Anyone can become a cyborg

British company Cyborg Nest began to accept pre-orders for an electronic chip that adds a new sense to our usual five ones and extends human abilities. The device called North Sense can give you what directly follows from its title – the sense of magnetic north. The first 2000 pre-orders will be delivered to clients by the end of summer.

“Sensing the North connects you to earth, space and the continuous flow of the Earth’s magnetic field,” the description says. The device doesn’t require an internet connection, but it can be synchronised with a mobile app to set personal preferences. The company calls the product a “standalone artificial sensory organ” that can be attached to the human body. The company promises that after getting used to the new sense, users will see and feel the world in a new way. Self-perception and world perception will become richer, new dimensions in memories will open, physical environment and moments in life will be perceived in a new way. “This is not a physical change – this is a mind change,” the company says.

British Neil Harbisson and Spaniard Moon Ribas actively work on the idea of increasing the intensity of already existing senses and adding new ones. Both are avant-garde artists and cyborg activists. They even founded the Cyborg Foundation to promote ideas of cyborgs and cyborgism as an art and social movement. “It’s basically to promote cyborg art and cyborgism as a social art movement, to help people become cyborgs and to identify cyborg rights – so the right to have surgery and the right to be identified as being technology,” Harbisson says.

Harbisson was born colour blind. He insisted on surgically implanting an antennae in his skull so that he can detect colours. He still cannot see them, but he feels unique vibrations and sounds of each colour. Neil uses his modified sensory organs in art. He creates electronic music on the basis of his colour perception. He also creates sound portraits of people, recording sounds he hears from various colours and tones in their faces.

Moon Ribas implanted a chip in her elbow that is wirelessly connected to online seismographs around the world. The chip vibrates with varied intensity based on Richter scale readings. Moon feels seismic motions and use them in her dance performances called Waiting for Earthquakes. She feels vibrations regularly enough as earthquakes of different magnitudes occur every few minutes around the world. In case of a sudden seismic lull, the artist works on a possibility to receive quake readings from the moon. In addition to the seismic sensor, Moon also tested prototypical earrings that allow feeling what’s behind you.

Cyborg activists say they focus on a deeper perception and enhancing abilities of human senses with the help of new technologies. In this regard extending our visual perception and hearing to the infrared spectrum and ultra sounds seems the most obvious decision possible in the near future.

Technological improvement of human body allows separating sensual perception from physical reality. Cyborgs can sense something happening far from their physical body, for example, Moon feels quakes in Japan when she is at her home in New York.

Cyborgs even think about sending their senses to space. Neil Harbisson, for example, already receives signals from the International Space Station through his antennae. They dream about using their technologically extended senses for exploring space. And they won’t even need to leave their houses.