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The term "cyborg" literally means "cybernetic organism" -- a being constructed of both mechanical and organic material. Although traditionally confined to the realms of science fiction, modern medicine and in particular prosthetics have made the term applicable to a number of human beings.
Many people who could technically be labelled part-cybernetic, part-organic, have become so as the result of complex medical procedures, usually stemming from medical necessity. Some, however, chose to grant themselves cyborg status in the name of scientific advancement.
As part of Wired.co.uk's Transhuman Week, we explore five examples of human beings who, today, would qualify as living cyborgs.
Jesse Sullivan Jesse Sullivan, hailed as the world's first "Bionic Man", lost his arms as a result of an accident he sustained during his work as an electrical linesman. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago gave him the opportunity to replace his arms with robotic prosthetics, which thanks to a procedure that connects his nervous system to the artificial arms, allowed him to lift objects by just thinking about doing so.
This form of "bionic medicine" involved taking nerves that originally ran to Sullivan's arm, and connecting them to muscles in his chest. When he thinks about lifting an arm, for example, certain muscles in his chest contract instead of muscles in his original arm, and the prosthetic replacement interprets this contraction as an instruction to move in a certain way.
Sullivan was the first to receive this treatment, during a 2005 procedure at RIC's Centre for Bionic Medicine.
Kevin Warwick It's difficult, though tempting, to write a piece about human cyborgs without crediting Kevin Warwick. The professor of cybernetics and the University of Reading is, by his own admission, the world's first cyborg.
His first experiment on himself was to implant an RFID chip under the skin of his forearm, during August of 1998. His goal was to be able to control lights, heaters and computer equipment without having to physically touch such devices in his vicinity -- the room detected he was inside, and it responded accordingly.
The second experiment saw Warwick connect the nerve fibres under his wrist to an array of electrodes. These electrodes ran up his forearm and out of his arm near the elbow, allowing him to connect them -- and by extension his nervous system -- to various computer devices. But the more unusual aspect of this experiment wasn't the part that allowed Warwick to affect electronics, but for electronics to affect him -- he was able, for example, to experience ultrasonic input in a way humans normally do not.
The woman trialling BrainGate2 Although a person necessitated by disability to utilise a brain-computer interface (BCI) isn't traditionally -- or politely -- labelled a cyborg, there are certain technologies being developed in this field that meet the criteria.
One such example is a patient of the incredible BrainGate2 system. This BCI uses a 4mm-wide chip, which is implanted in the brain in order to read signals from motion-controlling neurons and translate those signals via a computer into the physical movement of, for example, a robotic arm and hand.
A female patient, left paralysed by a brain stem stroke, is described in a 2012 study published in Nature. After five years the chip still works, and in one example was able to use the BrainGate technology to lift a cup of coffee to her mouth using the power of thought alone.
Rob Spence "Eyeborg"
Documentary-maker Rob Spence hit the headlines in 2008 when he replaced one of his eyes with a eyeball-shaped video camera.
Inside the prosthetic eye is a wireless transmitter that sends real-time colour video to a remote display.
Spence didn't replace a working eye with a digital one, however -- he lost it aged 13 as a result of playing with a gun. "I wanted to shoot a pile of cowshit," he said during a 2008 interview with Wired. "I wasn't holding the gun properly and it backfired."
The result was to remove the eye and replace it with a prosthetic alternative. Many years later it was this prosthesis he upgrade to a video-capturing model, developed by an ex-SpaceX engineer. He still wears the camera in 2012.
Jerry Jalava "USB finger" In 2009, Finnish programmer Jerry Jalava replaced part of one of his fingers with a 2GB USB stick, taking the term "thumb drive" to literal new levels.
Jalava lost part of his original digit (the fourth finger on his left hand) during a motorcycle accident. Not dissimilar to Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, Jalava decided he should create his own replacement prosthetic -- one that was useful to his career. For Iommi, it was guitar-playing; for Jalava, it was computer programming.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
