I, Cyborg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252072154 ISBN 13: 9780252072154

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2004

Now available for the first time in America, I, Cyborg is the story of Kevin Warwick, the cybernetic pioneer advancing science by upgrading his own body.
 
Warwick, the world's leading expert in cybernetics, explains how he has deliberately crossed over a perilous threshold to take the first practical steps toward becoming a cyborg--part human, part machine--using himself as a guinea pig and undergoing surgery to receive technological implants connected to his central nervous system.
 
Believing that machines with intelligence far beyond that of humans will eventually make the important decisions, Warwick investigates whether we can avoid obsolescence by using technology to improve on our comparatively limited capabilities. Warwick also discusses the implications for human relationships, and his wife's participation in the experiments.
 
Beyond the autobiography of a scientist who became, in part, a machine, I, Cyborg is also a story of courage, devotion, and endeavor that split apart personal lives. The results of these amazing experiments have far-reaching implications not only for e-medicine, extra-sensory input, increased memory and knowledge, and even telepathy, but for the future of humanity as well.
 
 

From the Inside Flap:

An account of an artificial intelligence experiment in humans.

Computer chips will be inserted into the nervous systems of both the author, a professor of Cybernetics, and his wife. The experiment is to determine if emotions such as intoxication, anger, lust, can be read by the computer in terms of patterns of nervous excitement. Can these recorded emotions be beamed back to the chip in the body and experienced all over again? Will the emotions be communicable between two people – if one feels desire in New York, will the other be able to feel it in London? Will it change forever what it means to be human?

About the Author:

Kevin Warwick is professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, UK. He is the author of numerous books on a wide variety of subjects including robotics, information technology, biomedicine, and ethics, and is deeply engaged with advances in neural implants.