Think of when someone having a heart attack has those electric paddles put on him (de-fibrillated?). His muscles all kind of spasm up as the electricity pours through them. This is the heart of the concept of my idea.
Muscles are indeed normally all controlled by small electical impulses sent from the brain.
Introduce the Britboy geektocool 3000.
I can't dance, I am not cool. Whatsoever. At all. I am a useless geek.
But next time, I intend to go into the nightclub with a small machine and battery hidden in my pocket called the geektocool 3000. Micro-thin wires connect from the pocket device, to each of my muscles. Here are the instructions:
Stand in the middle of the dance floor completely normally, up straight.
Activate the secret equipment in your pocket that always starts at the default 'standing' position and relax -- do not command your brain to use any muscle whatsoever from then on. Just try and 'go all floppy'. Normally if you did this you'd collapse onto the floor .. but wait .. the machine is sending enough electricity to your leg muscles to command the muscles to be 'inflated'. You're not falling over. You're standing there -- brain in neutral.
Then, let's get cool - the machine has a small mike so it can quickly pick up the beat of the music.
Lets start simple so you get the concept.. without putting in an ounce of effort personally, the machine starts with 'stand whilst nodding in time to the music' .. the machine keeps leg muscles 'on', arm muscles 'off' (so they hang by your side), and starts fluctuating the small electrical pulses to the neck muscle in time to the music. Hey presto -- you're nodding in time to the music like a cool dude.
Now you're getting into it .. as long as you can avoid the urge to try and 'manually' use any of your muscles (tell your brain to 'stay floppy', the geektocool can send electricity to all the correct muscles at exactly the right timing and intensity and order to get you moonwalking, jiving, back-flipping and even, should you feel the urge, performing the macarena - all in perfect time to the music. You can do moves you never thought you'd pull off. Finally -- wow -- you look simply stunning.
The next step
WIFI features allow a group of you to perform perfectly in sync dance routines. Without any practice -- with complete strangers! Brilliant!
At home later design new moves through the easy to use click-and-drop interface on yer PC -- then transfer them to your geektocool ready for the next night's dancing.
The side effects
The hot girl/boy that decides to smooch up to you to 'grind' gets a little upset as they keep getting electricuted through various parts of your body, and she is a little freaked out as you seem unwilling / even unable to stop crazy-ass breakdancing moves even when the smoochy music is on.
Some jealous person pushes you over and the machine would keep controlling your muscles as if you're still upright .. leading to you looking somewhere between having an epileptic fit and having killer bees stuck in your pants ...
But I'm sure you agree these are small prices to pay ..-- britboy, May 23 2007 Use this to smile and wink... Automatic_20Expressions...to get over your face geekiness. [Giblet, May 24 2007] Artists version http://www.levity.c...author/stelarc.htmlWired himself to the internet = remote control person [neutrinos_shadow, May 28 2007] Prior art just round the corner. Danger!_20High_20Voltage!You're about a year late, sorry [methinksnot, May 30 2007] OK, while this thing is on (and controlling your arms) how can you switch it off?-- pertinax, May 23 2007 You can still fight the electrical impulses to turn it off. For it to work you have to remain 'floppy'. This would be a skill in itself but getting the hang of it shouldn't take too long.
Bun, especially for the perfect sync dance troope.-- theleopard, May 23 2007 Er .. it doesn't control but monitors the big toe of your left foot.
Any mad wiggling of this toe means 'Stop .. STOP .. oh god PLEASE STOP'
!!-- britboy, May 23 2007 "Okay, HAL, stop the music and turn off"
"I am sorry, [britboy], I cannot do that..."
*Disco ball eye flashes eerily*-- froglet, May 23 2007 This is only for masochists. Have you any idea what it would feel like, the jolt needed to twitch an entire limb. Try a TENS machine some time but scale it up by a factor of a 100. Nasty. Very Nasty. Should sell well in a certain segment of the population.-- gtoal, May 23 2007 The only problem I see is that nobody has ever managed really good beat detection, so you'd be off-tempo a lot.
*nod* Yep, that's the only problem.-- 5th Earth, May 23 2007 As long as the thing activates enough muscles to keep your balance system going, or you do. I proposed something similar in the form of an exo-suit earlier.-- RayfordSteele, May 24 2007 //big toe//
OK, that should work then. [+]
//This is only for masochists.//
Well, yeah - it's for self-confessed geeks who still choose to spend time in night-clubs, where, in any case, they're likely to be humiliated. Given that premise, it makes perfect sense.-- pertinax, May 24 2007 Baked in the movie 'Saving Silverman' albeit with a different original intended purpose. Ultimately his clothes burst into flames.-- craigts, May 24 2007 Even the phrase "in sync dance routines" raises a horrible shudder up my spine.
Bun for trying to work your way up from geekiness as opposed to just pretending it wasn't there.-- Custardguts, May 25 2007 With wireless capabilities, I hope this thing is/isn't hackable. We might just have horrible geek practical jokes, making their friends do some dirty pole-dance moves on the floor, or the funky-chicken (but then there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have done the funky-chicken without this device anyway). I'll wait for the voicebox muscle stimulator to make me sound like some famous singer, or anybody I like.-- twitch, May 25 2007 hey there [britboy] wanna dance?-- xandram, May 25 2007 I think I just figured out how to invent computer controlled (human or otherwise) zombies with this idea. Braindead folk will punch and kick again. But, is it ethical? (of course it is ethical dammit) And, what use are zombies besides rhythm controlled breakdancing sessions anyway? I know that if I was brain dead, that would be what I would want done to me, to go down looking cool like Bernie. [+]-- quantum_flux, May 25 2007 I'm not sure I could stay floppy if some cute girl came up to "grind".-- Ling, May 25 2007 This is an excellent idea, bunnage. Version 1 could just do 'the robot', but then it's more of a geekiness enhancement module.
An impulse sufficient to fully control a limb would be painful (I know, see below) but you can use a gentle impulse as a suggestion to move the muscle without pain and without anyone that touches you feeling the impulse. Once you get to the wifi stage you could ask the DJ to plug a transmitter into an output.
<below>Some friends and I tried to create a 'biobotic' arm using a few build-muscle-while-watching-tv machine with everyone working together to try to make a blindfolded person pick up and stack blocks. Not quite Jackass material but funny and painful nonetheless.</below>-- marklar, May 28 2007 //If you can't handle the heat, then don't electrify your body for fun.notmarkflynn, May 15 2006//Link!-- methinksnot, May 30 2007 Great idea, although they had the same thing in the Jackie Chan movie The Tuxedo, except they had the wires running inside a tuxedo.-- mikaman, Jun 01 2007 random, halfbakery