At the height of summer, when London was baking in unseasonable heat, I made an ill-fated trip to the Serpentine lido in central London. The Serpentine is a small lake in the heart of the capital where bathers have cooled off since the 18th Century. Leaving my clothes by the side of the lake, I plunged under into the refreshing water, only to hear it crackle around me in a peculiar way. Id forgotten to take out my hearing aids. And just like that, the greenish waters of the Serpentine washed away my new-found hearing.
The next day the devices were still lifeless little pebbles, one red and one blue, and I was lucky that my audiologist had an opening the following evening. I expected to be put in the doghouse when I explained what had happened, but he was delighted. This tells me your brain has adapted perfectly to the devices, he smiled.
Theres a cost to this tightened integration, though. My brain is no longer tuned to life without prosthetics. Without my hearing aids, I hear worse than I did before I got them. The little electronic plugs have become an extension of myself. Although I can be physically separated from my hearing aids I can take them out and hold them in my hand my sense of hearing is not so easily picked apart. It exists partly in my ears, and partly in my devices.
So I am now a cyborg out of necessity, not choice. Being part machine is my resting state. Yet I dont feel much like Robocop or the Six Million Dollar Man. If I am a cyborg, shouldnt I feel more, well, superhuman?
Theres a big gulf between the fantasy vision of cyborgs, and the current reality of being dependent on an implant or a prosthetic in day-to-day life. If were to separate the two, we ought to pay close attention to those who are living in that world already.
For this last column in my Beyond Human series, I spoke to a variety of very different people who I encountered this year. Each have embraced the idea of human enhancement, from an artist who hears colour to a man who can start a motorbike with a chip implanted in his hand. What secrets can they share about life as an enhanced human?
More:
Cyborgs: The truth about human augmentation - BBC Future
Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith
