Meet the world's first cyborg

[dlevere]

By SARAH PAVIS  FEB 13 2013

Born with achromatopsia, a rare condition that causes complete color blindness, Neil Harbisson developed the eyeborg, a device that translates colors into sounds for him.

Harbisson has been claimed to be the first recognized cyborg in the world, as his passport photo now includes his device. In 2010, Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas created the Cyborg Foundation, an international organization to help humans become cyborgs. The foundation has also experimented with other sensory devices, including an "earborg," which translates sound into color, and a "speedborg," which allows people to detect movement through electronic earrings that vibrate.

"One day I started hearing colors in my dreams. Then I understood what being a cyborg meant. It's not the union between the eyeborg and my head, what converts me into a cyborg, but the union between the software and my brain. My body and the technology have united. It's very very human to modify one's body with human creations."

[BeyondTheStatic]

Yikes, that's scary. I can appreciate how a person with a medical condition would use implants to remove a disability... but for enhancement purposes only? I've had nightmares about that very thing (admittedly after having watched too many Star Trek: Voyager episodes [Borg]), about someone who had had so many implants that eventually something went terribly wrong and his brain got permafried. Catatonic in a chair, starting outward with blank eyes from a bald, technology-scored scalp, showing traces of circuitry from various places on a body that was destined to never move again. The dream was so disturbing that I was haunted by its memory for years