by Brandon Turbeville

November 24, 2011
from ActivistPost Website

Neil Harbisson

World's first official cyborg
 

For years, many have mocked the idea of implantable microchips and cyborgs as both conspiracy theories and science fiction.

Anyone who so much as mentioned these possibilities to their neighbor risked being labeled either as a religious fanatic or delusional and paranoid. However, as they have become more and more prevalent in everyday society, it has become increasingly difficult to ridicule these concepts.

For instance, with stories like the recent Singularity Hub article entitled, “Revolutionary New Brain Chip Allows Monkeys To Grasp AND Feel Objects Using Their Thoughts,” these emerging technological possibilities are almost impossible to ignore.

This article discusses how scientists have recently announced the creation of an implantable device that can be placed in the brain and which will allow for the control of computers by thought.

Dr. Miguel Nicolelis and company have already tested these devices in monkeys with stunningly accurate results. In addition to allowing the user to control the computer by thought, it also allows the user to feel the virtual object it is manipulating.

Of course, this device is not the first of its kind. For years, implants have allowed monkeys to control computer cursors and even robotic arms in laboratory settings.

In the most recent experiment (Active Tactile Exploration Using a Brain-Machine-Brain Interface), two macaque monkeys were trained to control a virtual arm represented on the computer screen and use the arm to “grasp” virtual objects. The difference between this latest experiment and those that have preceded it, however, is that these monkeys were able to actually feel the objects they were grasping.

The good news is that this could provide individuals who have lost limbs with more than a mere prosthetic replacement.

Indeed, it would be able to offer them a prosthetic that comes complete with the sense of touch. As the quality of prosthetics continue to improve, this technology could no doubt go a great distance toward replacing lost limbs with something more than simple equipment that allows merely for basic mobility.

Yet mobility, for some, is still the main goal. Miguel Nicolelis and his associates who conducted the experiment have expressed desire to take the technology to the next level.

In conjunction with The Walk Again Project, there is allegedly a concerted effort to,

“restore full mobility to patients suffering from a severe degree of paralysis.”

Nicolelis’ lab at Duke University is already working toward this end.

Because the ultimate goal of a return of full mobility to a person experiencing such paralysis will require support for the body itself, the scientists are also developing what they call a “wearable robot” to encase the person who is being implanted.

Yes, I said a wearable robot. And yes, a wearable robot can also be described as an exoskeleton.

Peter Murray of Singularity Hub writes:

The brain chips - if they work - will be a technological triumph by themselves. Custom designed, the brain chips will be low-power and wireless, transmitting their signals to a processing unit worn on the patient’s belt about the size of a cell phone.

 

That brain activity will then be translated to digital motor signals which will control the actuators across the joints of the exoskeleton. Force and stretch indicators throughout the exoskeleton will signal back to the patient’s brain the whereabouts of his or her joints and limbs.

That technology is being created which may enable the lame to walk again is obviously good news.

However, for everything good in the world, there is an evil twin. This technology not only provides for the possibility of some darker applications, but, considering those who are currently guiding the destiny of the world, it almost ensures them.

If we allow society to continue to move in the direction it is currently headed, these technologies simply do not bode well for the future of humanity as we know it.

For years, shadowy and nefarious agencies like DARPA have openly discussed creating drones designed to look like insects, snakes, and other animals. Largely, these creations have been robotic, with the appearance of being an insect, but actually being nothing more than a sophisticated remote controlled or pre-programmed drone.

Going one giant step further, and in direct relationship to the style of brain tampering spoken about early in this article, DARPA has unveiled other projects as well. As far back as 2007, DARPA announced that it was planning to not only build but grow cyborg moths and other insects for spying purposes.

The program, Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS), involves the construction of a,

“tiny lepidopterine infiltration borg by growing a living moth around a ‘micro-mechanical system.’”

Essentially, DARPA is implanting a “metallic core” into the moths which will function as a cloak for the metal center.

This is something that bears repeating. Instead of functioning as an exoskeleton like what was discussed in Nicolelis’ project, the cores will actually wear the bodies.

As Lewis Page wrote for The Register,

“If Dr. Lal [DARPA scientist involved in the project] was using vast Austrian bodybuilders rather than moths, we’d be talking Terminator yet again (this happens rather a lot when one starts looking at the US defense establishment.”

Of course, there is little doubt that if DARPA is releasing this much information on HI-MEMS, the project has already been attempted, tested, and perfected a long time ago.

It is only new to the general public and the few scientists who have been chosen to release the information to the population for the purposes of prepping them for the coming New World Order.

As Rod Brooks of MIT’s computer science and artificial intelligence lab (CSAIL) was quoted as saying,

“This is going to happen. It’s not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply.”

He goes on,

“A bunch of experiments have been done over the past couple of years where simple animals, such as rats and cockroaches, have been operated on and driven by joysticks, but this is the first time where chip has been injected in the pupa stage and ‘grown’ inside it.”

“First time.” Yeah right.

Nevertheless, Brooks continues to discuss the future of technological implants in humans when he says,

Biological engineering is coming.

 

There are already more than 100,000 people with cochlear implants, which have a direct neural connection, and chips are being inserted in people’s retinas to combat macular degeneration. By the 2012 Olympics, we’re going to be dealing with systems which can aid the oxygen uptake of athletes.

There’s going to be more and more technology in our bodies... there’s going to be a lot of moral debates.

Moral debates there may be, but there is also no doubt that the world is more and more readily coming to accept biological intrusion and top-down control as a result of their constant training at the hands of the television, video games, and indoctrination at the hands of the education system.

One need only take a look at the behavior of anyone under the age of thirty in the presence of any modern interactive technology to see the writing on the wall.

In this regard, The Singularity Movement is a perfect example of the coming scientific dictatorship and the enthusiasm of some to accept it.

Singularity can be defined, very simply, as the moment when human and machine merge together. It is a philosophy that is gaining more and more steam with the general public as a result of its gradual introduction and promotion by the media (television, games, etc.) and prominent individuals like Ray Kurzweil and Rodney Brooks.
 

TIME magazine’s Lev Grossman discussed Singularity in this way:

Maybe we’ll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities.

 

Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life indefinitely. Maybe we’ll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually.

 

Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: Singularity.

Singularity is obviously a movement that has been promoted from the top-down.

This is easily seen by the fact that the backers of the Singularity movement are the usual suspects including NASA and GOOGLE, as well as individuals like Bill Gates in addition to Ray Kurzweil. Not only that, but major governments have been preparing for the eventuality of a massive merger between man and machine for some time.

For instance, in a report by Richard Norton-Taylor, written for The Guardian in 2007, entitled “Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips - A grim vision of the future,” Norton-Taylor relays the findings of a 90-page report administered and released by the British Ministry of Defense.

The research team was tasked with describing a future “strategic context” that the British military might encounter in the coming years.

Norton-Taylor writes:

By 2035, an implantable 'information chip' could be wired directly to the brain. A growing pervasiveness of information communications technology will enable states, terrorists or criminals, to mobilize 'flashmobs,' challenging security forces to match this potential agility coupled with an ability to concentrate forces quickly in a small area.

Singularity is also a movement that has its roots in eugenics and the desire of the ruling elites for complete control over the mind, body, and soul of every human being on the planet.

Oddly enough, while some may dispute this claim, this movement’s roots in eugenics is relatively open.

Consider the comments made by the RAND corporation in its 2001 report, The Global Technology Revolution - Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015.

It says,

The results could be astonishing. Effects may include significant improvements in human quality of life and life span... continued globalization, reshuffling of wealth, cultural amalgamation or invasion with potential for increased tension and conflict, shifts in power from nation states to non-government organizations and individuals... and the possibility of human eugenics and cloning.

With this in mind, the developments presented in the Singularity Hub article which I discussed early on, take a more sinister tone.

As the RAND corporation states in its report, the introduction of Singularity will most likely involve a great improvement in living standards for the handicapped. At least it will at first.

Eventually, the movement will begin to encompass convenience and will come to be seen as trendy and fashionable. Once merging with machines has become commonplace and acceptable (even expected), the real tyranny will begin to set in. Soon after, there will be no opt-outs allowed.
 

When discussing the coming technological fascism, author and researcher Alan Watt stated:

It [technology/internet/etc.] has many purposes but one of them was never to free the people, it would be used as an incredible tool of data-collection and using, like television and repetition of different topics, or the same topics or phrases again, it would be used to condition the public in their opinions, until, really, they’d be addicted to it, they could never do without it.

 

That’s the intent, because you will go cashless eventually and it will be used as a form of social approval and disapproval, if they cut you off from the net: you won’t be able to do your banking, get money to pay your rent etc.

 

Bertrand Russell talked about this sort of technique to be used in the future and it’s coming now. 'Cloud' will come in and that will take over and be THE one for the planet and everyone will rush into it thinking ‘my God I don’t have to worry about spyware or viruses or upgrades, it’s all done for me, out there somewhere in the big 'cloud.'

 

And the Cloud, eventually, will be censoring your emails and actually popping up windows to tell you 'are you sure you want to use this word, this politically incorrect word in this email?' Then it might give you a little list of fines or punishments etc. etc.

 

This is all planned folks, that’s how you do it.

http://www.alanwattsentientsentinel.eu/english/transcripts/Alan_Watt_CTTM_LIVEonRBN_302_Death_by_Stealth--Allergic_to_Food_Apr202009.html

The advancements in the quality of human life as a result of this new technology have never been intended for the average person.

The good that could be done by virtue of its development is only meant as a tool to sell it to the population in the beginning and to control them in the end. Indeed, the control that can and will be exerted through its acceptance is the ultimate goal.