The Future Gets Closer, Part VI

September 26, 2013 8:34 PM

DARPA has funded the next generation of bionic legs and DIY brain scanners. Next up: drone submarines and a hypersonic spaceplane.

Development continues on robomules, previously noted on MeFi.

posted by StrikeTheViol (21 comments total)

We're past the William Gibson future and heading straight into Peter Watts.
posted by figurant at 8:36 PM on September 26, 2013 [3 favorites]

Wake me when it gets to Douglas Adams.
posted by Mike Mongo at 9:15 PM on September 26, 2013 [4 favorites]

I'm going to take a nap. Wake me when it gets to Douglas Adams.

The Douglas Adams future will be improbable hyperfast developments, kicked off by a string of coincidences producing a technological singularity, that peak in a five-minute-long utopian society that then rapidly collapses and reverts to the normal tech levels of Sept 26, 2013 before your nap is over. The only thing you'll notice afterwards is that all the terriers are gone and bananas taste different and people get weirdly cagey when you bring it up.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:24 PM on September 26, 2013 [20 favorites]

Pretty righteous, but until they get the bionic eye down, I'm still not going to get into a space plane crash.
posted by happyroach at 9:54 PM on September 26, 2013

It's probably about time we all agreed upon a phonetic spelling of the "bionic power" sound, then, because this is going to come up.

I propose: De-neh-neh-neh-neh-neh(etc.)
posted by ShutterBun at 11:04 PM on September 26, 2013

Wake me when it gets to Douglas Adams.

Oh no, not again.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:09 PM on September 26, 2013 [2 favorites]

They can scan brains, but can they scan cats?
posted by Jahaza at 11:14 PM on September 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Crikey. A knee that works.

Another gifting opportunity, people! Christmas is not far away!
posted by Samizdata at 11:39 PM on September 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Say what you will, but I'll be riding my magnificently intrepid, rastafari, cheetah-bot to the company party with a working tail on the both of us. When we arrive, I'll knowingly bow and he'll stand up and read The Gettysburg Address in a condescendingly dulcet tone to the fragile delight of all my coworkers and their dumbstruck children.
posted by mnmlst at 12:03 AM on September 27, 2013

mnmlst: "Say what you will, but I'll be riding my magnificently intrepid, rastafari, cheetah-bot to the company party with a working tail on the both of us. When we arrive, I'll knowingly bow and he'll stand up and read The Gettysburg Address in a condescendingly dulcet tone to the fragile delight of all my coworkers and their dumbstruck children."

See, the reason I wanted the legs was because I would like to be able to run too. Not 28 mph, but something would be lovely.
posted by Samizdata at 12:29 AM on September 27, 2013

"DARPA’s mission is to prevent technological surprise for the United States and to create technological surprise for its adversaries," the agency said

Job security.
posted by stbalbach at 12:37 AM on September 27, 2013

And just wait 'til you see what DERPA has in the works.
posted by pracowity at 2:10 AM on September 27, 2013

DARPA is an acronym for PRADA.

Just sayin'.
posted by ardgedee at 4:44 AM on September 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Lord! Byronic legs, for poetry in motion!

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies."
 
posted by Herodios at 5:44 AM on September 27, 2013

I'm going to take a nap. Wake me when it gets to Douglas Adams.

The Douglas Adams future will be improbable hyperfast developments . . . and reverts to the normal tech levels of Sept 26, 2013 before your nap is over. The only thing you'll notice afterwards is that all the terriers are gone and bananas taste different . . .

Oh, and that Europe will be full of stacks of music manuscript by an impossibly prolific composer with the improbable name of 'Johann Sebastian Bach' (a 'contemporary' of the well known and popular baroque composer Dieterich Buxtehude).

You say you've heard of Bach, but not Buxtehude?








Boy, did you miss a wild party!
 
posted by Herodios at 5:59 AM on September 27, 2013

by acronym of course I mean anagram but we have to obscure THE TRUTH to keep THEM from overhearing us I've said too much already bye
posted by ardgedee at 6:10 AM on September 27, 2013

I process research proposals and funded awards for a living. One that you could quite reasonably call a bionic eye was on my desk yesterday. Start getting ready for your space plane crash, happyroach.

Seriously, I wish I were allowed to talk more in public about the stuff I see our researchers creating because it is both awesome (in every sense) and terrifying.
posted by Stacey at 6:29 AM on September 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

And when I said 'Dieterich Buxtehude', of course, I was referring to the Dutch composer, not the Japanese baseball player or the US president of the same name.
 
posted by Herodios at 6:29 AM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

The first rule of spaceplane club is you don't talk about spaceplane club. Or so I'm, um, told.
posted by digitalprimate at 8:05 AM on September 27, 2013

Yeah, but all of this is going to end up A: automating things people used to be paid to do and/or B: enabling our masters to more efficiently and effectively rule us.

The corporation/state/machine can kill me with robots for things I will think in the future, and all I got was this lousy iPad.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 3:32 PM on September 27, 2013

The idea of cheap DIY brain scanning freaks the hell out of me...
posted by blue shadows at 12:51 AM on September 28, 2013