More on "A Cyborg Unplugged"

Umm...that's the point of sharing SLASH. If you have so much time that you'd like to go ahead and reiterate what's taken an enormous, years-long effort by many people to create, go ahead. The rest of us will just get by in the regular way, learning from others, benefiting from the engineering achievements of the past, basing our knowledge and toolsets upon those of our predecessors.

You can go ahead and try to reinvent fire. We'll be here copy-n-pasting SLASH, but hey, you'll have your own, original source of heat to keep you warm, since you wouldn't want to copy-n-paste from oxidation.

The best way to get public's attention to a problem is by raising a fuss and the best way to do that is to exxagerate a bit. So what? Let them prove their claim that the've done him no harm (except violating his himan right to staying unharmed and unhumiliated at all) and get everyone to work their mind arounf this topic.

That this discussion/flamewar has taken place is an acievement in itself and yes, I'd like to export our right on you own image (Germany, about counter-survivelance) and I'd like to have consistent and measurable criteria about what you are allowed to operate and wear on a plane and yes I like to have the right of looking and behaving different. If I did not have that last right, I would not live in a democracy or other free society.

PS:

(thread-starter)

Counter-survivelance at least gets the ones taking your image/other data to think about what the heck they are alloing themself to do!

we have another airline??? :o)

I remeber reading an article where researchers took test subjects and made them wear prismatic glasses to see how the brain adapted to the new input. The prism lenses could flip the image upside down or rotate 90 degrees. They tried various combinations, including flipping one eye upside down and the other reflected vertically left/right. In all cases, the subjects were extremely sdisoriented for the first few days, but gradually relearned how to see. After a week they were highly proficient; when the glasses were emoved, they once again became disoriented and had to relearn again.

I think this might be the 'brain damage' Steve Mann is talking about. I can't see how the removal could cause him anything but sensory discomfort until he re-adapts.

While I can respect Steve's work, and relize that he may have been treated less than respectfully by officials, I'd rather have the security screeners err on the side of caution in light of recent events - the guy does come across as a bit weird. I've had to endure all sorts of hassles bringing laptops, PDA's and cell phones onto planes; I think a guy with 100,000 worth of customized computing equipment claiming to be a 'cyborg' should raise some flags.

agreed. he could be severely disoriented due to the lack of the usual inputs. but this is not brain damage. Plus the fact that the brain is a system that constantly is rewiring itself.

The only way that it would be brain damage is if any and all stressful activity causes brain damage.

which it doesn't. This is called learning.

Being totally ignorant, My interperetation was that his senses were accustomed to receiving input from these devices (in other words, he doesn't know how to deal with direct vision, only knows how to deal with input from his display). Kind of like how I am used to seeing only through my glasses. If I were forced to walk around & look around without my glasses all of a sudden, it would be very disorienting. His problem is probably much worse, and since he considers his accustomization to his devices the norm, if he becomes unaccustomed to them, this is damage, which will cause him to have to become accustomed to them again.

Well then you know that unless you are a) a neurologist, and b) have full knowledge of the system and what was removed, you are completely unqualified to make a judgement.

Yeesh. I thought they were keeping the entrance requirements up at least a little bit!

From the Article: Similar experiments have previously only ever been carried out on cats and monkeys in the United States.

Wonder which category Dr. Mann fits in?

An enhancement is only an "extra" until you fully encorperate it into your normal functionality. Think about a blind person who is given sight. For them, vision is an enhancement from their original state. This enhancement is only an "extra" up to the point that they become fully functional and dependant upon it. After that point, if you take away the person's sight, they will suffer the same way as a sighted person suffers from the loss. Admittedly, they will be a functional blind person quicker than a person who was sighted all their life, but they will still experience problems.

As the article states, Dr. Mann has been working with the enhancements for years. I think it is safe to say that at that point, they are no longer extras. They were a standard part of a fully functioning Dr. Mann.