Radical body design “Primo Posthuman”

February 25, 2002

Originally posted 2002 and excerpted from www.natasha.cc/primo.htm. Published on KurzweilAI.net February 20, 2002.

If you could design your own body–give it any shape, size, color, contour, texture and elegant design–what would you choose?

What if your body could regenerate healthier, fresher skin and substitute worn out tendons, ligaments and joints with replaceable ones? What if your body was as sleek, as sexy, and felt as comfortable as your new automobile? These are just a few of the questions to consider in the decades ahead.

Primo 3M+ 2002 — More comfort, better performance, lower price.

The architecture of Primo’s physique is designed formobility, flexibility and longevity. Primo is being considered for the 2002 Smithsonian Summary/Fall Design Exposition.

We like to think of it as a cross between Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Valentine. The collaborative scientific team that designed Primo includes Max More, Marvin Minsky, Robert Freitas, Michael Rose, Greg Fahy, Ralph Merkle, Alexander Sasha Chislenko, Roy Walford, Gregory Benford, Robin Hanson, Vernor Vinge, and Hans Moravec.

Primo’s radical body design is more powerful, better suspended and more flexible–its body offering extended performance and modern style. The expansive interior provides advanced metabrain and enhanced senses. Our nano-engineered spinal communication system runs under the guidance of networked AI with a wide range of optional features.

Warranty: Additional twenty-fourth chromosomal pair. Guaranteed for any genetic defects. Immune system guaranteed against all known pathogens. Return-Exchange Policy:Replacement body upon request. Disclaimer: Abused body will be replaced at owner’s expense. We reserve the right to replace with a used model.PrimoStar System:Unlimited service calls. Service range located within Asteroid Belt.

Comparison Chart

The human body is undergoing change. Plastic surgery, prosthetics, robotics, electronic and digitized vocal chords, implants for hearing, chemicals to adjust and fine-tune brain functioning, genetics and genetic engineering, and cloning organs are ways to augment and upgrade our physique. The human life span is going to increase as well our desire for vitality. With this in mind, it is advantageous to augment with a sense of aesthetics and approach the future physique like a design comprised of elegant strokes.

The following compares the 20th Century Human Body with the 21st Century future physique of our conceptualized body design Primo 3M+.

20th Century — Body	21st Century — Primo 3M+
Limited life span	Ageless
Legacy genes	Replaceable genes
Wears out	Upgrades
Random mistakes	Error-correction device
Sense of humanity	Enlightened transhumanity
Intelligence capacity: 100 trillion synapses	Intelligence capacity: 100 quadrillion synapses
Single track awareness	Multiple viewpoints running in parallel
Gender-restricted	Gender changeability
Prone to environmental damage	Impervious to environmental damage
Corrosion by irritability, envy, depression	Turbocharged optimism
Elimination messy and gaseous waste	Recycles and purifies waste

Metabrain

Nanotech data storage memory system

Error Correction device, replay and feedback system

High-bandwidth awareness powered by 100 quadrillion-synapse nanocomputing brain.

Error-corrected memory replay.

Global Net connection with remote neural access guarded by security protocol.

Embedded high-throughput contradiction detectors.

Prosthetic neo-neocortex designed by AI and interwoven with nanobots.

Polysensory modalities sort new data over existing and additional channels.

Nano-optical neurons process thoughts one million times faster than outdated bio-brains.

Continual monitoring of internal bodily functions with emergency repair on call.

Energystar-compliant operation, with autosleep mode.

Extended short-term memory (remains functional even if tipsy).

History

Primitive clinical neurochemical modification starting in the 1950s.

Anti-tremor electrode implants, late 1990s.

V i s u a l F i e l d

Network sonar sensors map data

Infrared/ultraviolet-sensitive high-acuity single-photon-detecting, acceleration-resistant eyeballs.

Enhanced reality visual overlays through retinal implants allow you to view information on top of physical objects.

You can also edit your visual experience, removing unsightly objects and morphing

scenes into images of your choice.

Sensory input can be patched in through global Net connection, allowing viewing of remote locations from Webcams, space telescopes, and flying micro-cameras.

External visual input gives you eyes in the back of your head.

History

Magnifying lens, by Roger Bacon, 1267.

Eyeglasses, by Salvino D’Armate, 1291.

Contact lenses sketched,

Leonardo da Vinci, 1508.

First cataract removal, 1748.

Toric contact lenses approved for use, 1978.

Corneal sculpting, 1990s.

Silicon retinal implants, 1999.

O l f a c t o r y

Broadly tuned polymer chemical sensor arrays that emulate mammalian olfactory receptor neurons.

Electronic/artificial nose can detect and classify odors, vapors and gases. The augmented biological nose to electronic smart nose stage is composed of a chemical sensing system along with pattern recognition to work in correlation to enhance memory via smell association.

The electronic nose protects and warns owner of potential danger as well as adds to visual replay recognition via smell association.

A multi-disciplinary approach by CalTech to design an electronic nose spans neurobiology, chemistry and electronic engineering. The goal is to develop construction of a silicon “nose on a chip.”

“The olfactory receptors are proteins that sit on the surface of your nerve cells, in the upper reaches of your nasal cavity.” (Digsents)

The molecules entering your nose bind sense these proteins, triggering a cascade of events. As a result, signals are transmitted to your brain, where we experience smell.

Experts say that humans (and early transhumans) smell anywhere from 3000-4000 to 10,000-30,000 smells. According to neuroscientist Dr. Stuart Firestein, we can “detect and discriminate between 10,000 different chemicals which we commonly call ‘odors.’ This is probably the most sophisticated chemical detector that we know of.”

“Smells and scents elicit very strong messages to human sensory networks. They can evoke vivid memories that have long been buried in our subconscious. The sense of smell is often the first sense alerted to danger or even slight changes in the environment.” (Ruef)

As animal species became more complex, creatures continued to use their sense of smell to find food and water, evade predators, track prey, and recognize and attract mates.

History

In 600 BC, nasal reconstruction was done by using a forehead flap over a nasal defect. (Samhita Sushruta, India).

Much later, in the late 1800s, improvements in anesthesia techniques encouraged surgeons to augment the nose with such materials as paraffin, gold, silver, aluminum, platinum, porcelain, celluloid, ivory, cork and some stones from the Black Sea.

A u d i o

Increased frequency range and parabolic hearing

External wiring and internal intelligent agents able to receive and send audio messages on 24-hour Net interface. Metabrain’s internal connections allow for sense overlay to morph voice, which is used for privacy and to mask identity.

Digital signal processors reduce extraneous noise and enhance signal, easily pick out specific voices in a crowded room.

Frequency-selectable ultrasonic and infrasonic frequency (there is much significant information below 20 Hz, especially on emotional states). This info has to be tunable to prevent neural overload.

Convert grating voices into dulcet tones, or hook into enhanced reality system to convert unwanted sounds into visual data (neighboring conversations turn into a light rain).

History

Speaking tubes, 1700s.

Ear trumpets, 1800s.

Hearing aids, 1900s.

Cochlear bionic implants, 1960s.

Digital signal processing, 1984.

Smart Skin

The smart Skin of the future combines the historical evolutionary role of survival from the earliest of human ancestors, the Australopithecus, to our future Posthuman whose survival will be conditioned to a far different world than we realize today. The architecture of this transition is both biological, as our genes shape our lives, and technological, as we merge and mingle more and more with the technology around us.

It is also self-directed, as our intellectual capacity and our need to problem solve, progress, and survive lies at the forefront of our human nature. The smart skin of the future will be a multi-functional design coalescing safety and survival, sensation and texture, beauty and elegance, fluidity and mobility, and terraced layers of what we know as the “self.” It will function as an exterior protection and interior multi-function; it will combine artificial and natural design options; fuzzy membrane, both natural and synthetic; a sensorial surface; and ultimately square the curve of design.

Solar protected skin with tone and texture changeability.

Biosensors externally stimulate atmospheric tensions.

Active integument management system keeps all outer surfaces totally smooth and wrinkle free (unless you choose wrinkles for effect), and maintains maximal suppleness and instant response to sudden demands for stretch and twist.

Color control for instant blending in or standing out. Optional silicon carbide sheath enables you to become almost invisible.

ActiveSkin makes clothing unnecessary and allows you to display written or pictorial messages to convey mood.

History

Historically, humans have been augmenting the skin with the use of dyes, tattoos, and piercings for mating, fertility, hunting, fighting, and religious rituals.

The first tissue successfully engineered and made available to people was skin.

S p i n e

Evolving Internal Communication at the speed of technology

Whole-body communications navigation grid with one communicyte (cell) stationed every 100 microns apart in the tissue, providing 60 billon communicytes with a peak power consumption of 60 watts.

1,000,000 terabit/sec optical backbone (one billion times more capacity than a human spinal cord).

Exquisite conscious perception of internal physical states, including spatial orientation, hormone levels, neural firing patterns.

Hear your body speaking!

Neuromuscular control allows you to use thumb and forefinger as calipers, measuring distance to micrometers. In-vivo fiber optic communications backbone running from head to toe with a transmission capacity of 1018 bits/sec., linked to distributed extra neural tissue, giving a total of 1023 bits of information (about 60,000 times the sum total of all 20th Century human knowledge).

Nanodiamond-laced spine provides multi-ton load capacity.