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"the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"


Michael Hopcroft

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The London Daily Telegraph reports that the Pentagon really is conduting expreiments on chips that can be iomplanted in the brains of soldiers to improve their performance.

 

This seems to me an extaordinarily unethical thing to do (what do you do when the guy musters out -- take it out?), but I am wondering what the game effect of having something like that in your head would be.

 

Not to mention the social implciations. Once you get the surgery, do you lose the option of leaving the serivce? In effect, are you now property of the government? If not, how can you ever leave the servide given the obvious danger a guy with hyper-reactions poses to the rest of society?

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky to me. What does "sends out the same signals as the hippocampus" really mean? Same type of signal? Identical to every detail (where's the improvement?) Why is the focus on soldiers (wouldn't everybody benefit from this?) Who would submit to such a procedure, since it seems to require the destruction of part of the brain?

Sensationalist Shenanigans, I call!

 

Keith "Mr. Skeptic" Curtis

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Scientists believe the implant will vastly improve the memory of troops so that they can recall every detail of their training and become more effective fighters.

 

so if all it does is vastly improve memory (and no bad side effects comes from this)..who would want it turned off after getting out? Of course, the chip would probably be classified..thus you would have to have it removed before getting out. That would also mean deserters with the chip would be hunted in a determined fashion, instead of the normal policy.

 

If you were allowed to keep it after getting out..talk about vets having an edge!

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

I am wondering what the game effect of having something like that in your head would be.

Sx for eidetic memory and/or craming.

 

Not to mention the social implciations. Once you get the surgery' date=' do you lose the option of leaving the serivce? In effect, are you now [i']property[/i] of the government? If not, how can you ever leave the servide given the obvious danger a guy with hyper-reactions poses to the rest of society?

Look at how many people managed to keep "souvenier" firearms when they mustered out after World War II. I wish I could find it as hard to believe as you do that the US Armed Forces would discharge veterains with experimental technology in their heads.

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

It's not just being developed for soldiers. They want to use it to help stroke victims and people suffering from Alzheimer's too.

 

The military angle may or may not be a recent development...

They should have mentioned that in the story, then. If this is true, why does the story mention that it is specifically being developed by the "US military experts? It then goes on to say it is made by "Researchers at the University of Southern California's bio-engineering department". Which is it? It's a poorly-written story.

 

Keiht "But an interetsing topic for discussion" Curtis

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Sensationalist Shenanigans, I call!

 

Keith "Mr. Skeptic" Curtis

 

Absolutely. I suspect this is the Australian equivalent of the USA's Supermarket tabloids. Check some of the other headlines:

 

Nazi racoons on the march

China to buy the moon

New car to run on iron filings

 

Not what I'd call a trustworthy source. ;)

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Bah! Bah, I say! They've had this technology locked away for years. Anybody who read Norbert Weiner's 1948 book Cybernetics knows that the government's been working on these for fifty years! In 1946, they put electrodes in the brains of babies without the knowledge or consent of the parents in their quest for the ultimate Mind Control technology! In Sweden the situation's been better documented: in 1973, then-Prime Minister Olof Palme allowed researchers to implant prisoners, and nursing-home patients were implanted in the mid-1980s (read the 1972:47 Swedish state report, Statens Officiella Utradninger). In 1988, prisoners in Utah reported being implanted as a means of punishment - the technology had advanced far enough that they could be remotely controlled. In May 1995, the Washington Post reported that Prince William had been implanted at the age of 12 "in case of kidnapping." A likely story! Who else would be implanted but future heads of state! The technology that has been incubating for decades behind the scenes has now been brought into the open! Big Brother is here, but now he watches you from inside your own head...

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Um, not to make a mess of a perfectly entertaining argument here, but I think the chip we're talking about is like a dogtag -- it has medical and personal information encoded into it which can be read by an induction device. Plus, it's inserted just under the skin at that location because statistically it's the place on the body most likely to survive relatively intact from typical combat injuries. They've been using this technology in people's pets for a few years now.

 

Matt "Hoping-I-didn't-step-in-it" Frisbee

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Um, not to make a mess of a perfectly entertaining argument here, but I think the chip we're talking about is like a dogtag -- it has medical and personal information encoded into it which can be read by an induction device. Plus, it's inserted just under the skin at that location because statistically it's the place on the body most likely to survive relatively intact from typical combat injuries. They've been using this technology in people's pets for a few years now.

 

Matt "Hoping-I-didn't-step-in-it" Frisbee

 

No, the chip we (and the article pointed to by the OP) are talking about supposedly does lots more.

 

Scientists believe the implant will vastly improve the memory of troops so that they can recall every detail of their training and become more effective fighters.

 

Load of codswallop, you ask me, but that's what we're all talking about. The Ident-chip you mean is well establish tech.

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Hey Basil,

 

Okay, I stand corrected. But my first response to that sort of thing is "um, interesting, but not possible with the current level of technology." To do something even remotely like that, they would need a neurological interface program and system which could translate neurochemical emissions from the surrounding synapses and create and send back same for the chip to work. While there are some ideas for replacing people's eyes with cameras by hooking into the optic nerve, this is still in the experimental stage.

 

Matt "Wishing-I'd-just-kept-quiet" Frisbee

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

I do know that we've had an optical sensor the size of a human eye that could process visual information about a hundred times better than a human eye for at least ten-twenty years now. The technology to allow you to translate that information into something the human brain can interpret properly is not quite as advanced...

 

However, it should be possible to make a chip that can increase memory to some extent. They've done some incredible work with implanted chips that can be used to remotely activate devices. Plus there were those cockroaches they implanted with chips, which they then figured out how to remotely control. I don't think the technology is as remote as we might think it is...

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

I do know that we've had an optical sensor the size of a human eye that could process visual information about a hundred times better than a human eye for at least ten-twenty years now. The technology to allow you to translate that information into something the human brain can interpret properly is not quite as advanced...

 

However, it should be possible to make a chip that can increase memory to some extent. They've done some incredible work with implanted chips that can be used to remotely activate devices. Plus there were those cockroaches they implanted with chips, which they then figured out how to remotely control. I don't think the technology is as remote as we might think it is...

 

The whole thing sounds very Johnny Mnemonic to me is all. I suppose someone could hook up a rider on one of those three tiny bones in the ear and run a voice recognition program to record everthing a certain someone says and then download the audio back into an iPod or something...

 

Matt Frisbee

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

I do know that we've had an optical sensor the size of a human eye that could process visual information about a hundred times better than a human eye for at least ten-twenty years now. The technology to allow you to translate that information into something the human brain can interpret properly is not quite as advanced...
Read "non-existant."

 

However' date=' it should be possible to make a chip that can increase memory to some extent. They've done some incredible work with implanted chips that can be used to remotely activate devices. Plus there were those cockroaches they implanted with chips, which they then figured out how to remotely control. I don't think the technology is as remote as we might think it is...[/quote'] There's a world of difference between implanting electrodes that "hit" nerves with a bit of electricity and cause muscles to respond (which is [A] what you're talking about and has been done for decades--the chip mere makes it self-contained), and devising something the brain can directly access, "push" information into and later "pull" that information back out of. I'm afraid the "memory chip" is decades away, at best.
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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Read "non-existant."

 

There's a world of difference between implanting electrodes that "hit" nerves with a bit of electricity and cause muscles to respond (which is [A] what you're talking about and has been done for decades--the chip mere makes it self-contained), and devising something the brain can directly access, "push" information into and later "pull" that information back out of. I'm afraid the "memory chip" is decades away, at best.

Probably, yes. But progress is being made. It's easily played up, however. It's important for the research to continue, but to express it as something 'just around the corner' is probably a little ambitious.

 

One of the things I got impressed with a few years back was a pilot flying a simulation of a plane using only his brainpower. O_O Electrodes stuck around his head, reading his brainwaves, and he was actually flying the damn thing. Not too well, mind you - response was slow, among other problems - but it was proof of concept, if not working technology.

 

But yeah, I'd go with a figure of a few decades rather than a few years, for this stuff to become operational. :)

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

John Birmingham's Weapons of Choice had some interesting chip technology for its soldiers. A combined biomonitor/drug implant that could be accessed by command and control computers, or medics' scanners. It monitored the soldier's vital states, and could administer medications - pain meds, for instance, in the case of injury. In the book, they're of vital importance when the entire combat force is struck down with an extreme disorientation/nausea/etc type effect. Those with chips are up and about in minutes, those without are unconscious for hours, or even longer.

 

Important note was made: self-administration of medication is impossible. It's done by others, or not at all. Only a handful of people in the world would be able to resist the temptation to abuse it.

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Read "non-existant."

 

There's a world of difference between implanting electrodes that "hit" nerves with a bit of electricity and cause muscles to respond (which is [A] what you're talking about and has been done for decades--the chip mere makes it self-contained), and devising something the brain can directly access, "push" information into and later "pull" that information back out of. I'm afraid the "memory chip" is decades away, at best.

I'm not thinking in terms of a chip that the brain can access. I'm talking about a chip that controls the hormones that control memory; consider the positive memory effects of leptin or the negative effects of testosterone. I could see a chip that triggers leptin production, activated when you want to learn something vital.

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Re: "the Governmput put a Chip in my Head!"

 

Presumably the spelling is how it would appear on a cardboard sign held by the unemployable but surprisingly dangerous derelict on the street corner.

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to SKJAM! again." :(

 

Or perhaps "The Governput Meant a Hip in my Shed" ;)

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