cyborgs
cagapakis | September 6, 2010A lot of synthetic biology is about getting biology to be more like electrical engineering, designing genetic "logic gates" to create a living circuit board. Beyond analogies, however, cells have many fascinating electrical properties--proteins that transfer electrons like wires, membranes that separate ions and create an electrical charge that drives the metabolism of the cell, channels through these membranes that open and close to activate an electro-biological response. Electrons are electrons whether they are in proteins or copper wires, and many scientists have designed ways to connect…
razib | March 17, 2009This bloggingheads.tv about war robots is pretty fascinating. One of the issues with robots is that people are fixated on androids and really human-like artifice, and that hasn't really panned out. But it seems that technology is becoming a seamless part of our lives in a way that we're not even particularly aware of. The new shuffle isn't just a technology story, it's a lifestyle & fashion story. I'm very interested near the end when Peter Singer recounts how someone with a chip implant began to consider un-augmented humans "cows." I'm moderately skeptical of extrapolating from this…