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I, Superman!

  
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
18:58 / 20.07.05
I saw a newspaper article about HAL5 and went "F**K YES!", then "OOh, hang on, that's also quite scary...."

Basically, to earn money I do a lot of lifting and I can see how one day I'll probably screw my back up beyond repair. This suit could, I suppose, have many GOOD and BAD superhuman-type uses.

What do you reckon: "With great power comes great responsibillity...."? Got any other examples like this one? e.g. pills which make you telepathic....
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
19:07 / 20.07.05
Pictures of HAL5 suit being worn and used.
 
 
P. Horus Rhacoid
01:05 / 21.07.05
This is great, though less fully developed, it seems, than sweet robotic exoskeletons. Give it a few years, though, and I'll be able to control your HAL5. With my mind!
 
 
sdv (non-human)
10:04 / 22.07.05
I'm not sure about this, if the technology can transform us which seems unlikely anymore than a bus, car or bicycle can be thought to have transformed us, apart from being better than walking to work.

It makes me wonder if the suit would age at the same pace as we do, is this merely going to be a mortal engine ? Mortal not just because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics but because it has to age more slowly than machines usually do...
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
11:13 / 22.07.05
It makes me wonder if the suit would age at the same pace as we do, is this merely going to be a mortal engine ?

Excuse me if I'm being a bit dim, but I think you just take the apparatus off, like Iron Man's many suits. Aging is not a concern, no? I mean, you just get a new one if anything happens, and they're probably going to outlive us anyway (i.e. hal-life of plastc, etc). Although, of course, I suppose a future model of HAL might be surgical implants like the Bionic Man.

Any news on those "teletabs" anyone?
 
 
sdv (non-human)
16:07 / 22.07.05
I was merely taking the logic of the suits enhancment of the human, a step further in which the suit and wearer become still more integrated. Perhaps this might be release 6. Where the suit and human might be so integrated that the mortality of one becomes a critical issue for the other.

The mortality of the human might become as important to the machine as the mortality of the machine might be for the human. After all the suit/machine is not being proposed as merely an item of mass-trivial-consumption is it ?
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
00:08 / 23.07.05
The mortality of the human might become as important to the machine as the mortality of the machine might be for the human. After all the suit/machine is not being proposed as merely an item of mass-trivial-consumption is it ?

Oh right, I get ya. Cool.

Indeed, I like that train of thought. i.e. will the machine keep the man alive; is it in the machine's own interest to keep the owner alive? Nice.

It reminds me of a story-idea I had a couple of years ago, a story which I started but never actually finished. The story was about a druggie layabout, a young cad who gets tricked by his (betrayed) scientist friend into trying on a new invention, "the health suit". The idea of the suit was that it's comprised on nanotechnology and actually melds itself to the user, acting as a kind of Personal trainer/heath guru. e.g. contacting the muscles in your arm if you tried to light a cigarette, or closing your mouth hole with a membrane if you tried to eat junk food etc. The plot of the story was one of revenge (after the protagonist slept with the scientist friend's lover), with the protagonist unable to take the suit off after his friend commits suiced; and I wanted him to live for hundreds of years with his guilt (etc), kept alive by the Health Suit but living a boring life with no treats, booze, drugs, partying etc. I started the story with the ending first: the protagonist sitting on a hill, overlooking the city a few hours before the bombs are due to drop and end humanity...

Anyway, I digress (badly). Personally, I like the idea of wearing a power suit of some kind to do manual work or if (say) I was badly injured, etc. However, I've never been keen on bionics and the idea of not being able to "take it off" makes me feel a little uncomfortable.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
09:40 / 23.07.05
Some people already wear internal heart pacemakers, so even at it's most banal it is not hard to think of someone with MS of Muscular Dystrophy having to wear something a suit to survive.

I can imagine a comic book superhero - by day in his suit/wheelchair (like S.Hawking), by night wearing its enhanced suit.... a human/cyborg mixture - deeply resently of his/her inability to have sex, or even perhaps resenting its need for the sickly human .. and obviously in psychotherapy to help her/him/it make it through the weeks and years.

Stanilsaw Lem story i think...

s
 
 
Seth
11:08 / 23.07.05
I was merely taking the logic of the suits enhancment of the human, a step further in which the suit and wearer become still more integrated.

You mean like Shinji and his RoboAngelic-Save-Us-From-Our-Flesh-FreudvsJung MummySuit?

I can't see that going too horribly wrong.
 
 
Benny the Ball
14:00 / 23.07.05
I still maintain that Hawkins is little more than a battery to the AI computer that comes up with all his theories. Braniac I, if you will.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
19:37 / 23.07.05
The Stephen Hawking Superhero idea is a good'un. (Were you joking about that being a Stanilsaw Lem story?. Also, I haven't heard of "Shinji and his RoboAngelic-Save-Us-From-Our-Flesh-FreudvsJung MummySuit"; and was Braniac that baddie from DC who didn't like Superman?)

I was thinking of this type of suit being a techno version of Spiderman's old alien symbiote costume. Do any of you remember 'Web of Spiderman, no.1' where Spidey put it on by accident and had to try and forcibly take it off? Eventually, Spidey was forced to go into a bell-tower to use sound to destroy the symbiote (it's only weakness). The power of the bells nearly killed Peter Parker, but the symbiote wouldn't let him commit suicide and saved him just in time (there was blood coming out of his nose, ears, etc), before disappearing elsewhere....

I know Pace-makers aren't sentient, but imagine having a truly "intelligent" implant. *Shiver*
 
 
sdv (non-human)
16:41 / 24.07.05
I thought that Lem would write a better version than most western sf writers, something like one of the stories in mortal engines or the cyberiad...

Why is the intelligent or even unintelligent symbiote idea more alarming than say a pacemaker or the suit ? I'm not sure why the symbiote is more alarming than the average extremely bad idea (virus) which human beings allow to occupy their time, for example - allah/god.

Of course I wouldn't recommending that anyone accept a symbiote until it had been well tested and proved to be safe... but that's a different pure engineering issue entirely.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
17:23 / 27.07.05
sdv, yeah, you're right there isn't much difference. But for me, while I know I'm covered in microbes, mites, bacteria, etc with which I have a kind of symbiotic relationship, I suppose I don't feel all that comfortable with the idea of a sentient and potentially powerful life-form or technology sharing my body: it's the danger of malfunction and/or maybe them "taking over". Using my Health-Suit (idea) from earlier might be like a virus keeping you alive in a do-not enjoy-life state, so that it can stay alive for as long as possible (BTW, is this how "friendly bacteria" operate?) But I'm not a scientist (can you tell?), and I don't know much about the sentience and/or abstract-awareness of viruses, etc. Also, of course, the argument over the possible sentience of other life-forms on this plantet is probably one for another thread.

That typed, if (like a Jedi's Midichlorians) some (say) alien microbes decided to coexist within my body, but weren't malevolent, and gave me (amongst other powers) telekinesis as a way to say thanks for putting a roof over their heads, I'd be sooooo chuffed, I'd try to take the time to thank them all, individually (even if it would take forever). Plus, Jedi mind tricks would save a lot of time with people who wear uniforms and insist on being jobsworths -- that bus driver the other day should have believed the three strangers behind me in the queue when they confirmed the ticket machine had swallowed my last pound. All the way home, as my tired feet slapped down the wet pavement, I was thinking "Come on Science, couldn't you just graft a set of Warren Worthington III style wings onto my back?...[etc]"

Seriously though, my interest in this subject, and the original intentions for starting this thread are purely selfish: I wanna fly, teleport, and read people's minds (etc) god-damn-it! (joke-ish!)

(Oh, and I haven't read enough Lem; your posts have made me want to read a lot more. Cheers! [sincerely])

Incidentally, I know the tone of my posts in this thread may sound light, but I am genuinely interested in learning more about such Scientific applications; not because I want to be more powerful than everyone and take over the world, but because almost all I think I know for sure is that I'm "here", and I'd like to push many of my existence's limits and hopefully grow wiser in the process. Also, can any elder (i.e. more experienced) 'lithers tell me if it would be remiss of me to start a sister thread to this thread (maybe called "I, Superman too") in Temple? I'm thinking one might argue religious and/or Magickal practice (e.g Sygils) do have an effect on reality and may endow the user with certain...advantages(?). So, I thought it might be a (similarly) good place to drop links, iinformation, and spark debate surrounding such practices. Could you let me know? Thanks.
 
 
macrophage
03:46 / 31.07.05
I think the American MI have already got them within experimental versions as they have got their R&D teeth into so called bioroid Suits I'm sure Jim Schnabel wrote about it in Non Lethalities and the New Mental Battlefields, total Managa innit!!! Fuck Spiderman c'mon he's a dweeb compared to Appleseed and that!!!! Actually all hail in invoke to the prater Spidey you were bitten by the radioactive tarantula venom (oh no Bertaux versus Grant) kick the fucky out of Dr Octopus (I hate that fucker) as I did pay homage to you as it was cheap Cable TV special for the Cartoons!!! Not the Transformers are cool as well. Good invoke that - good for self defence!!!
 
 
delta
10:06 / 31.07.05
Lem? A sexually repressed mechanised unit enslaved to it's weakling nutbar master?

Sounds more like Warren Ellis to me.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
20:23 / 31.07.05
Jim Schnabel wrote about it in Non Lethalities and the New Mental Battlefields,

Hmm...interesting. I haven't heard of or thus read Jim Schabel (although a Google search has since made me want to read his books), and so I therefore can't comment. Is there an online copy of 'Non Lethalities and the New Mental Battlefields', as I'm pretty skint at the moment and can't afford to buy one. Do you know if this is the kind of stuff Jon Ronson was talking about in 'The Men Who Stare at Goats'?

(Also, sorry macrophage, but I sincerely and genuinely didn't get what you meant from "total Managa innit!!! .." onwards. Sorry, it's probably just me, but please explain, for my benefit? (or PM me if you'd rather, and if you think it would be better to avoid off-topic-ness, etc. Cheers.)
 
  
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