From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Thu Jun 20 2002 - 20:46:01 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote:
> From a transhumanist position, I think we should wend our way carefully
> here. In we end we both need morphological freedom and self direction.
> The SA policy is reasonable since it is a local action that makes people
> pay for their lifestyle choices - and opens the door for competing
> airlines without this rule; let the market sort this thing out.
That reminds me of an idea I kick around every so often, seeing if the
tech is yet there to do this for cheap:
A simple implant that does nothing but burn fat (or maybe just glucose
or ATP) to generate electricity, using an accelerated version of the
body's own mechanism. Probably not mobile: once it has used a lot of
the energy locally available, the body will likely sense a deficit of
that type of chemical in the implant's vicinity, and react by
transferring the chemical from other parts to there (and, if lower
levels of energy than fat are used, breaking down some fat to generate
said lower levels).
First version would not try to use this energy for anything. It'd
just dump the energy via induction to an external unit every so often.
It would also not have to be in any way efficient; the value to the
early adopters is mostly effortless, zero-willpower fat burning. (It
would have its limits - having one of these would not be an excuse to
double one's calorie intake - but it would supplement other efforts,
especially if one was able to keep a stable, if high, weight before
the implant.)
Later versions could become more efficient and try to power other
implants (though the amount of energy they get would be truly miniscule,
it could be enough for some uses).
Unfortunately, almost every time I bring this up and try to discuss the
practicalities of bringing the first version to market, discussion
almost always jumps to the things one could do if one had an
ultra-efficient later version which could produce huge amounts of power
by, say, converting calories to megawatts one-to-one (which is
physically impossible, since both calories and megawatts are energy and
1 MW >> 1 cal). Which is why it's still only an idea: I haven't been
able to find a clear answer on what it would take to develop,
manufacture, and market the first version. (Frankly, I'm not even sure
if the FDA would regulate this as a medical device, or if it could get
away with being a mostly passive electronic device that does not release
drugs, but just happens to be implanted.)
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