Enter The Age of Human Augmentation [Forbes]
Video (5 minutes) – Bruce Upbin, Taylor Soppe & Chad McClymonds
“We’re all about augmenting human strength and endurance, and to do that, you’ve got to wrap a robot around a person. That’s what you call a human exoskeleton, and that’s what we’re all about…”
A Prosthetic Arm That “Feels” [TED]
Video (19 minutes) – Todd Kuiken
“Physiatrist and engineer Todd Kuiken is building a prosthetic arm that connects with the human nervous system – improving motion, control and even feeling…”
Cyborgs: The Truth About Human Augmentation [BBC]
Article (7 minutes) – Frank Swain
“So I am now a cyborg out of necessity, not choice. Being part machine is my resting state. Yet I don’t feel much like Robocop or the Six Million Dollar Man. If I am a cyborg, shouldn’t I feel more, well, superhuman?”
Human Augmentation: Blurring the Line Between Biology & Technology [VLAB]
Video (1 hour 21 minutes)
“The true age of the bionic man is upon us. Innovative new technologies are restoring and enhancing human sensory and motor functions like never before. Setting a new standard for quality of life and physiological enhancement, their creators enrich human capacities in ways only imagination could promise in the past…”
More Than Human? The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers [The Atlantic]
Article (8 minutes) – Patrick Lin
“Our ability to ‘upgrade’ the bodies of soldiers through drugs, implants, and exoskeletons may be upending the ethical norms of war as we’ve understood them…”
The New Bionics That Let Us Run, Climb and Dance [Business Insider]
TED Talk (19 minutes) – Hugh Herr
“Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage…”
Thanks for reading,
Joe Howard
