Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by codeisawesome 979 days ago
Would it be possible in a sci-fi near-future to transplant a new, lab-grown vertebral column, using something like this?
3 comments

Imagine a lab-grown vertebral column where nerve signals travel at electric current speeds.
CS:GO and StarCraft would need new leagues
Don't nerve signals already travel at electric current speeds?
No they are much slower, on the order of a few dozen meters per second.
Ah, thanks for clarifying… I assumed nerve signals travel at the speed of light and the person responding to me was being sarcastic!
speaking of scifi

I wonder... especially after reading about people developing limbs or fingers they don't have:

"Some of CTRL-Labs’ goals are mind-bendingly exotic, like training a model for controlling extra fingers.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/6/17433516/ctrl-labs-brain-c...

I wonder if we could augment/cross our nerves to control things we normally can't control? what if we could release hormones on demand, like maybe release adrenaline or calm down?

Reminds me of a few hilarious plot points in a few Ian Banks novels. One of them, the Hydrogen Sonata had this passage:

“Is it true your body was covered in over a hundred penises?” “No. I think the most I ever had was about sixty, but that was slightly too many. I settled on fifty-three as the maximum. Even then it was very difficult maintaining an erection in all of them at the same time, even with four hearts.”

Silly as this is, Ian Banks had a way of taking the mere hint of the possibility of a thing to it's logical extremes. His characters change sex, regrow limps, or morph themselves into a different alien species basically in an orgy of hedonism and utopianism. Definitely science fiction/fantasy when he wrote it but eerily close to becoming science fact as time progresses.

Banks' most apt futurism was that give the ability to do anything, only a few people would use it to do something interesting.
Bought by Facebook years ago.
I think the spine is far more complex than the average person is aware of. From what I have read it has some basic reaction/thinking capabilities which may be beyond what can be made by humans.
Would be awesome for folks with irreparable damage or diseases like scoliosis if it could “just” be replaced though.
Mine needs to learn to just be quiet and follow instructions