Category: voluntary cooperation

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The Real Randy Travis

Randy Travis, music, AI

In 2013, Randy Travis had a stroke so severe that doctors thought he was not long for this world.

Yet his life wasn’t over. And although he remains partly incapacitated, his career, amazingly, wasn’t over either: his wife Mary tours with him, and voice-​cloning technology is helping him create songs with a Randy Travis timbre.

When things were at their worst, Mary rejected the doctors’ prognosis because, as she says, her husband was still fighting.

“There was never a doubt in Randy’s mind that he could make it through it. It was that magical moment that I went to his bedside when they said, ‘We need to pull the plug. He’s got too many things going against him at that point.’ He had gotten a staph infection and three other hospital-​born bacterial viruses … one thing after another. And the doctors were just saying, ‘He just doesn’t have the strength to get through this.’…

“That’s when I went to him. That was the moment that I knew that Randy Travis was gonna make it because he squeezed my hand and a tear went down his face. And I said, ‘He’s still fighting.’”

Mary Travis praises artificial intelligence. 

Along with musician friends, AI is helping her husband complete lyrics and is simulating his voice so that he can, indirectly, sing again. 

The technology is guided by a human attention to nuance, and Randy himself obviously feels that what is being created conveys his spirit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom individual achievement voluntary cooperation

Paralyzed Man Moves

brain, paralysis, medicine, science, magic

After falling on ice, a 46-​year-​old Swiss man became paralyzed, losing all mobility.

Now he is beginning to move again thanks to a brain implant that enables what the Dutch firm Onward, its inventor, calls “thought-​driven movement.”

The implant interprets neural impulses that are triggered when the patient intends to move. A second implant in his abdomen then stimulates parts of the body so that he can move them as he wishes.

Onward says that although its results are preliminary, “the technology works as expected and appears to successfully reanimate his paralyzed arms, hands, and fingers.”

This astonishing work is not without precedent. Over a decade ago, French neuroscientist Gregoire Courtine conceived of the possibility of a digital bridge between brain and body to help such patients.

It took a while to realize his dream. But this year, Courtine and Swiss neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch installed implants in a Dutch man, Gert-​Jan Oskam, to restore his ability to walk after he lost the use of his legs in a biking accident.

One unexpected benefit of their procedure is neural regeneration.

“What we discover,” says Courtine, “is that when using this system for a long period of time, through training, nerve fibers start growing again.… That was like the dream, regenerative medicine!”

Onward CEO Dave Marver says that the next step for its own implant technology is small trials, then a larger one, then “hopefully get FDA approval and make it available.”

What a wonderful world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

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The Day Cillian Took Control

chair, robotics

One of the things that made 2019 a decent year was the robotics team at Farmington High School in Minnesota.

A former student at the school, Tyler Jackson, contacted the team to ask if they could help his son, two-​year-​old Cillian, become more mobile. He had been born with a condition resembling cerebral palsy that makes it hard to move around.

The Jackson family couldn’t afford the kind of power wheelchair Cillian needed.

The Farmington kids were eager to help. They replaced the electrical innards of a Fisher Price riding toy, added a bicycle seat, and used a 3D printer to design a joystick and other components.

The team applied skills gained by building robots for competitions, and they also got technical help from the University of Delaware, which had a program for designing mobility devices for disabled kids.

A local broadcast story about the wheelchair shows Cillian in action.

He isn’t the only child who has benefitted from the team’s tech prowess.

Early in 2021, the Rogue Robotics team at Farmington posted an appeal on their Facebook page after learning that Fisher Price had “discontinued the Power Wheels model Wild Thing we convert into wheelchairs for little kids” who either don’t fit into standard powered wheelchairs or can’t afford them.

They asked that anyone who happens to have a Wild Thing model in good condition consider donating it.

This kind of innovation can now be rolled out — pun intended? — broadly, not so much as mass production but as home and community and fix-​it shop projects, with 3D printing tech aiding in the revolution.

Now that’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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