 |
THE CYBORG FUTURE By Evan Anderson
Why Read: The ability to be, and to create, cyborgs has always been an ultimate goal in tech. This week, we cover the ways in which we are already there and what comes next. Read on for a look at the companies that make the technologies that will enable our cyborg future, bullet points from my discussion with the CIO of 2023 FiReStarter company Naqi Logix, and a synopsis of just how capable we are today of controlling everything with . . . well . . . our minds. _____ Long have science-fiction authors and innovators dreamed of cyborgs - a term that originated in 1960 with NASA scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, who envisioned a human species surpassing its limitations in the stars. The ability to restore or improve human motion, stimulate or implant knowledge and skills, and generally shift humanity to a new and more enabled plane could be considered a Holy Grail of modern technological advance. Marvel's Iron Man, first featured three years later, was likely inspired by the concept. Martin Caidin's novel Cyborg also took us back to Earth; and the film adaptation, The Six Million Dollar Man, inspired countless more iterations of what a bionic human being operating in this world might look like. But despite these early dreams, technology had a bit of catch-up to do. Long years of R&D were spent in brain research, chip design, robotics, batteries, and countless other fields. In the 64 years since Clynes and Kline coined the term, a true cyborg future has remained elusive. Now, it seems that the time is finally arriving. New materials, batteries, sensors, and our understanding of the motor cortex have seen an explosion of advances. Today, we find ourselves not only close to these early visions of grandeur, but also actually beginning to build the tech suites the early visionaries described so long ago. Just what is going on in the field of human-machine interfaces, robotic prosthetics, and exoskeletons is best represented by a survey of the companies that are closest to go-to-market with the technologies a cyborg future requires. Let's start with the center of it all: the human brain.
|
