is staggering. A wooden cyborg as first president might possibly mean taking a second glance at the rules regarding presidential elections and appointments. If this seems sure to raise political controversy, it won’t be the first time; this presidential secret stirred the controversy kettle, even in Washington’s time.

Alongside Washington’s body was found a partially-burned confession letter. In it, Aaron Burr writes that “two hired goons” coerced him into “murdering [his] only friend, Alexander Hamilton.” The letter then states the two goons, “Franklin and Adams”, told Burr that “Hamilton knew too much for his own big mouth” and that Burr “had to shut him up real bullet-like.” The confession goes on to say that Washington was intending to silence Hamilton himself, but that he ultimately “didn’t want to get his greasy wooden mitts dirty” in connection with the murder. It’s certainly difficult to envision America’s first president as a wooden cyborg president, but a wooden cyborg assassin president sounds even more fantastical. Is there any proof of George Washington as a killer, aside from the well-documented accounts of his battles?
A third item was found in Washington’s hidden tomb: A wooden gun held in his human right hand, next to several wooden bullets. The gun appears to have fit neatly inside the president’s hollow right thigh, which was entirely wooden, velvet-lined, and opened up specifically for gun-storage. The last item in the casket, a wooden pepper mill labeled “Whompin’ Washington’s pepper spray” was found resting in a holster in Washington’s leather belt. The gun and pepper spray combination has led top police experts to believe Washington may have served as a kind of judge, jury, and executionary robotic law enforcer.
“No doubt about it, Washington ran this country with a wooden fist,” says New York Chief of Police Randy Fish. Fish is not pleased with Buhrningman, Wūdstock or any of the other music festivals scientists.
“At first I thought those scientists were doing good work, but any first-year cop can tell you that only most of the holes in Washington’s body are bullet holes; the rest of ‘em are termites holes. From the angle of the bullet entry wounds, my forensics department has concluded that Washington was such a badass, he actually shot the termites out of himself from time to time.”

But what of the larger picture? Does this evidence of primitive technology mean there may now be cyborgs living among us constructed of stone, or bronze or even iron? Only time will tell. Until then, one thing is certain: we “soft-skins” can only hope they’re as wonderful and patriotic as our beloved wooden cyborg assassin president, who could apparently tell a lie.

“You could still have sex, because it’s just data”

Merci Gizmodo US

In 1998, when Kevin Warwick, researcher and Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, implanted a silicon chip transponder into his left arm and connected it to his nervous sy…

Pimp myself! Da bekommt der Name “Body Shop” einen ganz anderen Zungenschlag: Im Netz aller Netze dürfen wir virtuell durch den Ersatzteile- und Tuningladen für den menschlichen Körper schlendern und die Preise für Updates bewundern.

Ein harmloser Schaufensterbummel ist sooo 19. Jahrhundert im Vergleich zum virtuellen Streifzug im “Bionic Body Shop”. Online haben die Jungs von Spectrum einmal dargestellt, wie unsere Kinder und Enkel in naher Zukunft ihr Körperpimping locker per Mausklick auswählen und in den Einkaufskorb des Shops legen. Ob Nerven- oder Gehirn-Stimulation, Interface von Maschine und Bewusstsein oder eine verstärkte Skelettstruktur, ab 15.000 Dollar pro Upgrade geht es los.
Zugegeben, manche geben ja heute schon für Lifting, Fettverschiebungen und Hautbegradigungen mehr Geld aus. Zumal das Bionic-Tuning eines Tages bestimmt deutlich nutzbringender sein dürfte, verspricht es doch ein Zuwachs an Kraft, Reflexe und vor allem Denkvermögen. Den letzten Punkt möchte ich am liebsten zum Pflichtprogramm für Politiker machen. Sofern es einen additiven Effekt gibt, denn mit einmal ist es da oft nicht getan. [Ralf]

[IEEE Spectrum]

[This Cyborg Life]

[Gizmodo]

Fortschritt? Weißkittel erfinden eine Art Gedankenlesen

Britische Wissenschaftler wollen Cyborg bauen

US-Militär lässt Cyborg-Käfer fliegen

Hoax oder heftig? USB-Stick als Fingerersatz

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg manifesto”
Sarah Kember, “Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life”
Mojca Puncer. “ Artistic Research on Life Forms”

“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of “Western” science and politics – the tradition of racist, male-dominated capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the production of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other – the relations between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. The essay is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction.”

Haraway seems to question the monopoly of knowledge, of something being itself, as a strategy for questioning its emergent collective form. By reorganizing the furniture, she hopes to change the architecture. It reads like poetry and an instruction manual, and hints at a kind of liberation that doesn’t replicate the oppressor but births a new kind of child. Regeneration rather then replication…. a body of words that produce an aura of a future action, of potentials that are grounded in existing materiality but don’t yet know their ends.

“So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work. One of my premises is that most American socialists and feminists see deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism, in the social practices, symbolic formulations, and physical artifacts associated with…. scientific culture. …. Another of my premises is that the need for unity of people trying to resist worldwide intensification of domination has never been more acute.”

Fraying the edges of binaries, overlapping and crisscrossing ideas and signs, Haraway employs her words like a sculptor reworking a mold to build a prosthetic for a body that doesn’t yet exist. That’s to say, her words are speculative, both laterally and linearly, risky business in the disciplinary foldings of academia, but that’s the history of consciousness for you.

“Innocence, and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for insight, has done enough damage. But the constructed revolutionary subject must give late twentieth-century people pause as well. In the fraying of identities and in the reflexive strategies for constructing them, the possibility opens up for weaving something other than a shroud for the day after the apocalypse that so prophetically ends salvation history.”

A lineage of ideas and people that turns in on itself, a position of continual redevelopment and re-articulation. It has the tenacity to move along, while not going anywhere.

“This is a dream not of a common language, but of powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the super-savers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space, stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”

http://a.aaaarg.org/text/990/cyborg-manifesto

Le cyberpunk a très vite envahi l’univers des mangas, ces bandes dessinées très populaires au Japon et qui, depuis plusieurs années maintenant, déferlent sur l’Europe. L’esthétique du cyberpunk s’intègre parfaitement au format et au style graphique très particulier des mangas. On retrouve dans les mangas cyberpunk l’environnement classique qui caractérise ce sous-genre de la science-fiction : vision sombre de l’avenir, surpopulation, pollution, drogue, une société robotisée peuplée de cyborgs (mi-humain, mi-robot) et où règne une technologie de plus en plus avancée.

Le plus célèbre manga cyberpunk, adapté en film d’animation (ou anime) en 1995, s’intitule Ghost in the Shell (autrement dit le fantôme dans la machine). Ce manga futuriste, dont l’histoire se déroule dans les années 2030, met en scène une héroïne cyborg, qui traque un cybercriminel surnommé le « Marionettiste » (Puppet Master). Un des thèmes développé est la complexité des rapports entre les hommes et les machines ; mais se pose également la question existentielle de savoir ce qu’est vraiment un être humain, parfois perdu au milieu de toute cette technologie dont il ne maîtrise plus ni l’ampleur, ni les conséquences.

Les mangas sont divisés en plusieurs catégories, qui correspondent chacune à une classe d’âge bien définie. Les mangas cyberpunk ne font pas exception à la règle et s’adressent plutôt, pour leur côté souvent sombre et brutal, aux jeunes adultes. Un public d’initiés nombreux et fidèle, pour qui le manga est depuis longtemps un moyen d’expression majeur du cyberpunk, au même titre que le cinéma, mais qui a l’avantage de ne pas être, pour le moment en tout cas, aussi médiatisé et contrôlé.

Charles Dubré

Pour en savoir plus sur les mangas : http://fr.wikipédia.org/wiki/Manga ou http://www.tevader.com/manga/tout-sur-le-manga.php