We all have a rough idea of what cyborgs are. Whether you’re a fan of the Terminator, guzzle down whatever even smells of sci-fi, or just have a scientific interest on the subject, by now, you should have a clear picture in your mind.
You probably pictured something like this.
This is indeed a very romanticized version of a cyborg (It is Cyborg himself, for the DC comics fans) – a person enhanced by having machinery implanted into his/her body.
The truth is, body modification is much more than a sci-fi nerd’s fantasy – it is already a reality. You just need to look attentively.
I’m now going to tell you what there is to know about this technology in this article, in 3 simple facts.
Let’s get started, shall we?
1 – Body mods are meant to enhance the body of the user
The purpose of body mods is pretty clear – it consists of introducing some kind of system into your body that’s meant to improve it somehow. This can happen in many ways.
One of the most prominent uses of this tech, for example, is helping disabled people get over their disability.
You might have heard of Adrianne Haslet-Davis. This amazing woman lost a leg as a consequence of the Boston Marathon bombing. A customized bionic leg soon returned her skill and she was back on the dance floor.
Does the name Oscar Pitorius ring a bell? He’s a famous athlete – and the first amputee to compete at the regular Olympics, with his faithful prosthetic leg.
But why be so flashy? A cochlear implant, a nice little device that can help a deaf person hear, has been available since 1984. What about pacemakers? And peg legs had existed since even longer…
All this goes to show that bio-modding has been along for a long time. But where exactly is it now?
2 – There are super interesting mods in development nowadays
As we learn more and more about how the body works, we grow increasingly aware of it’s limitations… so systems that once would have been impossible to trespass into are now going under the knife, and people are learning how to tamper with them.
For example, take the human heart. A system designed to pump blood 35 million times in a year. Until recently, designing anything that could even conceivably come close was unthinkable, yet in 2013, a French company successfully implanted an artificial heart on a 76 year old man, in open heart surgery. Many new such hearts have been announced, with the BiVACOR being the best one to date.
The human heart isn’t the only organ that’s getting overhauled. A bionic eye is a dream long held by the blind, in the hope that it may one day restore their vision. But there are other interpretations of that dream.
Smart lenses, put over the eye, could have the potential of granting the user enhanced abilities. For example, diabetic patients could monitor their glucose levels through them. Other models could grant the wearer a better vision, suck as a 3x amplification, or night vision.
…The greatest of all organs though, the brain, is also getting looked at in order to see how it can be improved. Despite the tremendous complexity of it, there are already some ideas. Deep Brain Stimulation, for example, consists of applying a pacemaker on the brain, in order to send out electrical impulses to certain parts of it. This can tremendously help fight diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, depression, and much more.
Of course, this is what’s happening now… but what about the future? What does the future hold for this tech?
3 – In the future, they may allow us to surpass our limitation… by a lot
I will actually cover this tomorrow!
But for now, I leave you this - the future of this technology could change not just our entire lives, but what it means to be human.
You see, many of the mods currently in consideration go beyond the current trend – whereas in the present we are simply trying to improve the lives of those who have disabilities, in the future, we will try to improve the lives of everyone.
From better vision, to chips that allow a better integration between our bodies and our surrounding environment, to better sex organs, improved organs that prolong our lifespan. What they all have in common is an ability to transcend the limitations of our current body.
What this will mean for our species… I cannot say. What I can say is that this, of all the technologies I’ve covered, holds the greatest possible impact not just for how we live our lives, but for how we look at ourselves.
That wraps this up!
That’s basically it for today! Sorry if you thought I was too vague this last topic, but I wanted to set up the article for tomorrow – I thought that I could easily go up to 2000 words if I tried to cram it all here, and that wouldn’t be enjoyable for either of us…
Feel free to sound off in the comments below if you have some criticism, or some question you’d like to ask, or something. I’ll be back tomorrow with the promised article!
Steem on guys!