Creating a nation of zombies

Pentagon hires British scientist to help build robot soldiers that 'won't commit war crimes'

The American military is planning to build robot soldiers that will not be able to commit war crimes like their human comrades in arms.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3536943/Pentagon-hires-British-scientist-to-help-build-robot-soldiers-that-wont-commit-war-crimes.html

Ran Prieur had some interesting thoughts about this in his January 24, 2005 post:

January 24. "Some thoughts on these new robot soldiers. For the moment, they're just remote extentions of human operators. Now, if the human operator sees another human attacking the robot, will he fire on that human? Of course!

Do you see the problem? A human is being killed for attacking a machine. When cops kill people, they always use the excuse that they fear their lives, human lives, are in danger. Now they're trying to slip this one by us, and get us to accept that a machine can kill in "self"-defense, or that a human can be murdered on the spot for attacking a lifeless object. It's as if you take a baseball bat to a port-a-john, and a gun sticks out and shoots you dead, and it's legal. Eventually, the family of a human killed by a robot will take it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court will have to say, yes, a machine has a right to kill a human, because if they say no, the system will collapse."

U.S. agency sees robots replacing humans in service jobs by 2025

Robot workers could 'disrupt unskilled labor markets,' federal report says

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9121385&intsrc=hm_list

Computers figuring out what words mean



http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080918073717.xvg33wf1&show_article=1

George Carlin - Modern Man

Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain


http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/uncle-sam-wants.html

I Sing The Body Electric (1/3)

Changing the nature of human beings

Single page

This outspoken professor advocates cloning, genetic screening and drugs in sport, writes Jacqueline Maley.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/this-man-advocates-cloning-anddrugs-in-sport/2008/08/09/1218139179842.html

Virtual creatures and robots take on 'a life of their own'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/11/scirobot111.xml

Remote-controlled humans enhance immersive games

http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2005/08aug/remotecontroledhuman.html

Conference Examines Man and Machine Merging, How Tech Will Make Human Brain Obsolete

http://www.dailytech.com/Conference+Examines+Man+and+Machine+Merging+How+Tech+Will+Make+Human+Brain+Obsolete/article12384.htm

Wrassling with Transhumanism

Transhumanism for me is like a relationship with an obsessive and very neurotic lover. Knowing it is deeply flawed, I have tried several times to break off my engagement, but each time it manages to creep in through the back door of my mind. In How We Became Posthuman,¹ I identified an undergirding assumption that makes possible such predictions as Hans Moravec’s transhumanist fantasy that we will soon be able to upload our consciousness into computers and leave our bodies behind. I argued that this scenario depends on a decontextualized and disembodied construction of information. The disembodied information Claude Shannon formalized as a probability function, useful for specific purposes, has been expanded far beyond its original context and inappropriately applied to such phenomena as consciousness.² With this argument, I naively thought that I had dismissed transhumanism once and for all, exposing its misapprehensions to my satisfaction and delivering a decisive blow to its aspirations. But I was wrong. Transhumanism has exponentially more adherents today than it did a decade ago when I made this argument, and its influence is clearly growing rather than diminishing, as this workshop itself testifies:

http://metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10543/Default.aspx

The Lonely (1/3)

In 2050, your lover may be a ... robot

http://www.physorg.com/news132727834.html

WALL•E Greets Newseum Visitors

http://www.newseum.org/news/newseum_videos/video.aspx?item=nv_WALL080602&style=f

America's Medicated Army

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0%2C8599%2C1811858%2C00.html?redux



From Time Magazine:

"Seven months after Sergeant Christopher LeJeune started scouting Baghdad's dangerous roads — acting as bait to lure insurgents into the open so his Army unit could kill them — he found himself growing increasingly despondent. "We'd been doing some heavy missions, and things were starting to bother me," LeJeune says. His unit had been protecting Iraqi police stations targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, hunting down mortars hidden in dark Baghdad basements and cleaning up its own messes. He recalls the order his unit got after a nighttime firefight to roll back out and collect the enemy dead. When LeJeune and his buddies arrived, they discovered that some of the bodies were still alive. "You don't always know who the bad guys are," he says. "When you search someone's house, you have it built up in your mind that these guys are terrorists, but when you go in, there's little bitty tiny shoes and toys on the floor — things like that started affecting me a lot more than I thought they would." "

U.S. Military Gets Newest Kill-Bot

From Wired Magazine:

The U.S. military's small, but growing, arsenal of armed robots has a new addition. Bot-maker Foster-Miller has shipped the first of its new killer machines to the Defense Department's Combatting Terrorism Technology Support Office.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/us-military-get.html#more

Pupils 'will soon be able to download lessons directly into their brains'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1023153/Pupils-soon-able-download-lessons-directly-brains.html

Children will learn by downloading information directly into their brains within 30 years, the head of Britain's top private schools organisation predicted today.

Chris Parry, the new chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said "Matrix-style" technology would render traditional lessons obsolete.

He told the Times Educational Supplement: "It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge."

Who’s afraid of a synthetic human?

If we can enhance our species - make it live longer and resist disease - we should do it

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3949986.ece

Could robots take over the world?

In many ways they already have...


http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid61912.aspx

We All Root for Amputees—Until They Win Medals

Leg Up


The emerging supremacy of artificial limbs.



http://www.slate.com/id/2191801/

Robot 'conducts' orchestra for first time

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1954704/Robot-%27conducts%27-orchestra-for-first-time.html

Is Technology Ruining Children?

http://www.rense.com/general81/techh.htm

Technology is moulding a generation of children unable
to think for themselves or empathise with others,
says the leading brain scientist Susan Greenfield.
Is it time to switch off?

By John Cornwell
The Sunday Times - UK
4-30-8

Honda ASIMO Serves coffee DEMO

New wi-fi devices warn doctors of heart attacks

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3883082.ece

"The Bluetooth wireless technology that allows people to use a hands-free earpiece while making a mobile telephone call could soon alert the emergency services when someone has a heart attack, Ofcom predicts.

The communications regulator said that sensors could be implanted into people at risk of heart attack or diabetic collapse that would allow doctors to monitor them remotely.

If the “in-body network” recorded that the person had suddenly collapsed, it would send an alert, via a nearby base station at their home, to a surgery or hospital.

However, Ofcom also gave warning in its report, Tomorrow’s Wireless World, that the impact of such technology on personal privacy would require more debate."

Dawn of the superhumans?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3861076.ece

Ethical concerns

extract from Times Online article:

"There are many ethical concerns about enhancement. Most are about fairness, particularly in relation to competitive sport or exams. But there are darker worries. If a brain implant was shown to control mood, could you force a violent criminal to have one? If many had mood-enhancing implants, could someone override their individual controls and thus control them all? And there are always two sides to the many coins in the enhancement debate. For instance, chemicals called ampakines can enhance memory, but some would rather take drugs that prevent rather than enhance memory formation, such as those who work in stressful situations or those who have been subjected to trauma. What if soldiers were forced to take such drugs? "

Real-Life iron man - a robot suit that magnifies human strength

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=real-life-iron-man-exoskeleton

I, Human

	The Antigonish Review
	Antigonish Review # 129 Esther Cameron I, HUMAN A Review of Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines http://www.antigonishreview.com/bi-129/129-review_article_esther_cameron.html

School Questionare - Creating The Compliant Robot Society

http://www.rense.com/general81/ques.htm

From Ken Adachi
Editor - Educate-Yourself.org
3-30-8

Man, 81, kills himself with shot from 'suicide robot'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article3591734.ece

An elderly man has killed himself by programming a robot to shoot him in the head after building the machine from plans downloaded from the internet.

BigDog - BostonDynamics (2008)

Swarms of Transformer-style robots to be built

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/13/scirobot113.xml

Orc Holocaust

The reprehensible moral universe of Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons.

http://www.slate.com/id/2186203/pagenum/all/#page_start

From Slate.com:

"Here's the narrative arithmetic that Gygax came up with: You come across a family of sleeping orcs, huddled around their overflowing chest of gold coins and magical weapons. Why do orcs and other monsters horde gold when they can't buy anything from the local "shoppes," or share a jug of mead in the tavern, or do anything but gnash their teeth in the darkness and wait for someone to show up and fight them? Who knows, but there they are, and you now have a choice. You can let sleeping orcs lie and get on with the task at hand—saving a damsel, recovering some ancient scepter, whatever. Or you can start slitting throats—after all, mercy doesn't have an experience point value in D&D. It's the kind of atrocity that commits itself."

Wilson!

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/05/wilson.html

The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.

This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, built something like that. At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield.

Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly.

The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse.

The colonel ordered the test stopped.

Why? asked Tilden. What's wrong?

The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.

This test, he charged, was inhumane.

Japanese robots enter daily life

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2008-03-01-robots_N.htm

Japanese are also more accepting of robots because the native Shinto religion often blurs boundaries between the animate and inanimate, experts say. To the Japanese psyche, the idea of a humanoid robot with feelings doesn't feel as creepy — or as threatening — as it might do in other cultures.

Iron Man-Black Sabbath-Lyrics Included

The Terminal Man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal_Man

Plot summary:

To give perspective, the author gives a timeline of developments in behavior modification. He informs the reader that such active research in behavior modification isn't merely a potential threat in the distant future, he cites examples of how it is occurring now, specifically in regard to trying to curtail psychomotor epilepsy.

Harry Benson, an unimpressive man in his 30s, is a sufferer of psychomotor epilepsy and the character around which the novel centers and derives its name. He often has seizures, periods of blackout, and he then wakes up hours later to unfamiliar surroundings with no knowledge of what he's done. He has severely beaten two people. The book begins with Benson in the third stage of the disorder, and he is a prime candidate for an operation to implant electrodes and minicomputer in his brain to control the seizures. Surgeons Ellis and Morris are to perform the surgery, which is unprecedented for the time.

The ramifications of the procedure are questioned from the beginning, naturally, by psychiatrist Janet Ross, and they are ominously echoed by an emeritus professor named Manon at the lecture about the surgery. Manon raises concerns that Benson is psychotic (pointing to Benson's adamant belief that there is no difference between man and machine) and the crimes he commits during the blackouts won't be curtailed because the operation is anything but a cure for psychomotor epilepsy. Ellis admits that what they are doing isn't a cure but just a way to stimulate the brain when the computer senses a seizure coming on. It would prevent a seizure but not cure his personality disorder. However, it will stop the harm Benson inflicts upon others, so they decide to go through with the operation.

They place a plutonium power pack in his shoulder to power the computer, forty electrodes, and a mini-computer. They give him a dog tag to wear that says to call the University Hospital if he were to be injured, as his atomic power pack might emit radiation. Later, while he's recovering, a woman named Angela Black gives Morris (one of the surgeons who operated on him)a wig for Benson, whose head was shaved prior to the operation. Morris then goes back to his normal work, where he talks to a man who volunteers to have electrodes put into his mind to stimulate pleasure. Morris refuses him, but realizes that people like Benson could potentially become addicts. He recalls a Norweigian man, who was allowed to stimulate himself as much as he wanted, and did so much that it actually gave him brain damage.

McPherson, head of the Neuropsychiatric department, interviews Benson, who is still convinced machines are taking over the world. McPherson realizes Manon and Ross were right and orders nurses to administer thorazine to Benson.

Gerhard, a computer technician, begins testing two computers. The two computers had been programmed with primitive emotions, and a dislike of certain objects, like bananas and cucumbers. They begin to interact with one another and the one that is programmed to be loving is repeatedly asked "Have a cucumber" by the annoying, angry one. After politely declining several times, the nicer one, St.George, replies "GO TO HELL!" which was not programmed at all. Gerhard doesn't think he's malfunctioning, he thinks the computer is actually learning to be angry.

After resting for a day, Benson goes through "interfacing". The forty electrodes in his brain are activated by Gerhard, one by one, to see which ones would stop a seizure. Each produces different results. Only two work, so they are programmed into the mini-computer. One of which, electrode seven, stimulates a sexual pleasure. Ross asks Gerhard to monitor him.

Gerhard shows his findings to Ross, who realizes that the seizures are getting more frequent. She explains that Benson is learning to initiate seizures involuntarily because the result of these seizures is a shock of pleasure, which he likes. This could worsen his condition as it did to the Norwegian, giving him frequent seizures. Ross goes to check on Benson, and upon looking at his record, realizes that nobody had given him thorazine as McPherson ordered. The nurses were told to obey only commands from Morris or Ellis, and when they read the name as "McPhee" instead of McPherson, they thought it was a mistake(as a McPhee did work at the University Hospital, but not in neuropychology). So they didn't give Benson thorazine, which means he is still psychotic and thinks machines will take over the world.

Ross finds out that Benson has escaped from the hospital. She goes to his house, but finds two girls instead who say he has a gun and blueprints for the basement of University Hospital (where the computer mainframe is). Ellis searches at a strip club where Benson, who is fascinated with all things sexual, spends a lot of time. He doesn't find him. Morris goes to his job, and meets Benson's boss who said that Benson feared the University Hospital because of its ultra-modern computer system. The number to the University Hospital is called by Anders, a policeman who found Benson's dogtag. Benson is the suspect of the murder of Angela Black. Ross goes down there, answers some questions, and goes home. Benson arrives at her house, and has a seizure, pinning her to the kitchen counter, strangling her. She reaches out her arm and turns on her microwave, which disrupts the atomic pacemaker in his shoulder. He runs away. Ross goes back to the hospital and goes to sleep.

When Angela Black is brought back to the hospital for autopsy, pathologists find a book of matches that have the name of an airport. Morris goes to this airport, and a bartender says he saw Benson an hour ago leaving with Joe, who took him to the hangar. Morris goes to this hangar and finds Joe severely beaten (Joe later dies). He is in turn beaten by Benson, who flees. Morris will survive but has his mouth wired shut when the ambulance takes him back to the hospital.

Ross, back at the hospital, is awakened by Gerhard. She has a call from Benson. When Anders traces the call he realizes that Benson is inside the hospital. Gerhard's computers begin to malfunction, as if somebody was messing with the mainframe. Anders, a policeman, and Ross go down into the labyrinth-like basement with scores of hallways and rooms that are hard to navigate through. Anders locates Benson and has a brief firefight, injuring and disarming Benson before becoming lost in the maze of corridors. Benson, with blueprints, goes back to the computer room to finish shutting down the computer mainframe and finds Ross. Ross picks up his gun, and after an intense internal struggle finally shoots and kills Benson.

Neurostimulation

Is it a good idea to drill holes in people's heads to treat them for depression?

http://www.slate.com/id/2184699/nav/tap3/

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?em&ex=1203397200&en=38525b1af4915364&ei=5087%0A

Darpa Offers No Food for Thought

From Wired Magazine:

"Soldiers' moms will no doubt be horrified. But the Pentagon is looking into ways for GIs to fight for up to five days -- without eating a single meal.

During a mission, soldiers in the field typically don't have the time, or the inclination, to chow down. That lack of food can affect their battlefield performance. So Darpa, the U.S. military's far-out research arm, wants scientists to figure out if soldiers can operate at top levels -- without lunch breaks.

"The question is: 'Are there temporary biochemical approaches we can use to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of soldiers when they're already worked to exhaustion?'" said a Darpa life sciences consultant, who asked not to be named.

The agency has a couple of ideas on how this might be done: A cocktail of nutrients or so-called "nutraceuticals" could help build endurance. Lowering soldiers' core body temperature might keep them from overheating. Or, perhaps, the change could be made at the microscopic level, by turbo-charging mitochondria -- the cell's energy suppliers."

article continues...

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/02/62297

Plastic Fantastic Lover Lyrics

Her neon mouth with the blinkers-off smile
Nothing but an electric sign
You could say she has an individual style
She's part of a colourful time

Secrecy of lady-chrome-covered clothes
You wear cause you have no other
But I suppose no one knows
You're my plastic fantastic lover

Her rattlin' cough never shuts off
Is nothin' but a used machine
Her aluminium finish, slightly diminished
Is the best I ever have seen

Cosmetic baby plugged into me
I'd never ever find another
I realize no one's wise
To my plastic fantastic lover

The electrical dust is starting to rust
Her trapezoid thermometer taste
All the red tape is mechanical rape
Of the TV program waste

Data control and IBM
Science is mankind's brother
But all I see is dranin' me
On my plastic fantastic lover

Jefferson Airplane - Plastic Fantastic Lover

Shape-shifting robot forms from magnetic swarm

Microchip Implants, Mind Control, and Cybernetics

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/microchip_implants_mind_control.htm

- by Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, MD Former Chief Medical Officer of Finland December 6, 2000

In 1948 Norbert Weiner published a book, Cybernetics, defined as a neurological communication and control theory already in use in small circles at that time. Yoneji Masuda, "Father of the Information Society," stated his concern in 1980 that our liberty is threatened Orwellian-style by cybernetic technology totally unknown to most people. This technology links the brains of people via implanted microchips to satellites controlled by ground-based supercomputers.

The Unburdened Mind

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=936#more-936

Dead Souls: The Pentagon Plan to Create Remorseless "Warfighters"

http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/Dead_Souls:_The_Pentagon_Plan_to_Create_Remorseless_%22Warfighters%22/

Written by Chris Floyd

Friday, 11 January 2008

Penny Coleman at Alternet.com gives us a look at a new program designed to dull the moral sensibilities of American soldiers in combat on the imperial frontiers: Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War. But as we'll see below, this attempt to peddle magic pills to chase away the horrors of war is just one front in a long-term, wide-ranging "warfighter enhancement program" -- including the neurological and genetic re-engineering of soldiers' minds and bodies to create what the Pentagon calls "iron bodied and iron willed personnel": tireless, relentless, remorseless, unstoppable.

Life-Long Loving with a Sexbot

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0%2C1518%2C522919%2C00.html

"Sexbots have been around forever, but they are getting smarter all the time. David Levy, an artificial intelligence expert, sees a future when people will prefer robots to humans. They will offer, he says, better sex and better relationships.

Andy, whose measurements are 101-56-86 centimeters (40-22-34 inches), has what many men want in a woman: "unlimited patience." At least that's what the manufacturer, a company called First Androids based in Neumarkt near the southern German city of Nürnberg, promises. Andy also comes with options, including a "blowjob system, with adjustable levels," a "tangible pulse," "rotating hip motion" and a "heating system with adjustable controls" to raise the body temperature."

With friends like these ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

Facebook has 59 million users - and 2 million new ones join each week. But you won't catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information - not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site

A man needs a maid without tears

http://www.paleofuture.com/2007/11/maid-without-tears-1978.html

Campaigner (Neil Young cover) - Isis

campaigner

Under-7s 'should be banned from playing computer games or risk damaging their brains'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=507143&in_page_id=1965

Things a person cannot learn that a computer can, so they say

http://improbable.com/2008/01/04/things-a-person-cannot-learn-that-a-computer-can-so-they-say/