Becoming Bionic

In 1958 at the intersection of two disciplines, biology and electronics a new era of science opened up. This was way more than a linguistic blend of words or portmanteau because bionics has advanced human existence in so many ways.

The futuristic novel “Cyborg” published in 1972 talked of what today is a working reality. From artificial limbs and the replacement of body parts like mechanical hearts or enhancing eyesight or hearing aids are some examples of bionic advancement. Likewise hotel valets, drones delivering goods with GPS based directions, automated manufacturing plants and behavior/balance issues in Parkinson’s disease have all become bionic.

Perhaps it was the pebble I forced deep into my ear expecting it to emerge in my mouth that set the stage for hearing loss. I was mimicking a friend’s older brother’s trick where he took two pebbles and he said “Look, if I place one pebble in my ear it comes out in my mouth.” The other pebble he had obviously placed in his mouth beforehand leading me to try this ruse. I was young and a willing subject.

Later an abcess infected an eardrum and even later when I was swimming the foot of a fellow burst an eardrum when he jumped into the pool. Then it was the beat of decibels from loud, loud music pounding on the eardrum. It was downhill after that. Finally at an interview I had to ask the interviewer to repeat a question. Well that did it. My first hearing aid became an assistive device allowing me to exclaim, “Heavens the floorboards squeak.”

Bionics and Bluetooth technology have enhanced hearing solutions in recent years. For instance a Cochlear implant can now communicate with any Bluetooth enabled device as can newly developed hearing aids. I no longer need headphones as the likes of music, the TV and podcasts can all be streamed though the hearing aids and adjusted for different situations.

Compression socks use bionic concepts and combined with physiological factors they deliver a graduated comfort in many activities; athletes sport compression socks for enhanced performance and for medical reasons where others wear them to protect varicose veins or swelling of the legs. I can testify to this too.

Pacemakers are now being developed to include bionic concepts. Neural network-based analog chips are designed to help regulate the heart with every breath you take. Pacemakers will likely work more efficiently powering them with the heart itself, and making them out of graphene so they can run on light. Some groups are developing optical pacemakers using a genetic engineering technique called optogenetics, rather than hardware, to trigger cardiac cell contraction. As all of this is in the works I cannot testify about it, only about the regulator I had installed on the exchange of my weakened heart for an extremely excited working one.

If it were not for bionics can you imagine what life would be like without Velcro. Examples of bionics in engineering include the hulls of boats imitating the thick skin of dolphins; sonar, radar, and medical ultrasound imaging imitating animal echolocation. In the field of computer science, the study of bionics has produced artificial neurons, artificial neural networks, and swarm intelligence.

Everyone has been touched by bionics in some way so there is no way to avoid becoming bionic.