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Random Access: Monkey Robots and More |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Weirdness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 29 May 2008 |
A couple of update items this week. You will remember our discussion from a few months ago regarding monkey-controlled robots. Well, believe it or not, they're back in the news. This time, in an apparently unrelated study, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have once again attached electrodes to monkey brains and wired them up to robots. Must be an emerging field.
 In the Pittsburgh study, the monkeys were able to manipulate a robotic
arm to grab marshmallows and bring them up to their mouths -- using
only their thoughts. The photographs alone are compelling. Researchers
hope the technology lead to brain-powered prosthetic limbs for people
with spinal cord injuries or disabling diseases.
In another update, I've been following closely the Privacy Wars being
fought among the major online search engines and social networking
sites. As usual, the marketing people are squaring off against the
consumer advocacy crowd, trying to find the promised land where data
mining and personal privacy can live in harmony.
In a strange spin-off story, Google -- practically the brand-name
emblem for freedom of information -- is fighting to keep its privacy
policy off its homepage. Unlike competitors AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo,
Google does not sport a link to its privacy policy on its famously
austere homepage. Now it's fighting with an advertising trade group
that wants to standardize the practice across the most rarified heights
of the Matrix.
I dunno. I'm kind of on Google's side with this one. Dig into the
details a bit, and it becomes clear that the homepage link is more a
guideline than a policy. Besides, like a great many things that are
politically correct, having an upfront link to your privacy policy
certainly appears to be meaningful. But what your privacy policy
actually is -- well, that's the important part, isn't it? It's
generally accepted that Google's privacy policies are much more
consumer friendly than the others, whether it advertises the fact or
not.
In any case, I'm going back to reading about the monkey robots. I prefer a certain pulp sci-fi vibe in my technology research.
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