[ExI] [POSSIBLE SPAM] Meat Hacks

[ben]

Spike has given me an idea.

As a result of having my arm fractured a while ago, I dreamed up a 
'meat-hack' that i'd love to see:

 > one of the 'meat-hacks' i'd
 > like to make is to create a 'pop-joint', that has a kind of
 > pop-out connection for the tendon, set to pop just before the
 > breaking strain of the attached bone, with a thin coiled line
 > that keeps the tendon attached to it's insertion, like an
 > astronaut's safety line.  When an accident happens that
 > stretches the joint past its normal range of movement, the
 > joint would 'pop' out, as though the tendon had snapped, your
 > arm (e.g.) would become unusable for the few seconds it took
 > for some mechanism to wind the thin line back in, pulling the
 > tendon with it, and back in to the pop-joint, thus
 > re-attaching the tendon to it's insertion point.

This is just one of what i'm sure could be many such hacks to the 
current human body.  Spike asked me to consider posting it to the list, 
and I thought it's likely that other people have come up with things 
they'd like to see.  So: Any other ideas?  I'm thinking in terms of 
reasonably simple modifications that don't involve any speculative 
technology (terahertz vision, chimp muscles, bird lungs, etc. - nice 
ideas, but we don't know how to do them yet), but well defined, 
achievable mods that are a step beyond what we do now (titanium hip 
joints, etc.), that are still grounded in proven technology. Something 
like the pop-joint is simple mechanics, and may be achievable given a 
bit of tissue engineering. A 3-d printer, some growth factors, an extra 
muscle or so, a tiny ratchet (a new thing for the human body, but quite 
possible), suitable sensors.  I'm not saying this would be easy, but 
it's something that's not much beyond the current state of the art with 
medical tech.

Apart from Iain M Banks' idea of a recirculating ejaculatory system, can 
anyone come up with any other ideas on the same general level?  I think 
it would be good to create a list of such hacks to share amongst 
ourselves.  Who knows, some of them might be doable fairly soon.

Sub-dermal organic circuitry tattoos is my second hack. They wouldn't 
have to be connected to the nervous system to be useful, or even powered 
by the body.  A clock/calculator/simple PDA that was permanently 
available on the inside of your arm would be very useful, i reckon, even 
if you had to wear a wristband with a mercury cell in it, or something 
similar.

Ben Zaiboc