Where are we with the fully cyborg human?
Multiple organs, no matter the complexity, can be reverse engineered and mimicked with currently understood chemistry and physics. Albeit with immense difficulty. This is an attempt at creating an informatics-rich visual of humanity’s efforts at augmenting itself or fully pairing with the machine. It is an ever-growing map of technologies being investigated in labs, clinics and ones granted medical approval.
The techniques in this selection will be limited to those that match the following criteria:
Artificial systems that are invasive:
That is, they are inserted into an intra-organism environment for prolonged periods of time. (”augmentations” like contact lenses, acrylic nails, or a wig don’t count)The artificial system has to be “cybernetic”(dynamic):
Paraphrasing wikipedia, we can describe cybernetics as “the study of processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action”[1]. So, In this case the techniques have to be a functional integration between biology and engineered systems that actively participate in sensing and decision. This means that the devices almost certainly have to be electronically-enabled or equipped to perform some kind of logic operation. This leaves out static implants like dental crowns or titanium hip replacements and only includes them if they have sensors or can perform a dynamic function. TL;DR: Dumb titanium hips won’t replace all femurs anytime soon. But a metamaterial that repairs itself and has a synthetic bone marrow bank probably will. That is what we will include in this listing.
Introducing the Synthetic Physiology Map
Feedback is welcome at → kakamatech@gmail.com.
References:
- Cybernetics wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
- Dreamstine image: https://www.dreamstime.com/human-anatomy-male-front-computer-generated-d-model-camera-shot-image176004912