Friday, June 22, 2007

Cyborgs at the Olympics and on the Dancefloor



Jamais Cascio
of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging
Technologies
posted a new article on the future of
Cyborgs in our society. He
comments on several trends such as baby boomers pushing the demand for
higher fidelity hearing aids and faster product development cycles. Any
article on Cyborgs has to mention the huge number of amputees being
generated by Bush's war in Iraq. The sheer number of amputees is driving
demand for prosthetics and resulting in rapid progress. People using these
new prosthetic legs expend 20% less energy walking or running than
people with natural legs. One South African is running fast enough with
his unpowered prosthetics to qualify for the Olympics, which has the
Olympic committee worried that natural humans may not be able to compete
against cyborgs in the near future. He also notes that prosthetics legs
are even becoming quite
fashionable on the dance floors.



Source: http://www.netchain.com

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