<html><head></head><body><strong>Från:
</strong>
Giulio Prisco <giulio@gmail.com>
<br><div><blockquote class="mori" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:2px blue solid;padding-left:1ex;">Anders, don't underestimate the Daily Mail, it's what the people out there read.
</blockquote></div><br>That is my worry.<br><br>Apropos magazines people ought to read, here is from this week's Nature:<br>http://www.nature.com/news/the-pentagon-s-gamble-on-brain-implants-bionic-limbs-and-combat-exoskeletons-1.17726<br><blockquote><p>"When Geoffrey Ling talks about the future of technology, his ideas go
flying around the room like a whirlwind. Ling eagerly describes a world
in which people live far beyond their natural lifespans, minds can be
downloaded into external 'hard drives' for enhancement by artificial
intelligence and robots and aircraft are controlled by human thought.</p> <p>“It's
abso-posi-frickin-lutely going to happen,” he declares. “The next 20
years are going to make our heads spin, because we've already crossed
over into that realm.”</p>
<p>Ling should know: he is doing as much
as anyone to make these visions real. A neurologist by training, he is
also a US Army colonel and director of the first biology funding office
to operate within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
the Pentagon's avant-garde research arm. The Biological Technologies
Office (BTO), which opened in April 2014, aims to support extremely
ambitious — some say fantastical — technologies ranging from powered
exoskeletons for soldiers to brain implants that can control mental
disorders."</p></blockquote>We'll see how much of it actually works out (the article is somewhat sceptical of the DARPA approach), but it is nice to see colonels saying stuff like that. <br><br><br>Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University</body></html>