The Age of the Cyborg impacts Warranty Coverage

There's a posting at robots.net that has collected a together couple of recent news stories on Cyborgs. Sadly they aren't the death ray wielding type, but still pretty interesting stuff.

The Second of the two stories (which I'll mention first), is a pretty standard piece that fits with traditional image of a cyborg. It's about Ginny Ong, 21, a student who can hear thanks to a cochlear implant.

It isn't exactly super hearing, but it's super that she can hear. Bionic augmentation/replacement of hearing or other senses is straight out of the pages of many books. In this case though it's just a part of her life, and someday the lives of many others who have hearing problems as the technology (40,000 US$) comes down in price.

The First story however is an essay entitled The Age of the Cyborg from some local (University of British Columbia) professors. They haven't juiced up local law enforcement yet, instead they are developing materials for nanoscale medical implants. These implants can be used as support structures inside the body, releasing medicine and aiding in the regeneration of damaged tissues. An example being skin on a burn victim, another being a damaged heart valve.

This is an interesting story because it shows an extension of the definition of cyborg, taking it beyond biomechanical wonders. Here is where Science starts to surpass and redefine Fiction. The Cyborgs these professors predict are invisible, subtle, in fact in many ways elegant. No noisy hydraulics or metal exo-skeletons, just normal people with a few artificial structures supplanting and boosting their biological body.

The Cyborg of the Future isn't the Hulking Silver Dood with the resonate voice, instead it's the seventy year old with a new hip, or it's a seventeen year old girl who enjoys the sound of the birds in the morning.