In the future, science fiction predicts, implanted chips and screens will turn humans into cyborgs. But for a growing group of technophiles, the future is now.
There’s colorblind “first cyborg” Neil Harbisson, whose head-mounted Eyeborg camera translates colors into vibrations, and professor Steve Mann, whose computerized EyeTap glasses are attached to his skull. And then there are the transhumanists who go under the knife at home or in piercing parlors to implant homemade electronic devices, such as magnets that provide the sixth sense of detecting electromagnetic fields.
Reporter Ben Popper delved into the world of DIY cyborgs for an article at The Verge, even receiving his own magnetic implant:
On a hot day in mid-July, I went for a walk around Manhattan with Dann Berg, who had a magnet implanted in his pinky three years earlier…Berg took me to an intersection at Broadway and Bleecker. In the middle of the crosswalk, he stopped, and began moving his hand over a metal grate. “You feel that,” he asked. “It’s a dome, right here, about a foot off the ground, that just sets my finger off. Somewhere down there, part of the subway system or the power ...
