Augmentation in Macross

[RedWolf]

Going over the Macross Chronicle World Guide for the Meltrandi and the Glossary entries for Exsedol Folmo and Meltrandi it seems Zentrans and Meltrans different more than just genders.

Zentrans are products of genetic engineering and uses organic looking technology or organic technology.

Meltrans while genetically engineered are also cyborgs with bio-optic nerves and use inorganic looking technology.

The difference can also be seen in their ship designs.

Now on to augmentation. Exsedol's entry tells he used to look like his TV version but once he joined Macross 7 he looked green with a large head. This is apparently for brain storage capacity. This also resulted in him having tentacles. Now Grace on the other hand with Macross Galaxy went for the cybernetic enhancement augmentations while looking perfectly organic.

Two different strategies to body augmentation. Genetic engineering and cybernetics. But it seems the Protoculture went more advanced on the bio technology route. Golg Boddole Zer was more of a bio computer for his ship in DYRL. The Bird Human and Evil Series were organic weapon WMDs.

[Seto Kaiba]

Going over the Macross Chronicle World Guide for the Meltrandi and the Glossary entries for Exsedol Folmo and Meltrandi it seems Zentrans and Meltrans different more than just genders.

Remember, the material in the DYRL?-related entries may not necessarily be true for the stories of the main/ongoing Macross universe... as DYRL? itself is a movie within that Macross universe.

[RedWolf]

Remember, the material in the DYRL?-related entries may not necessarily be true for the stories of the main/ongoing Macross universe... as DYRL? itself is a movie within that Macross universe.

True but Queadlunn Rau avionics contributed for the brain related systems of the YF-21. BDS carried over to the VF-22 and YF-24 children. Cyber grunts like Brera have BDI like control over the VF-27. BDI got added to the Queadlunn-Rhea.

The existence of Meltran implants could be the basis for Macross Galaxy's implant technology. Note prohibition of implants are rare. Macross Frontier's all natural policy bans implants.

[Seto Kaiba]

True but Queadlunn Rau avionics contributed for the brain related systems of the YF-21. BDS carried over to the VF-22 and YF-24 children. Cyber grunts like Brera have BDI like control over the VF-27. BDI got added to the Queadlunn-Rhea.

Source for that? I don't recall anything about the BDI system being Zentradi overtechnology... the only explicitly Zentradi system that's mentioned with the YF-21/VF-22 is the inertia vector control system, based on the one used in the Queadluun-Rau. I'm not finding anything that connects the YF-21's BDI to the DYRL?-only Meltrandi cybernetics.

EDIT: I think you might be conflating the BDI and IVCS... the BDI wasn't used on the YF-24, but the ISC used on the YF-24 and its derivative designs is based on the IVCS used on the Q-Rau and YF-21/VF-22.

The existence of Meltran implants could be the basis for Macross Galaxy's implant technology. Note prohibition of implants are rare. Macross Frontier's all natural policy bans implants.

Frontier's prohibition of implants is rare in 2059. Per Kawamori's interview in Otona Anime #9, that's a recent change.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Seto Kaiba

[jvmacross]

Wait....what's this thread about?

[Cabbit Commando]

Wait....what's this thread about?

Augmentation & Meltrandi Implants in th..... OH! I see what you did there!

[Valkyrie Driver]

Wait....what's this thread about?

Augmentation & Meltrandi Implants in th..... OH! I see what you did there!

I don't know... Something tells me that Klan is all natural...

[grigolosi]

This is copied and pasted directly from the Macross Mecha Manual. It does site a partial BDI system installed on the Queadluun Rhea.

Design Features: Quimeliquola inertia vector control system; 1 x optional independent Shinnakasu Industry/L.A.I FAB-1000 fold booster; 1 x main cockpit screen; active stealth system; fold navigation is possible with updated avionics system for use with independent fold booster; energy converting armor is adopted for the cockpit in addition to a simple cold-sleep function; two circuits of the flight control system were doubled to four (a primary and secondary) to improve survivability; a BDI system is partially introduced to the operation system

I also agree with Valkyrie Driver.......I definitely think Klan is all natural........Also I do believe neither gender would be able to use the Micloning/Macronization chambers if they had any artificial cybernetic implants installed on their bodies. But this is specutlation.

[Valkyrie Driver]

Honestly, I have to say that putting technology into a human body is a dangerous idea. For one, I don't believe it would catch on in a military organization, simply because of the maintenance that such tech would incur, and that means more than just a yearly check up. There's also the failure danger. Last thing you want is the power surging in the cockpit and shorting out the pilot's brain, if the pilot can still function there's a chance he can limp a crippled bird back to base, or eject.

Still, it's fun to toy with the idea.

[Seto Kaiba]

This is copied and pasted directly from the Macross Mecha Manual. It does site a partial BDI system installed on the Queadluun Rhea.

Yes, we know. The point was that there is no demonstrable link between the Zentradi or Meltrandi cybernetics seen/mentioned in the Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie and either human implant technology or the BDI system.

The Queadluun-Rhea is, after all, a Queadluun-Rau redesigned by human engineers and enhanced with human overtechnology.

I also agree with Valkyrie Driver.......I definitely think Klan is all natural........Also I do believe neither gender would be able to use the Micloning/Macronization chambers if they had any artificial cybernetic implants installed on their bodies. But this is specutlation.

That would have made it very difficult for the DYRLverse versions of Max and Milia to start a family... which they did.

Honestly, I have to say that putting technology into a human body is a dangerous idea. For one, I don't believe it would catch on in a military organization, simply because of the maintenance that such tech would incur, and that means more than just a yearly check up. There's also the failure danger. Last thing you want is the power surging in the cockpit and shorting out the pilot's brain, if the pilot can still function there's a chance he can limp a crippled bird back to base, or eject.

Still, it's fun to toy with the idea.

Eh... I think we'll be seeing it in the real world sooner rather than later. (Well, we already have on a trial basis... but I mean on a large scale.) There's just too much potential application to use cybernetics for prosthetic applications and organ replacements to treat injuries and illnesses that would otherwise be impossible to treat.

As far as military applications go, it'll be a long time before we start seeing cybernetics for combat troops... but Macross has that whole "overtechnology" thing to lean on. The tech the Protoculture designed for the Zentradi (and Meltrandi) was IMPOSSIBLY robust by modern standards. Right now, we can't even build a car that'll run for six months without preventative maintenance to sustain performance... the Protoculture built computers and starships that were still working fine after hundreds of thousands of years without maintenance.

(Also, they had a rather cavalier attitude towards the whole "Casualties" thing...)

[Valkyrie Driver]

I'm not denying that it's happening, and that it can be beneficial, especially for organ replacement and advanced prosthesis, but integrating telecom gizmos into the brain Ghost in the Shell style, seems like a philosophically dangerous idea. It also seems dangerous from a sociological perspective too, I mean just look at what cell phones have done to our manners, not to mention smart phones (I'm guilty too), just imagine how bad it will be if you couldn't tell that someone was doing it. It's bad enough that they can GPS hack your phone, imagine if your brain had such a thing, or if your thinkmeat had it's own MAC and IP address. Your thoughts wouldn't even be safe.

If we really want to watch a show that deals with that sort of stuff we could just watch Ghost in the Shell, and imagine Macross as a backdrop.

Despite how robust the tech is, you still have to PMCS (Preventative Maintenance, Checks and Services, for those that don't know that one) your crap, or it will fail when you need it.

As for the thousand year computers and space ships, well, if you properly maintain stuff (which we humans are pretty meticulous about) it'll run at peak performance for longer. I'll bet those Zentran and Meltran computers were not operating at optimal capacity.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm not denying that it's happening, and that it can be beneficial, especially for organ replacement and advanced prosthesis, but integrating telecom gizmos into the brain Ghost in the Shell style, seems like a philosophically dangerous idea. It also seems dangerous from a sociological perspective too, [...]

I know... and, believe, the writers of those series know too. It's still probably going to happen in reality, because as a species we've never really let potential security problems in implementation keep us from adopting new technologies that have the potential to be life-improving or just darn cool. (e.g. THE INTERNET) Eventually, the security problems get sorted out, but no implementation will ever be perfect from the word "go". In my own lab, there are multiple technologies that are absolutely too dangerous or finicky for "prime time" now... but that doesn't mean they can't be made safe enough for consumer use in the future.

Far from ignoring the risks, Macross and Ghost in the Shell make rather a meal out of the potential problems of that kind of implant technology. Ghost in the Shell in particular is fond of the "someone hacked my brain" thing, though Macross Frontier-era Macross titles (incl. Macross the Ride) make no bones about the possibility of this happening on a societal scale. Macross Galaxy's civilians and military are supposedly being mind-controlled through their implants, and they've demonstrated the ability to withdraw the free will of their soldiers and even putting alternate personalities into their heads to turn civilians into battle-ready troops (Maris Stella in the Macross the Ride series), and they were planning to turn all of humanity into a distributed intelligence via cybernetics. That's a part of why some fleets still outlaw implant technology... and why the military has elite anti-cyborg soldiers (as seen in the Frontier movies).

Despite how robust the tech is, you still have to PMCS (Preventative Maintenance, Checks and Services, for those that don't know that one) your crap, or it will fail when you need it.

With our technology, certainly... that's one of the areas where Macross's setting is advantageous to this kind of thing. They can use overtechnology to produce more robust, durable, and possibly even self-repairing implants. The standard of technology is just that much higher... though outside the Macross Galaxy fleet, all but the most minor implant work seems to be relatively rare.

(WRT Ghost in the Shell, the prohibitive costs involved in preventative maintenance on cybernetics is one of the factors the setting acknowledges as keeping all but the super-rich, the government's elite servants, and those for whom natural healing is not a viable option from ditching their flesh-and-blood bodies altogether. Implants that ape both the look and full range of functions of a human body are just too expensive.)

As for the thousand year computers and space ships, well, if you properly maintain stuff (which we humans are pretty meticulous about) it'll run at peak performance for longer. I'll bet those Zentran and Meltran computers were not operating at optimal capacity.

By all indications, the Protoculture built their technology to last... they can't repair battle damage, but there's no indication that the undamaged technology doesn't run as well now as it did 120,000 or even 500,000 years ago, like the computers on Uroboros and Lux, or the entropy control field in the Varauta system. Some of their more complex creations are known to have had self-repair and even self-improvement capabilities. The biggest hit the Zentradi took, militarily, was the loss of factory satellites that produced some of their weapons like thermonuclear reaction ordinance or the Glaug battle pod.

[Valkyrie Driver]

I suppose I cannot argue with that, seeing as all I have is conjecture and philosophical thought.

[JB0]

It also seems dangerous from a sociological perspective too, I mean just look at what cell phones have done to our manners, not to mention smart phones (I'm guilty too), just imagine how bad it will be if you couldn't tell that someone was doing it.

ALL communications technology has been disruptive to manners. Right now we're just in a phase where manners haven't caught up to the state of the art. This too shall pass.

It's bad enough that they can GPS hack your phone, imagine if your brain had such a thing, or if your thinkmeat had it's own MAC and IP address. Your thoughts wouldn't even be safe.

Definitely an issue in society as it exists now. But on the upside, the known interface techniques can't exactly extract thoughts from your OEM computer and put them into a foreign system.

Which is not to say that hacking prosthetics would not be real, and dangerous. Makes recent car-hacking demonstrations look positively benign.

And, well... most companies have proven they have no idea how to deal with computer security, including a few at the root of the traditional computing market(Hi, Apple!).

Get out into less traditional markets like artificial limbs, and you start seeing people who have no understanding of why you even NEED security designing computer interfaces.

To take a currently real example, you have cars where the Bluetooth receiver in the radio is connected to the main system bus with no filtration or authentication, and an attacker can futz with the AC, stomp on the brakes, disable the brakes, kill the ignition, flash the headlights, jerk the steering wheel away... because they simply had no concept of the IDEA of someone attacking their car computer. Network security was not something they ever had to think about before, and they didn't think about it this time either.

Similarly, the high profile pay card theft from Target exploited a vulnerability in the AIR CONDITIONER. The AC company has not typically had to be concerned with security, and didn't design to be robustly defended. The guys making the purchase decisions don't know much about security, and decided to install vulnerable AC control software on the same servers processing sensitive payment information.

Despite how robust the tech is, you still have to PMCS (Preventative Maintenance, Checks and Services, for those that don't know that one) your crap, or it will fail when you need it.

As for the thousand year computers and space ships, well, if you properly maintain stuff (which we humans are pretty meticulous about) it'll run at peak performance for longer. I'll bet those Zentran and Meltran computers were not operating at optimal capacity.

Well, that depends on the system design, doesn't it? Look at how reliable a car today is compared to one from the dawn of the automotive age(when someone hasn't remotely hijacked it).

Now spin that kind of progress forward a few millenia and see what the future looks like.

Computer systems are in many regards far less reliable than they used to be, but they also do so much MORE than they used to.

We're starting to hit the point where most people's use cases are satisfied, and they can once again focus on stability and performance improvements instead of adding more.

The OS on a zentradi ship is a fixed target. It can be burned into a solid-state read-only memory format at the factory. If something goes wrong, power-cycle the computer and it comes back up as good as new in a matter of seconds... just like a single-tasking 4-MHz machine from 1982 would have.

[Seto Kaiba]

ALL communications technology has been disruptive to manners. Right now we're just in a phase where manners haven't caught up to the state of the art. This too shall pass.

To be fair, people have been complaining about improvements in technology "ruining" manners and/or polite correspondence going back AT LEAST as far as the telegraph. (I vaguely recall seeing some remarks in old newspapers complaining that things like using trains to speed the postal service was ruining correspondence by increasing the pace of delivery and thus reducing the consideration the letter-writer needed to put into his letter.)

And, well... most companies have proven they have no idea how to deal with computer security, including a few at the root of the traditional computing market(Hi, Apple!).

Speaking as someone with a fair amount of professional investment in the computer security field... in my experience, it's often more a matter of companies being massively overconfident in their security than not having a clue how to secure their systems. Apple's a poster child for overconfidence. Their small market share in the PC industry meant that their systems were less frequently targeted by malware developers and/or hackers, and they misconstrued that to mean their software was more secure. Cue the bragging on how MacOS doesn't need antivirus... and the malware devs responding to that thrown gauntlet with gusto.

To take a currently real example, you have cars where the Bluetooth receiver in the radio is connected to the main system bus with no filtration or authentication, and an attacker can futz with the AC, stomp on the brakes, disable the brakes, kill the ignition, flash the headlights, jerk the steering wheel away... because they simply had no concept of the IDEA of someone attacking their car computer. Network security was not something they ever had to think about before, and they didn't think about it this time either.

That's a really bad example... because it's not actually true. (We are now firmly into the territory of my day job, esp. in terms of my SAE obligations.)

That Wired article is actually really, fantastically misleading and tries to make the (admittedly real) threat of hacker attacks on cars sound a lot scarier (and thus, more sensational) by omitting important context. Communications filtration is not only present, it's a fundamental part of how a CAN bus functions, as are various fault-checking methods that double as tamper-proofing. The author conveniently forgot to mention Miller and Valasek's 2011 experiment only worked because they chose a vehicle that didn't have a media hub system and installed a custom-made transceiver specifically designed to circumvent security and achieve that result. (In short, they cheated to show that it was theoretically possible under very specific conditions.)

This thing about the Cherokee's uConnect head unit is a similar demonstration in which a number of security measures had to be bypassed beforehand to get the malicious firmware in place. The article even admits that, for their earlier 2013 demo, they had to be IN THE CAR and physically connected to the OBD II port with a legit scan tool to modify variables by hand.

Believe me, the idea of the connected automobile as a potential target of external attack was most definitely something that all of the major automakers considered long before Bluetooth was even a thing... (we're talking ISO-11898 in 1986-1991). Obviously, it's still something being taken VERY seriously.

The OS on a zentradi ship is a fixed target. It can be burned into a solid-state read-only memory format at the factory. If something goes wrong, power-cycle the computer and it comes back up as good as new in a matter of seconds... just like a single-tasking 4-MHz machine from 1982 would have.

To say nothing of the living components of the DYRL? Zentradi warships likely having their software burned directly into the part's genetic code...

Though we know relatively little of how an overtechnology-based computer works. The description of the VF-1's avionics package makes it sound like they're not using a Von Neumann architecture like modern computers do. The security and stability implications of that alone are staggering.

[Valkyrie Driver]

Holy God Seto, was that even English? I understood about half of what you said. Something about variables, and a bunch of things I haven't worked with in over 5 years... If I can't fix it with duct tape, paracord, and/or a swift kick, I ain't getting it fixed (to be fair, almost all of my problems can be solved with the proper application of duct tape, paracord, and/or violence).

Which leads me to this point, I don't want my brain running on C++ or python, or java. I like the language it uses just fine.

[Seto Kaiba]

Holy God Seto, was that even English?

Sometimes, I'm not sure... does "engineer" count as a dialect or another language?

I understood about half of what you said. Something about variables, and a bunch of things I haven't worked with in over 5 years... If I can't fix it with duct tape, paracord, and/or a swift kick, I ain't getting it fixed (to be fair, almost all of my problems can be solved with the proper application of duct tape, paracord, and/or violence).

Percussive maintenance... the great equalizer.

(With solutions like those, I hope I don't become a problem...)

Network security in general is an evolving field, and has been for almost as long as networked computing has been a thing (ARPANET in '69). Things like cars and other simple network systems are secured easily enough because there's a limited range of information they can actually communicate and they can easily check incoming data for consistency without getting bogged down. The more complex the system, and the more types of data it can process, the harder it is to secure. It's hard to hack a car because a car's communications are very orderly, regular, and restricted. It's a lot easier to hack a PC, which has to sort out for itself if that sequence of 1's and 0's is a picture, an abstraction of a sound's waveform, a representation of plain text, or instructions to perform a task.

For a networked brain, we'd be able to apply a lot of lessons-learned from our efforts to secure mobile data networks and the internet. The human brain is the most monstrously complex computer we've yet discovered, that means there's probably a lot of potential attacks that haven't even occurred to us yet, but the potential gains for implant technology probably outweigh the risks in a lot of areas. Instantaneous access to the sum total of human knowledge. The ability to export a person's objective recollections of an event. Selectively disabling pain receptors instead of using painkillers. Moderating appetite or treating various mood disorders by stimulating changes in brain chemistry. The possibilities are endless... and so are the risks. The governments of various emigrant fleets in Macross are clearly very interested in the possible risks... like having to deal with soldiers that don't have the same performance limits on their bodies, who feel no pain and know no fear.

Which leads me to this point, I don't want my brain running on C++ or python, or java. I like the language it uses just fine.

Now THAT'S probably going to be the biggest obstacle to implant technology as a whole... figuring out the "language" the human brain uses to communicate with itself. If we ever figure it out, it'll turn the computing world on its ear. It'll probably make almost every modern programming language instantly obsolete. That'd possibly be enough to make a self-aware computer a practical possibility instead of pure science fiction. One has to wonder how much of human implant tech in Macross is modeled on human technology and how much is modeled on overtechnology.

(Maybe that's what sets the OTM computers like the ANGIRAS system apart from modern computers... instead of using a Von Neumann load-store architecture like a modern PC, which can't fetch data from storage AND perform an operation at the same time, they might be using a fuzzy logic computer modeled on the complex brain of a sentient being?)

Edited July 26, 2015 by Seto Kaiba

[mickyg]

The "language" the human brain uses to communicate with itself... That is some awesome bit of pondering that I'll be doing on that one. Never even thought about it! Funny, since thought is part of that "language" being discussed.

I'm sure it's got something to do with song though. Surely....

[sketchley]

The "language" the human brain uses to communicate with itself... That is some awesome bit of pondering that I'll be doing on that one. Never even thought about it! Funny, since thought is part of that "language" being discussed.

I'm sure it's got something to do with song though. Surely....

It's more complicated than that. To the point that one wonders if a "one size fits all" approach to the interface language when wiring up the brain is even possible.

Just ponder for a moment when you hear a word. For example: apple. What comes to mind first for you? Shape? Colour? Texture? Flavour? Good or bad experiences? Positive or negative emotional connotations?

That order of questions gives you a hint on how my mind works, but it still leaves a lot of things vague - what shape? What colour? Etc.. Even if your order is the same, the variables are probably extremely different. And that's just one word, with no modifications (ie: an apple, a spotted apple).

On the one hand, that example shows how memory is stored and accessed in the brain, and it also explains why one is able to recall everything BUT the name of a person or an object ("Hey, it's THAT guy from THAT movie!"). On the other hand, it signifies how difficult it is to wire up and connect a computer to a brain, as the bits of memory and their associations are all over the place, and they very extremely from person to person. (I don't disagree that it should be possible to train someone on how to interface with a wire into the head, but until parts of the brain are converted over to such things as microchips that have a standardized computer language on them, I disagree with the idea of it being possible to hack or upload viruses into brains).

As you can see, I've thought a bit about this as something very similar crops up in my work - teaching language. If you use the above example thought process, you can more easily learn a foreign language - associating the target language word with the things your brain most strongly associates with the English equivalent word, and skip the translation headache (that word means this in English, which means that in my mind)!

Edited July 27, 2015 by sketchley

[mickyg]

Fascinating stuff. I was about to put in some sort of OT warning but then realised it's completely within the topic. Great thread!

I've got a very close American friend in Tokyo, teaching English at a university. He's married to a Japanese girl. His stories of language and its many challenges always interest me. It is an amazing thing, languages. And in your above example, we're talking English (no pun intended!). It gets even more interesting when you're dealing with multiple languages.

I've got another friend who speaks numerous languages and she will often talk to me, and when I look at her strangely, eventually realise she's just attempted to speak to me in a completely different language!

How one would traverse those sorts of obstacles in designing an interface to talk to the brain on a lower level than language specific, well that would be very interesting.

[Valkyrie Driver]

My family is a pretty diverse one culturally. My mother's family is from the Netherlands, and she grew up speaking Dutch. Dad learned a bit of Russian, and mom's father speaks German fluently. My dad, brothers, and I really like playing language games, like letter swapping and pig latin, that coupled with all of the different languages getting thrown around have made it pretty easy to pick up other languages.

Now this relates because, Mom will say something to me in dutch, and I'll understand what she's saying, despite the fact that I don't speak the language. Dad will do the same thing with russian phrases, and again I can understand. I've picked up some phrases and things along the way, and I've taken German, which I picked up easily. I also took some Japanese, and will be continuing that to the intermediate level (as my university requires that).

That seems to suggest that the brain's internal computing language is independent of spoken language, and that it's really just pattern recognition. I may be completely off base, but It seems to me to be the case, seeing as I have an aptitude for languages, that I can't explain.

[JB0]

To be fair, people have been complaining about improvements in technology "ruining" manners and/or polite correspondence going back AT LEAST as far as the telegraph. (I vaguely recall seeing some remarks in old newspapers complaining that things like using trains to speed the postal service was ruining correspondence by increasing the pace of delivery and thus reducing the consideration the letter-writer needed to put into his letter.)

Which was kinda my point.

That's a really bad example... because it's not actually true. (We are now firmly into the territory of my day job, esp. in terms of my SAE obligations.)

That Wired article is actually really, fantastically misleading and tries to make the (admittedly real) threat of hacker attacks on cars sound a lot scarier (and thus, more sensational) by omitting important context. Communications filtration is not only present, it's a fundamental part of how a CAN bus functions, as are various fault-checking methods that double as tamper-proofing. The author conveniently forgot to mention Miller and Valasek's 2011 experiment only worked because they chose a vehicle that didn't have a media hub system and installed a custom-made transceiver specifically designed to circumvent security and achieve that result. (In short, they cheated to show that it was theoretically possible under very specific conditions.)

This thing about the Cherokee's uConnect head unit is a similar demonstration in which a number of security measures had to be bypassed beforehand to get the malicious firmware in place. The article even admits that, for their earlier 2013 demo, they had to be IN THE CAR and physically connected to the OBD II port with a legit scan tool to modify variables by hand.

Believe me, the idea of the connected automobile as a potential target of external attack was most definitely something that all of the major automakers considered long before Bluetooth was even a thing... (we're talking ISO-11898 in 1986-1991). Obviously, it's still something being taken VERY seriously.

Ya know, I hesitated to link that, since Wired is not exactly in-depth journalism, but it seemed legit. Shows what I know.

(I caught the part about requiring a firmware exploit and that they was a recall out to disable that exploit. I guess I just assumed this was a problem in the OEM stereo. )

[anime52k8]

Which was kinda my point.

Ya know, I hesitated to link that, since Wired is not exactly in-depth journalism, but it seemed legit. Shows what I know.

(I caught the part about requiring a firmware exploit and that they was a recall out to disable that exploit. I guess I just assumed this was a problem in the OEM stereo. )

apparently nobody in the news media knows because EVERY major outlet has been parroting this story for weeks.

[Seto Kaiba]

How one would traverse those sorts of obstacles in designing an interface to talk to the brain on a lower level than language specific, well that would be very interesting.

Science would have to unravel the low-level processing functions of the brain for us to do that... right now, we know just enough of how the brain functions at a high level to reconstruct very basic (often rather trippy) visual input from fMRI and EEG scans of brain activity. Even that is a HUGE leap forward for our understanding of the brain... we're not sure what kind of logical arrangement it's even running on. Are we really running on extraordinarily complex boolean logic trees, or does the brain's basic signaling operate with more than just two signal states? Perhaps we operate on balanced ternary, or something beyond that.

(I'd love to find out... and not just because that Nobel prize comes with a big chunk of cash.)

(I don't disagree that it should be possible to train someone on how to interface with a wire into the head, but until parts of the brain are converted over to such things as microchips that have a standardized computer language on them, I disagree with the idea of it being possible to hack or upload viruses into brains).

I'm not so sure... we've already proven in labs that we can use rudimentary implants to permit people to control things like a PC's mouse pointer or to stimulate sharper memory recording. With a proper functional map of the human brain and a sophisticated-enough interface, I think it'd be perfectly possible to introduce malicious "code" into the brain to cause unwanted changes mood or behavior. Something like a Ghost in the Shell-style virus that causes very specific behavior is probably out of the question though.

Ya know, I hesitated to link that, since Wired is not exactly in-depth journalism, but it seemed legit. Shows what I know.

(I caught the part about requiring a firmware exploit and that they was a recall out to disable that exploit. I guess I just assumed this was a problem in the OEM stereo. )

apparently nobody in the news media knows because EVERY major outlet has been parroting this story for weeks.

Back before the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russians used to have a saying:

Новости не истина и правда не новость

"The News isn't the Truth, and the Truth isn't News."

(It was a dig at the two main newspapers of the time... the Communist Party's sponsored newspaper Pravda (Truth), and the Soviet government's sponsored newspaper Izvestia (News)... but it's still pretty valid in general terms.)

The testing they're doing is real, and it does demonstrate a potential threat... but to do the things they were doing, you need to get inside the vehicle itself and either physically compromise the correct CAN bus (most vehicles have more than one, some can have as many as four or five, separated and filtered by network gateways) or use a flash-capable diagnostic assistant (not normally available outside of dealerships) to re-flash module firmware or manually adjust parameters. It's possible, if you have an enormous amount of insider knowledge (CAN message maps are generally only available to suppliers under NDA for a reason), but it'd be hard to argue it was even remotely practical at this time. The news is jumping all over it because it can be made to smell of a scandal, and because it sounds scary if you leave out some important context.

(Now, if some automaker were gormless enough to put unsecured over-the-air flash capability into a network device like that... it'd be a much different story...)

Edited July 27, 2015 by Seto Kaiba

[Zinjo]

Far from ignoring the risks, Macross and Ghost in the Shell make rather a meal out of the potential problems of that kind of implant technology. Ghost in the Shell in particular is fond of the "someone hacked my brain" thing, though Macross Frontier-era Macross titles (incl. Macross the Ride) make no bones about the possibility of this happening on a societal scale. Macross Galaxy's civilians and military are supposedly being mind-controlled through their implants, and they've demonstrated the ability to withdraw the free will of their soldiers and even putting alternate personalities into their heads to turn civilians into battle-ready troops (Maris Stella in the Macross the Ride series), and they were planning to turn all of humanity into a distributed intelligence via cybernetics. That's a part of why some fleets still outlaw implant technology... and why the military has elite anti-cyborg soldiers (as seen in the Frontier movies).

In my opinion, it would appear this notion of mind control could have been the basis for the PC Civil War. A war for which the PD were initially developed.

By all indications, the Protoculture built their technology to last... they can't repair battle damage, but there's no indication that the undamaged technology doesn't run as well now as it did 120,000 or even 500,000 years ago, like the computers on Uroboros and Lux, or the entropy control field in the Varauta system. Some of their more complex creations are known to have had self-repair and even self-improvement capabilities. The biggest hit the Zentradi took, militarily, was the loss of factory satellites that produced some of their weapons like thermonuclear reaction ordinance or the Glaug battle pod.

In M7 we get a taste of fully functional PC tech (as the PD understood it anyway). Now take into account what the actual SA could do with walking, talking PC on board who are able to maintain those robust systems... I still believe the SA were / are a far more formidable foe than what we are given to understand so far. I would expect that a Zentradi vs SA battle would be strewn with millions of dead giants and thousands of destroyed Zentradi ships with the final victory coming from attacking an SA fleet with totally depleted resources, who were fool enough to stick around too long.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Zinjo

[sketchley]

I'm not so sure... we've already proven in labs that we can use rudimentary implants to permit people to control things like a PC's mouse pointer or to stimulate sharper memory recording. With a proper functional map of the human brain and a sophisticated-enough interface, I think it'd be perfectly possible to introduce malicious "code" into the brain to cause unwanted changes mood or behavior. Something like a Ghost in the Shell-style virus that causes very specific behavior is probably out of the question though.

The way you've phrased it is that the external equipment is responding to output from the brain, not vice versa.

Nevertheless, the problem is that "functional map of human brain" - as everyone's brains develop differently (in the sense of the connections between neurons), beyond the basics (these general functions are performed in this general area), the mapping would have to be on a per-person basis, and updated in almost real time.

I don't want to completely disagree with you, as there have been cases where input has been applied to the brain (either directly or indirectly through the nervous system), but so far it has been, for the purpose of our discussion, extremely general. So, IMHO, I think it would be far easier to 'fry' a person's brain than to subtly manipulate it.