Vsauce!
Kevin here.
Twenty seven years before Superman flew in to save the day with alien powers - Nyctalope
had bionic abilities.
First published in 1911 and considered one of the first superheroes Nyctalope had an
artificial heart and night vision color-shifting eyes.
He was a “cyborg” fifty years before that word even existed.
In the September 1960 issue of Astronautics, Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline first used
the word cyborg to describe a cybernetic organism.
Their motivation was to propose a conceptual revolution: Instead of building artificial
environments to survive in extraterrestrial locations, why not upgrade our bodies on Earth
to adapt to what we find through space exploration?
After half a century of research, we may not be ready to walk around Mars in our underwear,
but there are cyborgs among us -- and millions more on the way.
Mind-controlled robotic arms are a reality.
They work by remapping the nerve endings that controlled the hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder
to existing muscle groups and then programming a prosthetic limb to react to the input.
We’re years away from ordering bionic limbs off Amazon, but a bionic eye is commercially
available.
The Argus II, named after a Greek mythological giant with a hundred eyes, is a retinal prosthesis
system that restores some sight to the blind.
It features a video camera attached to glasses that send images as electrical signals which
are processed and delivered wirelessly to electrodes implanted on the retina.
Patients go from complete darkness without it to seeing flashes of light, which allows
them to navigate their home, cross streets, or, in the case of Larry Hester, see his wife
for the first time in 33 years.
More common mechanical systems that help restore lost biological functions include pacemakers
which help control abnormal heart rhythms, and cochlear implants, which are essentially
bionic ears that deliver signals directly to nerve fibers so the brain can process them
as sound.
But the world’s first government-recognized cyborg is Neil Harbisson, who has an antenna
on his head that allows him to hear colors.
He was born only able to see in grayscale, so he had an antenna integrated within the
occipital bone of his skull that picks up colors with a sensor and translates them to
sounds that he hears through bone conduction.
Harbisson successfully petitioned the British government to recognize the “eyeborg”
as part of his body and was allowed to include it in his passport photo.
These are all technologies we have today.
Currently in development is an injectable neural lace that could lead to connecting
our brains wirelessly to the internet, and the observation of neurons in the Medial Temporal
Lobe that drive the formation of memories, which means that someday we could literally
download knowledge.
While we can now 3D bioprint human skin, synthetic skin to shield us from cosmic radiation is
a ways off -- let alone artificial lungs to breathe Martian air that’s 96% carbon dioxide.
But with continued progress on small blood-pumping motors designed to replace human hearts and
biohackers having developed eyedrops that temporarily give humans night vision…
Nyctalope could be roaming the streets any day now.
And as always - thanks for watching.