Cyborgs like us. Essay by Liat Clark

The convergence of man and machine started long ago. And the potential it offers us is far from being exhausted. The new species has to be welcomed with open arms to ensure that the benefits of cyborgisation don’t become the preserve of a select few.

We are, all of us, cyborgs in training. Commuter trains are littered with passengers clutching smartphones, tablets, laptops and ereaders – forget these one morning, and you might feel anxious, restless, like a part of you has been misplaced. These devices are extensions of the self; they are where we log our data, communicate with loved ones and store moments and memories in slideshows and MP3s. They do not replace human emotion, memory and intellect, but can certainly enhance it. These devices have laid the groundwork for the cyborgisation of humanity, and the adoption of a new self that will subsume technology as naturally and effortlessly as the air we breathe.

Some have already inadvertently inched closer to this self. Their heartbeats are regulated by pacemakers, electrodes are inserted into their cochleae to stimulate nerves and engage senses never before experienced, and retinal implants bring flashes of light, shape and colour to those who had long given up on ever seeing again. These are the acci

dental cyborgs – their technology is discreet, mainly hidden from public glare and denoted as a means of maintaining the status quo.

Transcending the boundaries of human nature

But as we saw with last year’s Paralympic Games , human enhancements are no longer being designed simply to match natural capability – they are coming close to surpassing it. Conscious of this, some are today pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human even further. Like Yuri Gagarin taking the first orbital flight or Jacques-Yves Cousteau plunging to the inky depths, 21st-century cyborgs do not see limitations in the human condition, but infinite opportunities to advance – if we are only willing to take an educated leap.

Colours are concepts we have defined and categorised with words – but that does not make our perception of them a permanent construct, argues colour-blind artist Neil Harbisson. He has developed the Eyeborg, a wearable device that translates colours into sound and transmits those sounds to the wearer via bone conduction. Now, not only can he perceive colours, he can pick up ones the human eye cannot, such as infrared and ultraviolet. He plans to have the device permanently implanted in his skull. Another eyeborg, rob Spence lost his right eye as a teenager and in 2010 replaced it with a video-recording eyeball-shaped camera. The device logs his life, wirelessly transmitting data in real time. Though it is not connected to the optic nerve, meaning it affords no biological function, it is an example of an individual adapting his body to suit his identity and, in this case, his profession as a filmmaker. Lastly, cybernetics professor kevin Warwick is the self-appointed guinea pig for cyborgisation. In 1998 he embedded an rFID chip in his arm and in 2002 he attached an 100-electrode array to his median nerve. The latter enabled him to control electronic devices via a computer interface, with the electronic signals from his hand movements picked up by the array and translated by an algorithm to instruct a mechanical hand.When his wife had electrodes placed in her neural system, Warwick could sense when she carried out simple actions like closing her hand. While many argue our reliance on technology can alienate, Warwick, Harbisson and Spence would argue the opposite – it has the capacity to afford us a better understanding of the world around us, and offers infinite possibilities for interacting with the people in that world in new and intimate ways.

Warwick, Harbisson and Spence have one thing in common: they are not satisfied with the status quo of what it means to be human. In an age when supercomputers can processes 17.59 quadrillion calculations per second, why should we be content with this kind of capacity being solely external? There is a thirst to get more data inside the human body, an urgency to meld technology and biology – and when there are YouTube videos telling DIY bodyhackers how to insert magnets under their skin, to extend their sensory capacity to the detection of electromagnetic fields, it’s clear that urgency is no longer confined to a quiet minority.

Cyborgisation: what will happen next?

Nevertheless, while DIY and headline-stealing cyborg pioneers certainly push the conversation into the mainstream, for safe and meaningful adaptations to become widespread studies will remain confined to labs for now. The good news? That research is astonishing, and is already changing the lives of ordinary people.

Bionic limbs and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), where technology is implanted into the nervous system, are early indicators of the capacity we have to surpass the human condition. In February 2013 an amputee received the first thought-controlled robotic prosthesis that has electrodes permanently implanted into the nerves and muscles. Algorithms translate their signals into movement of the boneanchored arm, developed by Max Ortiz Catalan in Sweden. robotic limbs usually rely on electrodes sitting on the skin – by connecting it directly to the neural system, the hope is the amputee will not only gain dominion over it, but begin to regain some sense of “feeling”. Meanwhile, in the US BrainGate has implanted a 4mm-wide chip with 96 hairthin electrodes into the brain of a woman left paralysed and unable to speak. In May 2012, for the first time in 15 years, Cathy Hutchinson took a sip of coffee unaided. How? She instructed a robotic hand to pick it up and lift it to her mouth using only her thoughts. The chip in her brain reads signals from motion-controlling neurons, and a processor translates these signals into action. The technology is impressive; the outcome, and the smile on the woman‘s face, priceless.

Extensions of these studies are already indicating where technology will take us in the future.

In the February 2013 issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering, the invention of a wireless brain sensor was announced. The rechargeable implant, which has been safely tested in animals, transmits signals from 100 neurons at 24 Mbps. It means that one day people like Hutchinson will not need a bulky external device attached to their head to decode and transmit data to robotic limbs – neural signals will be wirelessly transmitted straight to them. This will be one of the first steps toward widespread adoption of implantable technology; as with mobile devices, the smaller and more powerful they become, the more discreet, useful and ubiquitous. Heart implants that recharge using radio waves are already been being trialled, and indicate a time when the need for external interruption will be unnecessary. When devices become self-charging, perpetual parts of the human body, that’s when technology becomes subsumed into a person’s identity in a seamless fusion. Cumbersome wires and leads do not a cyborg make.

Once devices become invisible, that is when apps for the body will take over. IBM has predicted that 2017 will see the beginnings of mind-controlled tech, where technology like BrainGate’s meets the Internet of Things. Sensors will read our thoughts, enabling us to make calls or switch lights on just by thinking about it. Wearable devices such as Emotiv’s EPOC (which uses 14 sensors to translate electrical signals from the brain into actions on a computer game) will become smaller and be embedded into clothing to read thoughts and transmit instructions. Like a future of skin-embedded rFID tags, questions of surveillance and privacy could well limit how fast this is adopted. Nevertheless, IBM was definitely on to something – a year prior to the launch of Google Glass, it had picked up on a likely trend that will see humans turning to wearable rather than embedded devices in the short term. We may not yet be ready to implant chips that are unnecessary, or replace healthy limbs with superior bionic ones, but wearable devices bridge that chasm of adaptation naturally, making things like augmented reality (Ar) a visceral extension of our senses in the interim.

You can already buy EPOC, and with Google Glass slated to cost around £1,000 there are indications the future commodification of human enhancement will mean cyborg adaptation for the few, rather than the many. While the software needed to build Harbisson’s Eyeborg can be downloaded free online – a more democratised version of open source cyborgism – it’s clear that public funding will take many of these initiatives only so far, and it’s the commodification of the cyborg that could provide the cash needed for jumps in advancements.

Those jumps could mean digital bionic eyes with embedded Ar, morphological freedom over your body with arm length changed according to the day’s tasks, total organ replacement and even telepathy. While the first two might feel distant, considering the perceptual obstacles humanity would have to overcome to willingly replace healthy body parts with superior artificial ones, the latter two might be closer than you think.

When psychologist Bertolt Meyer oversaw the creation of the world’s first bionic man, rex, his incredulity and awkward embarrassment at the “revolting” creature may have proved we are not ready for total cyborg replacement – but it also proved how close we are to creating one. In rex, biologists and roboticists showed that 60 to 70 percent of the human body can be rebuilt. To fill the last 30 percent, Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University has already built a system to 3D print stem cells – the building blocks for one day 3D printing replacement organs – while Harvard scientists have created a system for building nanoscale electrode scaffolds that cyborg tissue can grow on. All that leaves is the brain, which groups like Initiative 2045 argue will be fully uploadable to avatar replacements in mere decades. While it’s unlikely anyone will be comfortable with that notion any time soon, a study in Scientific reports has revealed that BCIs could enable us to read minds one day. By fitting the brain of a rat in Brazil and one in the US with electrodes and transmitting the data captured online, neuroscientists were able to show that what one rat knew, the other quickly learned. This could lead to a “brain-net”, a collective group psyche that could theoretically solve problems individual minds cannot. With this, of course, comes the question of a loss of individual identity. Imagine a world where all minds could be connected: roads would be free of traffic and queues a thing of the past, but far more important constructs of privacy and freedom potentially sacrificed.

Setting aside issues of an anti-democratic cyborg movement and the emergence of a two-tiered society where those that can afford superior minds and bodies get the best jobs and social standing, all this may be entirely irrelevant if the cyborg remains on the fringe, an unknown and distrusted entity that challenges our traditional view of what it means to be human.

Of the new species

If the history of humanity has taught us nothing else, it’s that we fear the “other”; the unknown incites terror, paranoia and ultimately instinctual defensive behaviours. Wars have raged because of it and atrocities been committed under its guise. We accept progress for a number of reasons, but the clincher will be if it benefits our personal situation. To assimilate the other as a norm, its virtues must be undisputed and clear to the individual. Throughout history minorities have been ousted from communities despite the economic benefits their being there might bring – if an identity cannot be assimilated into normal society, and remains as “other”, its benefits to that society will remain irrelevant.

For some in the deaf community, cochlear implants represent an affront to their culture and identity. Will humans feel the same way when the wealthy begin to exchange their legs for faster models, their vision for Ar? We identify ourselves as human because we have two fleshy arms and legs, limbs that bleed and break. To prevent that degeneration is surely a good thing, but for a whole section of society to opt-in for change while others cannot could challenge what it means to be human and see the emergence of a new species. To ensure that species is welcomed with open arms, we must openly engage with the subject matter now, ensuring transparency persists throughout its development.

Liat Clark is Wired.co.uk's reporter and has written for publications including GQ, The Independent and The Metro on topics including science, technology, culture, politics and civil liberties issues.