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| Movie makers almost always portray the amalgam of man and machine as something like "RoboCop": futuristic, Borg-like creatures committing Dolby-enhanced mayhem. Yet benign cyborgs already surround us. You may be sitting next to a former cataract sufferer with plastic corneas, or a grandmother with a steel hip replacement. Other "humanoids" bless their pacemakers, insulin pumps, and Jarvik-7 artificial hearts. Cyborgs are of great importance to me personally. Genetically, I enjoy the prospect of longevity from both sides of my family. But, somewhere in my genetic past, my father's line developed a pancreatic weakness leading to midlife diabetes. My mother's line produced a progressive deafness with age. By some roll of the genetic dice, I am the target for both diabetes and a slowly progressing deafness. Ordinarily, these genetic errors would play out with the inevitability of taxes, to say nothing of death. Yet technology today is poised to trump their certainty. With the evidence of so many ancient, bionic, senior citizens walking around, I approach the millennium, and my 54th year, with optimism. I was about five when it was discovered that I had defective hearing, with a cut-off frequency around half that of a normal child. In other words, I couldn't hear little squeaky noises. For most of my life, I have heard very little above 11 kilohertz, while normal hearing goes up to 20 kilohertz. By the age of 16, my hearing range had fallen to just nine kilohertz, where, I'm happy to say, it stabilized. However, in the intervening years my hearing sensitivity has fallen a further 25 decibels for one ear and 15 decibels for the other, meaning I'm now missing soft sounds, as well. Having lived with poor hearing all my life, I'm not aware of what I've missed in hi-fi, live music, conversation, or the natural world. But the recent asymmetric drop in sensitivity has noticeably impaired my ability to figure out where a sound originated. Conversations in noisy rooms, cars, or at a soccer match are increasingly problematic. Though the drop in my hearing sensitivity means I can sleep like a baby in noisy airplanes, I suspect I'll soon seek a technology solution. Hearing technology is going from good to better to (someday soon) best. The old, prominent, analog hearing aids sure beat great-grandfather's ear trumpet. Now, the newer digital devices provide more of a boost to hearing at high frequencies and can be adjusted to match the characteristics of individual ears. They're also almost invisible. Soon, they'll probably disappear, because they'll be surgically inserted beneath the skin—much as has occurred with cochlea implants, which are now commonplace for the chronically deaf. It's not hard for me to imagine how the technology can progress even further, based on experiences I had 30 years ago, when I was involved with high-power radio transmitters. When near these installations, I often faintly heard Morse code transmissions in my head. While the transmissions were distracting, the mechanism is no mystery: We are largely made up of water, electrolytes, salts, and sugars, an ideal soup for electrical rectification. Put another way, our ears can resemble a cat's-whisker crystal set. It would be relatively easy to use the body's properties to add capabilities to internal digital hearing aids, making them also function as an FM radio, pager, mobile phone, and a device that cancels background noise. It's fun to imagine talking into my pinkie while listening to my thumb—or some such bionic arrangement—while tugging my earlobe to change radio stations. Looking at the circuitry, all these additions are feasible in the near future. Moreover, such technology could add a pleasant new dimension to hearing loss and, perhaps, offset the human cost. But what of diabetes? This is an insidious disease that shuts down the body's production of insulin, a biochemical catalyst that moves sugars from the bloodstream into cells for their nourishment. Currently, this complaint only presents me with the minor inconvenience of a controlled diet, the daily routine of regular finger-pricking to supply blood samples for glucose monitoring, and some pill-taking. Soon, however, I'll progress to a tighter dietary regime, a regulated lifestyle, and injections of insulin. Not a happy prospect, but necessary to stay alive. The steady march of technology may, however, help me here, too. It is looking increasingly feasible to develop an artificial pancreas, which would produce the insulin that my body isn't currently making on its own. In fact, MiniMed Inc.—which today makes an external pump that squirts insulin into the bloodstream at timed intervals to mimic nature—recently announced a device that would be an internal, automatic, glucose monitor, the next step toward a mechanical pancreas. Meanwhile, scientists are making progress that should soon allow for subcutaneous transplants of insulin-producing beta cells. Despite qualms, even the most ardent technophobes rarely refuse artificial implants when faced with death, or the prospect of a seriously degraded quality of life. Replacement hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys rescued from other humans are no longer big news. Even parts from animals, or those artificially created, are gratefully received. It's not too difficult, therefore, to envisage a creeping evolution toward a cyborg world of partially artificial people. It already looks as though some 30% of our bodies can be replaced, artificially repaired, or modified to advantage, so why not? Isn't it strange that some people get alarmed at the prospect of having internal silicon regulate their organs, while happily undergoing silicone implants? I want to live. So, I'll take my artificial body parts where they're not very obvious—but will do me the most good.
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