No shit.

The project, which is funded by the US military’s research arm, Darpa, was partly inspired by the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, and partly by the earthquake in India last January.

heh.

Sanjiv Talwar, lead author of the Nature paper, said not only did the rats wearing electrodes feel no pain, but they were having a good time.

“If the rat moves left or right as commanded, it feels this burst of happiness,” he said. “It follows this sort of cue very accurately. They work only for rewards. They love doing it.”

They LOVE doing it! haha funny man. Jim LOVES the Army, he feels a rush of pleasure everytime he pulls the trigger, Happiness is a Warm Gun after all.

There are more practical purposes, such as RC’d animals to help find accident victims in a collapsed building

They have this… they invented a remote controlled rat with a camera sometime last year as I recall. Oh, it was a few years back:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,708454,00.html

once our gobs of flesh are retro-fitted for the future

that is a great line.

A demonstration video shows a young man walking down the street nearly run over by a passing motorcycle, steered to safety at the last minute by a guardian angel wielding a remote control. But wouldn’t that require that people wear electric nodes behind their ears 24 hours a day?

Well, yes.

And you’d have to be monitored from all sides so the tech can see the coming vehicle in order to be saved. But everyone would have to monitor someone else on rotating shifts, unless we got aliens or some such at the controls.

they always slip in the devious uses at the end of the article, like watching a tv reporter talk about the chip implants used for ‘medical’ reasons.

“… and the chips can also be used to find your current location to within 100 feet. And now the weather…”

I see how this Human Remote Control can be used for kinky purposes between the spouse, but there’s always the possibility of body snatchers. Say some woman is hooked up to a RC and walks against her will to some unknown location and meets one or more of the RC techs? or what if Dr. Octopus comes around and gets a lot of RC’d thugs to rob banks for him.

Not to mention the possible military uses for this device. Soldier get scared and turns to run? Do an about face and pull the trigger for him, make him charge the enemy. Play a real life Real Time Strategy game. Hook the kids with that line, play Command and Conquer with real people!

There are more practical purposes, such as RC’d animals to help find accident victims in a collapsed building or in a lake, or say use a whale to explore the ocean deapths.