Cyborg Chips Boost the Brain - sounds like somebody read my manuscript!

Cyborg Chips Boost the Brain - sounds like somebody read my manuscript!

Three years ago I wrote the first draft of a novel. I am now on the fifth draft and the 4th is circulating among ten beta readers who will hopefully point out where my prose or plot need improving.

I'll talk about my novel in the next few day but for now I will let you know that it tells the love story of a man and a woman who live in Norwich and work for a robotics company.

Although mine is a speculative, contemporary romance novel, there is more than a touch of sci-fi in it. Except, I refuse to label as sci-fi what is actually happening daily under our eyes: the embedding of technology in each layer of our lives and all over our body, when not directly implanted in it.

My lead characters work in a company where cyborgs are created and employed just like anyone else. Three years ago it was science fiction, but now, reading the news, I realise that my predictions were not so impossible after all.

A cyborg doesn't have to look like Robocop. A definition of cyborg is, 'a fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.'

We are all cyborgs to a certain extent. We use hearing aids, glasses, mobile phones, dentures, prosthetic limbs and silicon breasts - we enhance our functionality with technology.

This evening my Google alert, which is set on cyborg, alerted me of something that could have come straight from my novel.

http://www.lifezette.com/healthzette/cyborg-chips-boost-brain/

I'll quote a few sentences to contribute to the discussion.

In a page straight out of science fiction, the Defense Department’s secretive high-tech research agency announced it was working on ways to implant electrodes in the human brain to improve human memory and to allow people with prosthetic arms to actually experience the sense of touch.


'In a unique conference last week called “Wait, What?” DARPA — or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — revealed some of its current projects. Two of those, under the direction of biomedical engineer Justin Sanchez, revealed the future of brain implants that can both stimulate memory and restore the sense of touch.'

'In George Effinger’s series of futuristic detective novels, (he) depicted a world where people popped in “daddies” — data chips — so they could instantly know how to speak a foreign language, or play a musical instrument.'

The article ends by quoting the middle part of my novel without knowing it.

'Former DARPA staffers talk about experiments to create “kill-proof” super soldiers, testing “inner armor” and plutonium injections. DARPA’s most public project to date has been BigDog, a freakish looking all-terrain robotic mule that has gone viral on YouTube.'

I must hurry up publishing my work before it's too late!

If you are interested in knowing about cyborgs and how they are becoming part of our lives, watch this space.