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While avatars (like this one from the game Second Life) and surrogates were once just the stuff of games, virtual reality and computer interfacing, now they're taking on more active roles as replacements for living, breathing humans.
While avatars (like this one from the game Second Life) and surrogates were once just the stuff of games, virtual reality and computer interfacing, now they're taking on more active roles as replacements for living, breathing humans.
Maybe you aren't comfortable with all of the futurist predictions and even the current rate of technological advance, and that's OK. You can be yourself and interact in the world in a fairly low-tech way while allowing a surrogate, avatar or robot to live your online and tech life for you. Even the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has budgeted millions of dollars to create avatars that will act as surrogates for real, live soldiers
While avatars and surrogates were once the stuff of games, virtual reality and computer interfacing, they are taking on more and more active roles as replacements for living breathing humans. Or, are they enhancements for humans?
Fully-realized robotic machines have become more and more widespread in medical technology and scientific development, both in the lab and in hospitals, enabling those with paralysis to move limbs, for instance. "Living" life with 'second life' surrogates is likely to become more and more common every day for those of us in less specialized fields, too.
Will there be a day when you say "I can't read your mind, you know!" and the reply will be "Oh, stop it -- of course you can!"? It could happen. Neuroscientists are finding ways to read people's minds with machines, and although this has been in the works for decades, real progress is being made by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere. Translating electrical activity from the brain by means of decoding brainwaves is one way to help sufferers of dementia, for example, who have complications with neurotransmitters relaying thoughts into comprehensible speech or holding thoughts long enough to get them out verbally before they're forgotten.While avatars and surrogates were once the stuff of games, virtual reality and computer interfacing, they are taking on more and more active roles as replacements for living breathing humans. Or, are they enhancements for humans?
Fully-realized robotic machines have become more and more widespread in medical technology and scientific development, both in the lab and in hospitals, enabling those with paralysis to move limbs, for instance. "Living" life with 'second life' surrogates is likely to become more and more common every day for those of us in less specialized fields, too.
- On the other hand, it is more than a little frightening to know that science and machines could soon have access to our innermost thoughts. Implications for neurohacking into people's thoughts have also been studied in relation to neuromarketing, which targets people's brains by manipulating their wants and desires through marketing and advertising. Our thoughts and actions could actually be hijacked by a form of media that makes us think we're getting what we want, when really, we're going for something our brains may only think is supposed to be good
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