“Third Thumb” Augmentation Changes the Way we Think of Prosthetics
Painting can be such a strenuous task, causing an eventual strain on the artist’s physical faculties. It requires a lot of patience and dedication. But what if I were to tell you that eventually, someday in the future, you won’t even need to use your hands to paint your next masterpiece? What if, instead, you were to use your eyes or your mind? Perhaps you’ll be able to control a robot using your mind alone to do the painting for you.
That future is closer than you might think. In fact, it’s already here. Thanks to a group of scientists from Imperial College London, people are now able to control a robot arm to paint on an empty canvas using nothing more than your eyes.
“It’s very intuitive because I don’t have to think about commands or something like this. I simply think about where I want to draw or which colour I want to take. And by thinking, a person usually looks at that colour… I didn’t need a lot of time to learn how to use it. Actually, using it one time was enough to know how to control it completely.”
– Sabine Dziemian (via Reuters)
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
Using your eyes to control a robot arm is certainly different from using your mind, grant you, but it’s no doubt a necessary step towards the eventual future of techno-telekinesis. Imagine being able to simply sit there and stare at an empty canvas, imagining the masterpiece you wish to create and watching it materialize before your very eyes. With the aide of your own personal robot, while using advanced brain-to-brain communication technologies, the robot will know exactly what you’re wishing to paint and proceed from there.
This is the future of techno-telekinetic artists that we’re talking about. Where art is no longer limited by your physical capacities, but is instead limited based on your imagination alone. Certainly there is a beautiful artist in the mind of someone whom is disabled or paralyzed, but is unfortunately incapable of expressing that beauty. With this kind of technology, combining robot arms, eye-tracking technology, and techno-telekinesis, that problem will eventually wither away and be thrown in to the dustbin of history.
About the author
B.J. Murphy is the Editor and Social Media Manager of Serious Wonder. He is a futurist, philosopher, activist, author and poet. B.J. is an Affiliate Scholar for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) and an Ambassador for the robotics company Humai.
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