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The future of the human machine interface
Four converging technologies are going to transform our interaction with the world radically: genetics, robotics, information and nanotechnology. With a few exceptions, such as pacemakers and artificial hips, technology has always been at one distance removed from our bodies and brains. Not for much longer. The interface between the made world and us is going to become almost invisible.
Breaking through the glass
The monolithic device with a screen may be on the verge of disappearing. It is being enhanced with numerous smaller devices, which may soon replace it as the way to access information. We will arrive at a more ambient experience where sensors capture information about us and feed that information into systems quietly working away in the background. Wearables will give way to "embeddables", nano-scale machinery inside our bodies, which can monitor us and modify us.
Watched over by machines
The first domains that we are seeing using this technology are the obvious ones, such as healthcare and fitness. But the possibilities extend further. Communications, entertainment, socialising, learning, work, even self-actuation – any human activity we can think of is going to be modified and amplified with an invisible mesh of data and processing that we will drift through (mostly obliviously). We can start to think about these systems as mental and sensory prosthetics, increasing our knowledge and perception of the world.
The extended human
Humans enhance their bodies both unknowingly and consciously as an instinctive action, either to confer social acceptance or to improve their physical attributes. Few people are totally content with the bodies they ended up in; the difference is that now we have the opportunity to change it in much more fundamental ways, from the gene up. The enhanced human will have improved attributes such as sensing, thinking (aided by computation) and in more physical ways, such as endurance, resistance and longevity. If you think this is far-fetched, recent developments in artificial organ technology and robotics are bringing this sci-fi scenario closer than we may imagine.
Designing ourselves
The technologists and designers of the future will have to understand much more about human psychology and physiology to deliver appropriate services. These new services will be sitting so close to us that they will have to find the right balance between unobtrusiveness and affordance. Algorithms and learning systems will be crucial to take effort away from the users of these services. Services that can predict our needs without us having to intervene will be the ones that resonate and find an audience. Those that get in the way of our daily activity will be discarded.
We can already see with the rather too rapid backlash against Google Glass that people are very particular about what they put on to their bodies and how "social deviance" is a big barrier to adoption. The hilarious spoof on Saturday Night Live shows exactly the problem with wearable tech: it can make us look ridiculous. The designs of future wearables will need to integrate subtly with our clothing and our bodies or become fashion statements in their own right. Nobody wants to look like the Borg.
A predictive world
The pattern finding software that is finding its way into vending machines in Japan and McDonald's drive-ins is crude and works only in a situation of limited choice. However, the promise of artificial intelligence (which is always 20 years off, don't forget) could really deliver this seamless and almost magical connection between systems and humans. It may not be long before Siri not only understands what we are saying but also knows our hearts desire.
Andy Goodman is a managing director at Fjord
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/jun/12/future-human-machine-interface
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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