Brainjacking will lead to the emergence of software hybrids
CYBORGS have walked among us for many years: humans fused with devices such as pacemakers, prosthetics and cochlear and retinal implants. Now the opposite approach is being embodied in a new kind of cyborg: a robot with an animal鈥檚 nervous system (鈥淧art moth, part machine: Cyborgs are on the move鈥�). Some bots run on grey matter culled from a living creature. Others run software based on 鈥渂rainjacking鈥�, for example, the pair of robot legs that learned to walk using a lamprey鈥檚 nerve signals.
This presents an unorthodox future for the cyborg. If lamprey software can help people with spinal injuries, it will be in the shape of animal brain circuitry realised on a chip wired into a human being 鈥� a kind of cyborg sandwich. Other cyborgs will be altogether inorganic but granted animalistic or even human thought patterns. Compared with the traditional image of a cyborg chimaera, such software hybrids may be more adaptable, perhaps even able to merge several kinds of minds. Unsettling perhaps, but we shouldn鈥檛 be surprised by the evolution of the cyborgs.
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