A NEW AGE OF HUMANITY

From reality-enhancing implants to brain-controlled exoskeletons, breakthroughs in biotech have fuelled a new fusion of machinery and organic matter. We speak to the cyborgs who are helping humanity transcend its biological limits, one device at a time

- HAYLEY BENNETT

Humans are integrating with technology. Not in the future – now. With the emergence of custom prosthetics that make us stronger and faster, neural implants that change how our brains work, and new senses and abilities that you’ve never dreamed of having, it’s time to start imagining what a better version of you might look like.

Some call it transhumanism. It’s not a philosophy cybernetics expert Kevin Warwick associates himself with, but he can’t deny he’s a cyborg… or was. Warwick had a 2.5cm-long radio frequency identification (RFID) chip implanted in his arm in 1998. Back then it was considered risky, even reckless. He went ahead anyway, creating a media circus as he demonstrated how the chip made him remotely traceable to a computer and allowed him to open the automated security doors at his University of Sheffield lab without touching them. Four years later, despite warnings from the surgeon, he had neural interfaces implanted that allowed him to control a robotic arm on another continent and communicate – nervous system to nervous system – with his wife, Irena, via electrodes in her arm.

“That was the most profound thing I did,” he says, recalling how he first felt the pulses of her transmitted signals in his finger.