being cyborg

Filed in archive Technology on April 14, 2004

Kevin Warwick is well published visionary who takes his own vision of being cyborg so serious that he has undertaken several surgeries to transform himself into one. A while ago I linked to this article. His story displayed on his homepage is intriguing:

"On the 14th of March 2002 a one hundred electrode array was surgically implanted into the median nerve fibres of the left arm of Professor Kevin Warwick. The operation was carried out at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, by a medical team headed by the neurosurgeons Amjad Shad and Peter teddy. The procedure, which took a little over two hours, involved inserting a guiding tube into a two inch incision made above the wrist, inserting the microelectrode array into this tube and firing it into the median nerve fibres below the elbow joint.

A number of experiments have been carried out using the signals detected by the array, most notably Professor Warwick was able to control an electric wheelchair and an intelligent artificial hand, developed by Dr Peter Kyberd, using this neural interface. In addition to being able to measure the nerve signals transmitted down Professor Wariwck's left arm, the implant was also able to create artificial sensation by stimulating individual electrodes within the array. This was demonstrated with the aid of Kevin's wife Irena and a second, less complex implant connecting to her nervous system."