Human Cyborgs

I have been conducting research into real life, human cyborgs, and read an article on Wired which researches into them. Some people are classed as part-cyborg, part-organic through having complex medical procedures and operations, whereas some people choose to become a cyborg through scientific advancement and research.

Firstly, Jesse Sullivan was hailed as the worlds first 'bionic man' when he replaced his lost arms with robotic prosthetics. He took the nerves which originally ran through his arm and used them to control the arms that replaced his damaged ones.

Kevin Warwick is another person who can be classed as a cyborg, but decided to become a cyborg out of choice rather than necessity. He experimented on himself, and firstly implanted a RFID chip under the skin of his forearm, allowing him to control lights, heaters and computer equipment without having to touch them. The room detected his was inside, and responded accordingly. Kevin Warwick was the first person I had heard of who chose the become a cyborg. 

The second experiment he conducted saw him connect the nerve fibres under his wrist to an array of electrodes, where he then connected them to a number of computer devices. This lead to the finding that humans could connect their nervous system to the internet for all to see, a dramatic finding that could change the way humans work in the next couple of hundred years.

Rob Spence replaced his eye with a video camera after losing it during a gun accident when he was 13, which sent real time colour video to a remote display that he personally owned. I have heard of a number of people who wear eyeborgs, as a means of capturing still images during the day, or video like Spence himself has done. 

Jerry Jalava replaced his finger with a USB stick, the strangest cyborg transformation I have heard of to date! His transformation has been compared to that of Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, who placed thimbles on the end of the fingers he has lost when he was 17, in order for him to play guitar better. Jalava replaced his with a USB stick as it was useful for his career as a computer programmer.