Humans have limited capabilities. Humans sense the world in a restricted way, vision being the best of the senses. Humans understand the world in only 3 dimensions and communicate in a very slow, serial fashion called speech. But can this be improved on? Can we use technology to upgrade humans?

The possibility exists to enhance human capabilities. To harness the ever increasing abilities of machine intelligence, to enable extra sensory input and to communicate in a much richer way, using thought alone. This possibility is made possible in the form of Cyborgs. A Cyborg is a Cybernetic Organism, part human part machine; it thrives on the inputs both from the living senses and from the machine interface, which acts as an enhancement module.
A cyborg (short for “cybernetic organism”) is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline. The term cyborg is not the same thing as bionic, biorobot or android; it applies to an organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback.[
In a typical example, a human with an artificial cardiac pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator would be considered a cyborg, since these devices measure voltage potentials in the body, perform signal processing, and can deliver electrical stimuli, using this synthetic feedback mechanism to keep that person alive
“A cyborg is essentially a man-machine system in which the control mechanisms of the human portion are modified externally by drugs or regulatory devices so that the being can live in an environment different from the normal one”

Types of Cyborgs—
• Animal Cyborgs: The world’s first commercially available cyborg was the RoboRoach. The kit allows students to use microstimulation to momentarily control the movements of a walking cockroach (left and right) using a bluetooth-enabled smartphone as the controller.
• Social Cyborgs: the full term “cybernetic organism” is used to describe larger networks of communication and control. A corporation can be considered as an artificial intelligence that makes use of replaceable human components to function.
• Cyberman: is a race of cyborgs from the universe “Doctor Who”, the race which completely removed all biological parts, except a brain, and deprived of emotions.
• Dalek. A race of mutants from the “Doctor Who” Universe. They are capable to live only in the robotized carcase. Many internals are also replaced with mechanics.
• Cymek is a type of cyborg, or machine-human hybrid, in the fictional Dune prequel universe.
• Borg. A civilization of cyborgs from the “Star Trek” universe.

In this sense, cyborg can be used to characterize anyone who relies on a computer to complete their daily work. The main advantage of a cyborg is the long life of the mechanical parts, compared to biological parts. Where it sometimes can be tricky or impossible to regrow,transplant body parts, it is much easier to replace a mechanical part.

Author: Achala Sharma