Make way for the cyborg – why humans could be unrecognisable in the future Humans will gradually merge with technology over the next two centuries creating a new race of cyborgs as different from […]

Humans will gradually merge with technology over the next two centuries creating a new race of cyborgs as different from today’s humans as we are from chimpanzees.

That’s the prediction of Professor Yuval Noah Harari, a leading historian, writer and cyborg expert from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – who argues that the process has already begun.

“We’re going to become cyborgs, combining organic and inorganic parts. And this is not a prophecy for the future. This is already happening right now,’ he said last month.

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Far fetched as his vision may sound he is by no means alone in believing we’re in the very early stages of a revolution of the human body and mind.

Blade Runner 2049

With the UK release of the Blade Runner film sequel next month likely to intensify interest in the crossover between people and technology, a growing group of experts are signalling that the age of cyborgs – a living thing that is both natural and artificial – is fast approaching.

Elon Musk, the space entrepreneur and electric car pioneer, is among those who has identified cyborgs as a major issue of our time – albeit one that nobody can really envision.

He has just set up a company in San Francisco called Neuralink and is recruiting people to “develop ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.”

With the cyborg world in the very earliest of stages it’s virtually impossible to predict what Musk’s team and other cyborg developers will create in the coming decades.

The aims of cyborg technology

But the general aim is to incorporate technology into the human body in a way that enhances its functioning, health, longevity, and brain power.

Innovations could include relatively basic advances such as inserting chips into your body to communicate with computers and other electronic devices in the outside world or inserting turbo-charged new body parts that provide extraordinary eyesight, hearing or strength.

In search of the Holy Grail

Or they might include the Holy Grail of cyborg research – sophisticated ‘brain-computer interfaces’ eliminating time-consuming obstacles such as typing and talking in favour of direct and immediate interactions between our brains and external devices.

“The human body is becoming more mechanical and computational and less biological” Woodrow Barfield

These could connect our brains directly to computers or the internet and they might bring benefits such as enhanced memory, intelligence and information processing abilities as well as extra senses such as night vision or the ability to “see” magnetic fields or radio waves.

The interfaces would involve decoding brain signals using implanted electrodes and then translating those signals into a command for a robot or computer – something that is well beyond us at the moment but will become increasingly possible as our understanding of neuroscience improves.

The process has already started

Although fully-fledged cyborgs are still the stuff of sci-fi movies, mankind has already made a reasonable start down the path towards being cybernetic beings, experts say.

Eye glasses, prosthetic limbs, hearing aids and pace makers are the most obvious examples, along with bionic ears, heart valves and artificial limbs.

“The human body is becoming more mechanical and computational and less biological and this trend will continue to accelerate as the body becomes transformed into an information processing technology,” said Professor Woodrow Barfield of the University of Washington in Seattle.

“This will ultimately challenge one’s sense of identity and what it means to be human,” he added.

“This will ultimately challenge one’s sense of identity and what it means to be human,” Woodrow Barfield

So far, these early cyborg devices have tended to correct defects rather than enhance our capabilities.

But enhancement is also happening, although at the moment it is happening outside the body.

Researchers in the US are working on a microchip that is implanted in the motor cortex just beneath a person’s skull that will be able to intercept nerve signals and reroute them to a computer, which will then wirelessly send a command to other electronic devices, such as other computers, stereos and electric wheelchairs.

And some people have gone a step further down the cyborg path by using internal implants to correct or enhance their abilities.

DIY cyborgs

One example of a current cyborg is Jerry Jalava who embedded a mini hard drive by implanting a memory stick in the tip of his prosthetic finger after an accident.

Another DIY cyborg, Tim Cannon, has integrated technology directly into his body by implanting a computer chip in his arm that can record and transmit biometrical data to an android device.

Whatever innovations come up in the future, the human brain will still be the command-and-control centre – even if it is plugged into a computer network so that you and the computer network become one.

Brain-machine interfaces

But it will increasingly be connected directly to more and more devices, whether it’s bionic arms or “brain-computer interfaces” that enhance the mind, experts says.

“The advent of brain-machine interfaces may force humans to redefine where our humanity lies. It will blur the boundary between human and machine,” said Dr Arthur Saniotis, of the University of Adelaide.

Just how far we will be able – or want – to go down the cyborg path remains to be seen. The brain, in particular, is hugely complex is relatively little understood. and as watching any old science fiction film reminds us – we tend to get the future wrong.”

“It can become easy to think of the body as a kind of machine with parts that need replacing. Of course, the body is not a machine but an evolutionary organism of enormous complexity. The human mind is not a logical machine, it is a product of organic interactions. That complexity should not be underestimated,” said Dr Saniotis.