5 Ways to Upgrade Your Body (With Modern Science)

We’d all like to be commuting to work in our hover cars and invading small countries with our own personal mechanisms, but sadly technology has failed to live up to our expectations, and no matter what Steve Jobs claims, the iPad is just not in the same league.

If we can’t have flying cars and robots that will make us breakfast in bed just yet, at least we’re well on our way to a time when mankind wanders the Earth with our innards stuffed with more technology than a Borg drone.

Neural Interfaces

Shown above: The future of HJ's

In 2002 Professor Kevin Warwick let a crack team of surgeons and geeks get together and implant a one hundred electrode array into his arm, jacking it directly into median nerve fibers above his wrist. Once he was healed up the good professor was run through a long number of experiments to see what the interface could do. This included being wired into an electric wheelchair and an intelligent robotic hand, both of which he was able to control using his newly implanted neural interface. We think he should have been wired into an r/c race car while they were at it, but nobody asked us.

For now the tests have been nothing more than In the future we may all have the option to be cyberpunks with neurological interfaces letting us do everything from operating machinery or artificial limbs to shutting down all the garbage compactors on the detention level, all without leaving the comfort of our recliners.

Digital Tattoo Interface

But does it get cable?

This slick gadget is still just a conceptual prototype, but if they can make one, you know there will be more. Made public in 2008, the digital tattoo is really a blood powered Blue Tooth accessory that uses a touch-screen control, where the screen is embedded under your skin, transforming your flesh into a digital display. Instead of traditional tattoo ink, the display uses microscopic spheres that can change their color from clear to black so they darken over the matrix field below. The result? Your arm is now a 2×4 inch display that can show anything from a keyboard to a video phone screen.

The battery is powered by two tiny tubes that are attached to an artery and a vein, making the implant part of your circulation system. As blood flows through the fuel cell it swipes a small portion of the glucose and oxygen and converts it to electricity, feeding itself like a tiny electronic leech.

Implanted Chips

The Verichip is the perky name for an FDA approved microchip. Its purpose? To one day replace that stack of ID and credit cards currently in your wallet. It can be implanted in your right arm and is programmed with a serial number which can be used to retrieve a myriad of data about you when scanned. Yes, scanned. Like a can of beans at the checkout counter you can now implant yourself with your own personal bar code. For now only medical information is being held on the database, and you need a secure login to gain access, but who knows what the future will bring? Instead of a wallet full of cards, you may one day just run your arm over the reader to buy your groceries, take out a library book or give that taxi driver your address because you’re too wrecked to remember where you live.

Cell phone Implants

Pardon me, my tooth is ringing.

So you and your cell phone are already inseparable and you are yearning to make a more permanent commitment? You’re not alone, and the techies of the world are on the case. In 2002 research associates from MIT Media Lab Europe designed a tooth implant that can actually receive digital signals from radio and cellular phones. Imbedded in a molar, the design turns your jawbone into an antenna and your entire skull into a receiver set, meaning that one day the voices you hear in your head won’t actually mean you need to up your medication.

Although this model was put on display at the Science Museum in London and never used, it is only a matter of time before people ditch those annoying blue tooth sets and just start talking to their teeth.

Nanobots/Nutribots

This may one day put Gordon Ramsay out of a job

Nanotechnology is all over the news these days, and it promises to bring a wealth of benefits or the end of the mankind; depending on which side of the debate you’re on.

Dr Robert Freitas is the author of the Nanomedicine series and a senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacture. He has also conceptualized the one of the most fascinating and depressing use for nanobots yet; and if his vision comes to life, one day we’re all going to be running on radioactive isotopes instead of pizza.

He believes that in the not so distant future we’re going to find ourselves alarmingly short of food. Instead of going with the Soylent Green plan, he’s come up with an alternative: nanobots that will make sure we don’t need to eat for 75 years or so. Gadolinium-148 is a radioactive isotope that could be use as an alternative human fuel, gently radiated into our systems by a horde of nanobots carrying a lifetime supply and monitoring the dosage to ensure we avoid becoming mutants in the process. Instead of steak, we’d be able to live on vitamins, the occasional protein shake and memories of what real food tasted like.

Written by Susan Hayes