One of my weirder hobbies is keeping track of things that prove we live in the future. So far I’ve got things like robot vacuum cleaners (Roomba), Star Trek communicators (iPhone), and lasers that correct vision (LAZIK). I can now add “cyborg comedians” to that roster. I don’t know what caused the synchronicity, but in the past couple days I’ve been coming across seemingly unrelated but very funny people talking about their significant disabilities and how they transcend them with mechanical aids.
The first video I saw was of Zach Anner’s addition for an Oprah competition. Zach, who has cerebral palsy and uses a motorized wheelchair to get around, is gunning for his own show. Now that he’s introduced, I’ll just let the man with the “sexiest palsy” do the talking:
For those of you who couldn’t make it to San Diego last week, Discovermagazine.com and the National Academy of Sciences’ Science & Entertainment Exchange present our panel discussion on “Mad Science,” featuring Jaime Paglia (co-Executive Producer of Eureka), Kevin Grazier (Battlestar Galactica and Eureka science adviser), Jane Espenson (Dollhouse, Battlestar, Caprica, and lots more), Ricardo Gil da Costa (science adviser for Fringe), and Rob Chiappetta and Glenn Whitman (writers for Fringe).
If you don’t have time to watch the video you can read recaps and quotes from the panel here, here, here, here and here.
Big thanks to Jennifer at SEE, to all of our panelists, and to the Bad Astronomer, who found time to moderate our panel while he wasn’t partying with Hollywood starlets (Phil – we kid because we love).
Sometime in the future, a group of renegade scientists and technologists will take a time machine to now. They're spilling the secrets of tomorrow here at Discover's Science Not Fiction blog.
▪ Malcolm MacIver is a bioengineer at Northwestern University who studies the neural and biomechanical basis of animal intelligence. He consults for sci-fi films (Tron Legacy, Joss Whedon's The Avengers), and was the science advisor for Caprica. He covers AI and robotics for Science Not Fiction.
▪ Kyle Munkittrick (Web, Twitter) is program director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He covers transhumanism.
