“Humans as we all know them won’t exist in the following 50-100 years,” says Professor Kevin Warwick, British engineer, recipient of two higher doctorates, nine honorary doctorates, and one in all the world’s first cyborgs. “I definitely see a future wherein we’re all adapted with cyborg abilities in a roundabout way.” Human potential is evolving, and discussion around the concept of cyborgs is being met with increasing fervour by the broader public. The term cyborg has many nuanced meanings, but most frequently refers to those whose physical abilities are prolonged beyond normal human limitations, largely as a result of the mixing of human and machine – where technology becomes one with the human body.

Professor Warwick has been experimenting on himself since 1998, dedicating his own body (and risking his life) as a way to push the boundaries of technology and human potential. His work has evolved from the implantation of microchips inside his body, a practice that’s becoming increasingly used very like a contactless card, allowing people to access buildings or pay for their lunch with just the touch of a hand, to work specializing in integrating the brain with technology. His BrainGate implant allowed him to manage a robotic hand on the opposite side of the Atlantic, and feel it too. “Someone who has had their hand or leg amputated, could have a man-made limb which they then control as if it’s a part of their body, they usually wouldn’t notice any difference so far as the brain is worried,” he says. “But the important thing thing is, it doesn’t must be a leg or an arm, it may very well be a constructing, it may very well be a automobile – your body doesn’t must have legs and arms prefer it does now. As soon as you’ve gotten the interface between your nervous system and wires, any technology might be your body, and it could actually be wherever you wish it to be.”

As a part of his experiments, Professor Warwick also created an extra sense inside his brain – ultrasonic. This bat-like ability allowed him to sense small movements at just a few metres distance. Because of the success of his research, Professor Warwick believes extra sensory abilities will develop into commonplace inside the following 100 years. “I used to be seeking to see if our brains could expand, which after all they will – it was no problem in any respect. We also experimented with infrared, which supplies you a distant sense of warmth, because humans can’t detect heat from a distance. I feel almost anything is feasible – UV, X-ray – we are able to extend our abilities to begin sensing whatever we like.”

Professor Warwick then moved on to a much bigger project – connecting his nervous system with that of his wife. Electrodes were implanted into his spouse, allowing them to speak – when she opened and closed her hand, his brain received a pulse. “It was like a telegraphic communication from nervous system to nervous system, which after we do it brain to brain, will develop into almost like a telepathy,” he says. “We now have the technology to do it now, it’s just bloody dangerous to attach two brains, so I’m a bit scared.”

Unlike a few of Professor Warwick’s endeavours, most cyborg experimentation isn’t done solely to push human bodies to the boundaries. For essentially the most part, the technology is utilized by those that have suffered an injury or amputation. The vast majority of those in the sphere work towards eradicating these disabilities – through spinal cord injuries or lack of limbs.

“This concept of becoming a cyborg for an amputee is nearly regaining functionality that they either were born without or they lost, and that the world around them is designed to be utilized in,” says Oliver Armitage, founding father of Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems (CBAS). Alongside his co-founder, Armitage has created a cybernetic system that permits his patients to regain control and feeling with bionic limbs. Their interface acts as a USB port connecting on to the nervous system, and allowing different prosthetic limbs to be attached, depending on the needs of the patient.

“We do that because there’s real medical need now for those people, but I’m also excited by the proven fact that in the method, you furthermore may create technology which could allow people so as to add to themselves in the event that they desired to. In the event that they need a limb for climbing, they will have a climbing limb. There’s no limits on what an individual can decide to have placed on the top of our interface.”

Dr Robert Gaunt, Assistant Professor within the Department of BioEngineering on the University of Pittsburgh, has worked with ‘cyborg’ patients, and was a part of the team that allowed a paralysed man to have a ‘natural’ sense of touch restored using a mind-controlled robotic arm, for the very first time. His focus is straightforward, to work on eradicating disability and create a world where losing a limb or losing functionality, now not has to define the way in which you reside.

“I feel in a brief timeframe, far lower than 100 years, it’s possible that folks who’ve a few of the more serious disabilities from strokes, or spinal cord injuries or amputation, won’t have an issue anymore. In case you lose your arm in an accident, you may go to the doctor that day and also you get a recent arm, and it will work almost in addition to an arm does.”

Despite his incredible work, Dr Gaunt is hesitant to make any outlandish predictions for the longer term. “Nature has set a high bar. For instance, it is rather difficult to copy hand function and there are not any hand robots that come anywhere near replicating human hands,” he says. “Will we get there? Almost definitely. But we’ve got to watch out about what we promise, especially with the medical use of those technologies. We’re still within the early stages and it’s unfair to get peoples’ hopes up.”                                                                                                                                                 

Nevertheless, Dr Gaunt, and plenty of others, argue that the cyborg future others are predicting, is already occurring now. “You would argue that everyone with a pacemaker is a cyborg,” he says. “They’ve a machine of their bodies that’s keeping them alive. I’ve heard of people that have prosthetic arms and one in all their jobs within the family is to succeed in into the bonfire and grab the marshmallow when it falls in. They will stick their hand in the fireplace with no consequences. You may call them recent ‘superhuman abilities’ if you happen to like, but persons are already in a position to do things that you simply and I couldn’t do if we had all our ‘normal’ parts.”

However it doesn’t must be about becoming superheroes, upgrading the human body and even treating disability. Cyborg artist and activist Moon Ribas argues that it’s simply about creating different perceptions of reality and finding more ways to experience the fantastic thing about the world we live in. For the past five years, Ribas has had two implants underneath her skin on the highest of her feet, which can be connected to online seismographs. Every time there’s an earthquake above two on the Richter scale, anywhere on the planet, she feels vibrations inside her body, which she then uses to tell the choreography of her dance performances. The sentiments vary in intensity depending on the strength of the earthquake, and sometimes occur every eight minutes. Ribas calls this her ‘seismic sense’.

“I feel like I even have two heart beats now – the center beat and the earth beat,” she says. “I discover myself as a cyborg, but perhaps it’s a bit different, because I used to be never fascinated with science fiction or anything like that, and it actually makes me feel closer to nature. I used to be studying movement research, and I desired to perceive movement otherwise.”

The concept of using cyborg augmentation not to boost, but to facilitate different perceptions of reality, offers a less divisive view of the longer term. “It’s not about upgrading or recuperating,” says Ribas. “Being higher or worse may be very subjective. A blind person just isn’t worse than someone who can see, they only have a distinct perception of reality, a few of their other senses may be heightened. Some groups inside the cyborg community are very much about improving humans, but I feel very uncomfortable with these terms. It’s not necessarily about becoming superheroes.”

In 2010, Ribas founded The Cyborg Foundation alongside fellow cyborg artist Neil Harbisson with three important goals – to assist humans develop into cyborgs, to advertise cyborg art, and to defend cyborg rights. “Cyborg is an identity, but you don’t need technology in your body to discover as one,” she says. “We’ve provide you with 3 ways of identifying as a cyborg. There’s psychological cyborgs, which is the sensation that you simply are united with technology. We could argue that we’re all psychological cyborgs, because when your cell phone is running out of battery, you say, ‘I’m running out of battery’ – you discuss technology as if it was an element of you. The second is biological cyborgs, which is the physical union between humans and technology (a robotic arm). And at last, there’s neurological cyborgs, which is the modification of the mind as a result of technology (a bionic arm you can control or feel along with your mind).”

Although she is a terrific proponent of cyborg adaptations and additional sensory abilities, she doesn’t think they are going to develop into a mainstay in human life. “I imagine a future wherein it would be more normal for people to be cyborgs and have extra senses, but I don’t think everyone could have them. I find that difficult to assume. We imagine a world that will probably be more diverse. Now we accept that there’s greater than two genders, so perhaps in the longer term there will probably be individuals who unite with technology and folks who don’t.” That said, Ribas does accept that the boundaries to what may very well be possible in the longer term are almost non-existent. “So long as it doesn’t harm other people. What we attempt to encourage, is that everybody can determine how they wish to perceive reality, and what senses they’d like. That’s the exciting thing, we are able to determine how we would like to be and the way we would like to perceive.”

Whether we’re using cyborg enhancements to regain functionality, push our limits or create recent sensory experiences – the longer term of the human body will probably be ours to design, creating a wholly recent mode of self-expression. The connection we each have with our soft bodies will change, as will our notions and experiences of what is gorgeous. In our highly personalised cyborg future, we’ll have more of a say in how we glance, how we operate and what we perceive, than ever before. Although research and testing is basically still within the early stages, our lives, bodies and minds have gotten increasingly infused with technology. The means and the methods exist, and a cyborg population is already in our midst. Perhaps inside our lifetimes, the road between the digital and the natural will blur almost completely. The one limits are your imagination.