Scifi author William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace, was interviewed by Belinda Goldsmith of Reuters in August of last year and stated,

Personally I think that contemporary reality is sufficiently science fiction for me. Some critics are already maintaining that science fiction is a sort of historical category and it is not possible any more.

The more I read, the more I agree his sentiment, especially in the last few days. Computers are become more human like every day, whether its by learning to play games like Ms. Pac-Man(and better than humans sometimes) or by actually learning to lie(both actual events that have been reported in the last few days), robots are becoming more human like every day. It doesn’t make the Matrix seem so far fetched anymore.

But its not just robots that are becoming more human like, humans are becoming more robot like as well. In the past few days researches at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have developed a farming robot suit that can make picking up 20 kg of rice feel like someone is barely holding it, while it is primarily designed to aid aging farmers with their tasks, its not hard to envision something like this really revolutionizing the way people interact with the environment(think of the benefits to rescue operations if all it takes is donning a suit to rescue someone from a car wreck or from under a fallen tree).

Its not just suits though, recently Oscar Pistorius, a double-amputee who has carbon-fibr, prosthetic feet has been denied a shot at the Olympics because his prosthetics give him an unfair advantage compared to his purely human counterparts, a report by the International Association of Athletics Federations found that the advantage of the prosthesis is higher than 30%, and uses 25% less energy than the average runner.

As Engadget quipped, “our suggestion? prosthetic legs for all!” I’d take it one step further, robot suits and prosthetic legs for all! We’ll need them when the robots try and take over.

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