Another thought: it seems to me not out of the ordinary that with access to our own brains, someone could literally "play them like a fiddle". This suggests that we should start to enact laws that decision making politicians should be required to be air-gapped.
jagged-chisel · 4h ago
And because anyone can run and become elected to office, perhaps we should all just be air-gapped.
k310 · 1d ago
Aw, get a tiny piezo speaker instead. We don't use frog's legs as activators any more, since Galvani.
raldi · 3h ago
I don't understand the "emergency warning" use case.
Torturing insects to make worse-than-MIDI music is gross.
Like, I dunno, record lots of cicada sounds and SIMULATE it?
These researchers should be ashamed of themselves. And it wasn't other-life-saving reasons, but shitty music.
debugnik · 6h ago
They do claim to have a better motive, but it's a fairly weak one:
> with the idea that cyborg cicadas might one day be used to transmit warning messages during emergencies
dheera · 4h ago
Academic "motivations" are just there to get papers accepted.
Papers are just there to get tenure and graduate.
Most of academia isn't after real science anymore.
cyberax · 1h ago
> to transmit warning messages during emergencies
In other words, if you see insects with electrodes that are moving towards you: RUN!
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 4h ago
Oh like in "When They Cry"
msla · 6h ago
I've lived somewhere with cicadas. If their drone begins to tell me things, I'm checking into a mental hospital for a schizophrenia workup and/or so the massive bug monster doesn't eat me.
bitwize · 5h ago
Horrors beyond human comprehension, got it. We know that arthropods can meaningfully feel pain. Turning living insects into a biological Floppotron is some Dr. Moreau shit that will earn you, at best, an IgNobel -- and I'm not even sure the IgNobel committee would want to draw positive attention to this kind of work. That said, I'm sure that The Fifth Element style spy cockroaches will start appearing in homes and offices courtesy your local intelligence agency before the decade is out.
poly2it · 4h ago
Many seem worried about the safety of the insects. An author responded as mentioned in the article.
> The experiments did not harm the cicadas, co-author Naoto Nishida, now at the University of Tokyo, told New Scientist. "Some of them wanted to run away," he said. "Others were like, 'OK, use my abdomen.'"
bqmjjx0kac · 2h ago
I don't think arthropods are capable of informed consent, despite what the author claims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p49K0L2fSig
Torturing insects to make worse-than-MIDI music is gross.
Like, I dunno, record lots of cicada sounds and SIMULATE it?
These researchers should be ashamed of themselves. And it wasn't other-life-saving reasons, but shitty music.
> with the idea that cyborg cicadas might one day be used to transmit warning messages during emergencies
Papers are just there to get tenure and graduate.
Most of academia isn't after real science anymore.
In other words, if you see insects with electrodes that are moving towards you: RUN!
> The experiments did not harm the cicadas, co-author Naoto Nishida, now at the University of Tokyo, told New Scientist. "Some of them wanted to run away," he said. "Others were like, 'OK, use my abdomen.'"