[m463]

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?

[jillesvangurp]

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.

[ethbr1]

Banks' most apt futurism was that give the ability to do anything, only a few people would use it to do something interesting.

[tomcam]

Bought by Facebook years ago.