Professor experiments with electrodes implanted in his arm

03/13/2003

By DOUG BEDELL / The Dallas Morning News

www.kevinwarwick.org Dr. Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading in the United Kingdom had 100 electrodes implanted along the major nerve in his left arm.

AUSTIN – For Kevin Warwick, becoming a cyborg is the only logical way to deal with failures of the flesh.

Unlike computers, his brain can't multi-task, he reasons. Unlike hospital X-ray machines, he can't see through skin. And, unlike electronic communications, his voice seems slow and inefficient to him.

"Look at all the wonderful things machines can do that we can't do," the professor of cybernetics told a rapt audience at the SXSW Interactive Festival this week. "And why not? We have the technology. My attitude is, 'Well, let's have a try.' "

And so, Dr. Warwick last year arranged for a tiny array of 100 electrodes to be surgically implanted into the largest nerve running down the inside of his left arm. For three months, he and a team of 20 scientists from across the globe connected Dr. Warwick's nervous system to computers, a robotic hand and dozens of other gadgets. In essence, he became the world's first real-life cybernetic organism – part human, part machine.

The results were as startling as the experiment itself.

www.kevinwarwick.org Dr. Kevin Warwick decided to get electrodes implanted after appearing on an academic panel with science fiction writers.

"Basically, we were listening into these signals like listening into a telephone call," says Dr. Warwick (www.kevinwarwick.org), who teaches at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

Hooking several pins into a wireless transmitter, the 49-year-old professor was able to crudely control the motions of a nearby robotic hand. In the same manner, he could quickly jerk his hand closed to control the motions of an electric wheelchair, turn on a light and navigate through a simple computer desktop interface.

And, in one of the strangest twists, Dr. Warwick's wife, Irena, volunteered to have a less complicated implant placed in her own left arm in an attempt to electronically communicate with her husband.

"When my lovely wife moved her hand three times, I felt three pulses of current," he reports. "It was sort of like Morse code between our nervous systems."

The implant concept began to take shape as Dr. Warwick participated on academic panels with science fiction writers during the late 1990s. "They all kept talking about cyborgs, but they were just guru-ing," he says. "I thought it was time to actually do something, and I did."

Some scientists scoffed at Dr. Warwick's guinea pig tactics. Religious zealots condemned the experiments as violations of the body's sanctity. But Dr. Warwick eagerly argues that we humans are already well on our way to becoming cyborgs.

Artificial hips, knees and other joints are in widespread use today, he points out. And doctors now routinely repair hearing difficulties using cochlear implants.

To Dr. Warwick, the next logical step is to route around the nerve damage that causes paralysis.

If nervous system messages can be wired for transmission to other cyborgs or devices, suddenly a whole new world would open for the disabled, he says.

"You're looking at driving an automobile; you could drive and navigate just by thinking about it," he says. "Somebody who is paralyzed could make coffee just by thinking about it."

Education could be streamlined and simplified if a professor's knowledge could be imparted to students by transmitting a bundle of thought waves, he says. "Why can't I just go, thwack! 'There you go; you've got it?' " he asks.

Speaking different languages could become as simple as turning a switch mounted in your skull. "And," he says, "I would love to have my brain linked into the network. I would love to browse the Web not by pushing buttons, but by thinking about it."

Dr. Warwick, author of a new U.K. book, I, Cyborg, contends the electrical pulses of the human brain will soon be understood well enough to allow infusion of computerlike characteristics.

When that happens, cyborgs will have the ability to track and respond to communication from multiple sources. "Our communication as humans has been basically the same for thousands and thousands of years," he says.

"When you can actually think to somebody else, I want to be able to know what that's like."

Cyborgs will have incredible advantages in society, he says. "I want to be there amongst the cyborgs," he says.

To that end, Dr. Warwick says he is seriously considering having cranial implants that can advance research into thought and memory transmissions.

"As far as being a cyborg in the future," he says, "I'll be back."