Prosthetics or Aesthetics?

Okay, this one is kind of cool. Although, I'm beginning to worry about just how advanced video games have become...

The latest generation of prosthetics being developed in the US are incredibly advanced, funded by a $73-million grant from defence research agency. But the latest piece of research kit is a cheap piece of videogame hardware: the controller to axe-man simulator Guitar Hero.
The controller was hacked by researchers at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab to respond to the electrical output of the twitching chest muscles tasked with controlling the lab's latest prototype prosthetic arms.

That provides a new, hopefully less tedious, way for amputees to train themselves to gain fine control over the arms. The lab hopes to make control of individual fingers on the robotic hand possible, not just opening and closing all five at the same time. Apparently they plan to modify more games for muscle twitch control.

It is developments like this one that truly lead me to believe that the future, and for that matter the not-so-distant future, will rely so heavily on technology that we might begin to lose sight of what makes us who we are. Things like art and culture, that may not hold the key to solving problems with disease or end climate change may not seem to share the same validity as new advents in prosthetics, but they show us who we are and where we came from. We cannot lose sight of any of these things. Otherwise, we ourselves become less human, and more machine. So, instead of a picture of the prosthesis on this blog, let's enjoy something a little more aesthetically pleasing.

And hey, I don't have anything against giving people the ability to use all of their limbs. I just think we need to take a step back some times and take in our surroundings. We as people often get so caught up in our daily lives, we forget to actually live them. I think former President Abraham Lincoln said it best when he noted, "With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die."

--Roger