back to article Captain Cyborg accepts another degree from puny humans

The nation's favourite would-be cyborg overlord and media strumpet, Professor Kevin Warwick, has been rewarded with another academic bauble. The post-human Brummie was given a Doctorate from the University of Portsmouth last week for his work as Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading. It adds to a growing …

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  1. dotdavid
    Terminator

    Removed

    "Last year we noted how Wikipedia's entry for Britain's Greatest Living Scientist had been miraculously cleansed of any controversy or criticism of Warwick's work or public statements. The following passage, the last remnant of any disquiet amongst Warwick's scientific peers, was subsequently removed"

    It was removed because the wikipedia bots are part of the forthcoming robopocalypse and won't stand for criticism of quislings like Captain Cyborg.

  2. Gerard Krupa

    Ashamed

    As someone who studied at Bradford, lives in Coventry and works in Aston I'm am ashamed beyond all belief to have a threefold association with this man. Still, nice to know where you can get a degree in self-aggrandisement.

    1. NoOnions
      WTF?

      Re: Ashamed

      Me too! How could our Uni do this?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pah - this cyborg doesn't even have laser eyes

  4. MrXavia
    Terminator

    He isn't a cyborg! the REAL cyborgs are those living daily with implants!

    People with artificial bionic limbs, artificial eyes (still in its infancy)

    These people are all out there, and they are letting themselves be used as guinea pigs to advance cybernetics...

    Lets celebrate them and the scientists & engineers who design and build their prosthesis!

    I am hopeful that within the next 5 years bionic limbs will reach a point where we can properly interface them with the nervous system, and bond them onto the skeletal structure, we HAVE the technology to do both.. We've proven it can be done, now it is an engineering problem...

    1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: REAL cyborgs are those living daily with implants

      I'm always amused at people's reactions when I point out that my pacemaker has more on-board compute power than the Apollo missions. Except for under-30s, who often ask what an Apollo mission was. :-(

      I'm certainly more of a cyborg than Kevin "I got chipped like a dog, which gave me cyberpowers" Warwick.

      1. brainwrong
        Boffin

        Re: REAL cyborgs are those living daily with implants

        Doesn't everything now have more compute power than the Apollo missions?

        I used to install a PIC-chip based nurse-call system in care homes, each call point had more compute power than the Apollo guidance computers, all they did was make a light blink and tell other devices on the system to make a bleeping noise.

        It was a very good system, shame the salesmen we worked for were such cunts.

        bleep bleeeeep!

  5. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
    Boffin

    Lucky escape for me

    I nearly went to Reading to study Cybernetics back in the 80s (pre-Warwick). It seemed like a really cool place, like a genuine mad scientist's lab. I suspect such a degree would be a source of derision nowadays, thanks to him.

    1. mark 63 Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Lucky escape for me

      yeah but even with the Warwick dilution factor , the flurry of degrees in totally bullshit subjects would re-inflate it.

      Wait, what am i thinking , its science. who would want or need that in this day n age.

      now if you had a degree in "Britains got the X factor" . . . . .

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lucky escape for me

      I did go to Reading Uni and Prof Warwick was my personal tutor. There was a notice board of clips of articles and interviews with him, I was reading it and he came up behind me and said "I shouldn't believe everything you read." Basically it's his job to advertise the department, to get people interested and enthusiastic about the department, this sometimes means that he oversells what he does.

      While I was there he was also that rarity in a professor who actually lectured, he took us for motors and related subjects.

      I found him to be a thoroughly nice chap, well schooled in his subject and able to talk off the cuff about all areas in Cybernetics at the drop of a hat. I daresay that most of the people here don't even understand what Cybernetics actually is, let alone his achievements - Do you really think that he would have so many honorary doctorates if he was a charlatan? - It's also odd that a similar professor Ross Anderson, who also oversells the work of his department and his achievements is lauded on these forums as being the savior of IT security. I assume that's because he sticks it to the man and Prof Warwick doesn't.

      1. Naughtyhorse
        Thumb Down

        Re: Lucky escape for me

        "Do you really think that he would have so many honorary doctorates if he was a charlatan?"

        You mean more than jeremy clarkson, or ian paisley, or terry wogan, or dubyah, or kermit the frog.

        well that changes everything! i'll have to take him more seriously... tell you what i'll apologise in person, whats his mac address?

        (sycophantic fuckwit)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Lucky escape for me

          There is quite a difference in getting an honorary degree in your area of expertise, when you already have several degrees at various levels and proven research in that area, than there is getting an honorary degree for being a public figure in a particular area.

          Also, I'm not sure where you get off calling me a "sycophantic fuckwit", it's astonishingly aggressive, to say I haven't provoked you in any way and I strongly suspect you'd never say that if you met me, or anyone else, face to face. That you would judge me as such for making an honest comment in a subject where I have experience says more about you than it does about me.

          1. Naughtyhorse
            Trollface

            Re: Lucky escape for me

            sycophantic fuckwit is a pretty reasonable description for someone crawling up the arse of on notorious media whore who has/will contribute nothing the the field cos hes too busy congratulating himself on his own cleverness on breakfast telly.

            1. Captain Underpants
              FAIL

              Re: Lucky escape for me

              @Naughtyhorse:

              Right, no contribution to the field. Must've been someone else who demonstrated a working neural interface that allowed the long term transmission of neural impulses to and from a living person's nervous system then, right?

              Oh, wait.

              I dislike a lot of his media antics because they're bloody silly at times ("I'm a cyborg, just like every registered pet cat or dog! Oh, wait, that doesn't sound very impressive...") but to suggest he's done nothing in his field is to buy into the increasingly desperate El Reg trolling on the subject rather than actually read about the work he has done.

              1. Trokair 1
                Mushroom

                Re: Lucky escape for me

                @ Captain Underpants

                No use in throwing a vaild argument towards that one. He obviously has his primary funtionaility center shoved up his major ejection port.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    University of Portsmouth?????

    An oxymoron surely?

    1. Graham Marsden
      Devil

      Re: University of Portsmouth?????

      Or the Polyversity as it's still cynically referred to as by graduates such as myself...

  7. Naughtyhorse

    Hmmmm...

    if hes still all cybered up, i think it's time to introduce him to stuxnet.

    I remember really looking forward to those RI lectures, in the event i think i tollerated about 90 seconds.

    monstrous plonker.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    dumbed down

    "The Institute of Physics selected Kevin as one of only 7 eminent scientists to illustrate the ethical impact their scientific work can have: the others being Galileo, Einstein, Curie, Nobel, Oppenheimer and Rotblat"

    I suspect this in one of the very few parallels that can be drawn between the other six and this fatuous self -publicist.

    It would be comforting to think that there is only a finite amount of flummory in the world and that, by so assiduously accumulating it, this idiot is removing it from other places - thereby functioning as a kind of shite magnet.

  9. futnuh

    How dare you mock someone with a stunningly-low combined Erdos-Bacon number of 6? I learned this from the great man's About page on his web-site. My About page just says that I like movies and ice hockey, no doubt omitting any mention of my Erdos-Bacon number because it is laughably high. It's probably over 15.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hmm, more Erdnuss-Bacon is surely a good thing!

      No text required

  10. Irongut

    Ah well at least he's compiling a handy list of where not to study for us.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes...

      And where else are you going to study Cybernetics?

      1. Naughtyhorse

        Re: Yes...

        just about anywhere else i guess... macdonalds?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Yes...

          My point was that there are very few Cybernetics courses and even fewer Cybernetics departments. Reading was the first and has produced some seriously ground breaking research, it has also been at the forefront of multi-disciplinary research projects.

  11. Reading Your E-mail
    Black Helicopters

    Resistance is Futile

    Looks like the Borg have come up with a way to skin themselves.

    I'm sure the moon is starting to like more like a cube!!!

  12. The last doughnut
    Meh

    I used to think he was a bit of a self-publicist

    But considered it likely he was just good at getting media attention, raising the profile of the subject and so on and therefore an acceptable annoyance. Then he went further and further, I suppose the media tend to encourage you to do that once they have focused on you as a public image (the Colin Pilinger effect).

    Then I found out he got his batchelors at my old university.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Has anyone tried to find out.....

    Whether this guy is in fact completely bonkers and is in fact in need of a strait jacket and padded cell?

    1. Reading Your E-mail
      Coat

      Re: Has anyone tried to find out.....

      Does the Pope defecate in the woods?

      Wait, that doesn't look right.

      1. Naughtyhorse

        Re: Has anyone tried to find out.....

        Does the Pope defecate in the woods?...

        is the bear a catholic?

        there fixed it for... oh hang on

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Has anyone tried to find out.....

      Or have people just spouted off without knowing anything about the person, his achievements or even the subject which he professes?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Aand in other news

    There was an article today about implanting a gene into monkeys to render the neurons blue light sensitive.

    This is a very interesting technique as light is a much more effective way to target individual neurons rather than the current magnetic or electrical techniques.

    Someone should volunteer for human trials of this research.

    AC/DC

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