"OXFORD, England -- A British university professor has been fitted with cyborg technology enabling his nervous system to be linked to a computer.
The ground-breaking surgery on Professor Kevin Warwick effectively makes him the world's first cyborg -- part human, part machine.
Although a long way from fictional characters The Terminator or the Six Million Dollar Man, it is hoped that readings will be taken from the implant in his arm of electrical impulses coursing through his nerves.
These signals, encoding movements like wiggling fingers and feelings like shock and pain, will be transmitted to a computer and recorded for the first time.
Similar experiments have previously only ever been carried out on cats and monkeys in the United States.
Surgeons implanted a silicon square about 3mm wide into an incision in Warwick's left wrist and attached its 100 electrodes, each as thin as a hair, into the median nerve.
Connecting wires were fed under the skin of the forearm and out from a skin puncture and the wounds were sewn up.
The wires will be linked to a transmitter/receiver device to relay nerve messages to a computer by radio signal." (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/03/22/human.cyborg, 4.5.2009)
Kevin Warwick ist Professor für Kybernetik an der University of Reading in Großbrittannien.
Mit seinem "Project Cyborg" erregte er international Aufsehen. Er beschäftigt sich vorallem mit der Schnittschnelle von Nervensystemen und Computern.
Für ihn ist der Schritt vom Mensch zum Cyborg der nächste in der Evolution. Sobald Mensch und Computer verbunden wären, könnten sie neue, aussergewöhnliche Fähigkeiten entwickeln. Diese seien nötig um in Zukunft gegen intelligente Maschinen antreten zu können.
Er selbst sagt: "There´s no way i want to stay a mere human".
Für weitere Infos zu Kevin Warwick: http://www.kevinwarwick.com
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