Self-Experimenters: Self-Styled Cyborg
- - photo via Scientific American
From:Scientific American
He hopes to have a sensor implanted in his brain by 2015 that will allow him to send signals across a computer network. Of course, a Brown University team has already moved the goalposts much closer: In 2006 researchers reported that a 25-year-old quadriplegic man had guided a computer cursor and moved a prosthetic arm via a brain implant. Warwick may have trouble finding a doctor to implant a similar device without a compelling medical reason, points out Charles Higgins, an associate professor of electrical engineering and neurobiology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Sure, he might damage his brain, but for Warwick, it’s the lesser of two evils. In his vision of a future dominated by cyborgs and intelligent machines, the outlook for those who refuse implants is grim: “I guess they’ll be some sort of subspecies. Just like we have cows now,” he says, “so we’ll have humans in the future.” And he’d rather not be put out to pasture.
Warrick has been mentioned here already. What caught my attention was the fact that not having a DOCTOR willing to do the operations will be more of a deterrent to him than the technology not being available.
and Kevin Warwick was featured here too..
it’s the lack of willing Doctors that will give rise to the Doktors .. no ethics board bs for them! just the body as canvas
Sorry, I missed that one. My apologies.
it’s the lack of willing Doctors that will give rise to the Doktors?
And that’s exactly the point of the post, m1k3y. Another thought for you: where does he go to find a Doktor? How does he even contact one? I don’t see anyone advertising directly, for concern over the powers-that-be interfering. (Unless it’s something only a Grinder would pick up on.)
In the future, I’m going want my damn implants! How do I find someone to install them?!?!?
I suspect I’ll be someone like Steve Haworth
[...] Self-Experimenters: Self-Styled Cyborg [...]
Those doktors are afraid, I found one underground clinic in Antwerp, and we wanted to fire a simpler device into my nerve, but he died last year. I am now both looking and learning…
Yep, it’ll be the people at the edge of the body mod movement, already. The people willing do do radical procedures for fetishists and the extreme edge of the body mod scene.
Strange how the medical system that sees self-experimentation or basic body mods as “mutilation” will in the forseable future future have created a riskier medical environment. Availability of Docs/Doks will not stop people who have the itch.
Just like there are underground Ibogaine clinics, there will be underground surgeons. With very mixed results.