Cyborgs

Most of you probably know the word Cyborg only from futuristic action movies. But what is a Cyborg and will we be Cyborgs in the future?

 

Who is a Cyborg?

This question is not that easy to answer as it seems because everyone whose body is extended with artificial components is a cyborg. As a consequence of this definition the world is full of cyborgs because everyone who uses a hearing aid or synthetic implants is as per this definition a cyborg. But in this post I don't want to talk about hearing aids and synthetic implants but about real computers in our tissue.

Most of you probably know the word Cyborg only from futuristic action movies. But what is a Cyborg and will we be Cyborgs in the future?

Who is a Cyborg?

This question is not that easy to answer as it seems because everyone whose body is extended with artificial components is a cyborg. As a consequence of this definition the world is full of cyborgs because everyone who uses a hearing aid or synthetic implants is as per this definition a cyborg. But in this post I don't want to talk about hearing aids and synthetic implants but about real computers in our tissue.

Cyborgs in the future

The scientist Yuval Noah Harari prognosed that in the next 200 years human will change into cyborgs and so I think. The next step is that we get assistance systems, like the ones we use today in our cars, in our brain and in our whole body. We will be totally networked with anyone on the planet and this networking includes everything. I imagine thought chats like we have today in the social media networks. I think in the future the personal computer and our mobiles will be replaced by little microchips in our brains and only the supercomputers of tomorrow will exist outside our body.

But there will not only be computers in our body. I can imagine new organs, because we will get older than 200 years which is a bit too long for only one heart or even new blood that can transport oxygen 8 times as much as our natural blood. With improvements like this we would be able to run 5 kilometres with a constant speed of 35 km/h or dive 20 minutes without an external oxygen cylinder.

But the cool thing about thinking what happens in the future is that there is always a further step we could do.

After the Cyborgs

In my opinion the cyborg, a mix between human and machine isn't the last step of our evolution. I think we will change completely into machines so even our brain will be loaded in a microchip. This step has the advantage that we than have solved the only problem of a cyborg, the human in it. This step will probably happen in 290-350 years but I don't want to eliminate that it happens much earlier.

Conclusion

As you can definitely see we have to develop and I prognose that there will be a day on which we have the opportunity to change between a life as part of a strong and powerful machine and a life as a weak human and most of us will change the first opportunity.