Heard an interesting account on the current development of cyborgs in the sense of these being persons whose physiological (and sensory) function is changed by mechanical and/or electronic means (www,bbc.com/future/story/20140924-the-greatest-myths-about-cyborgs). It seems that some people are choosing to enhance their abilities, often by combining electronics with piercings (devices can be implanted). It was remarkable how many of the cases involved people who came to see their device as part of themselves. Sometimes cyborg development is linked to particular problems (such as developing a way of hearing different colours in response to an eye condition producing a monochrome world or 'hacking' an insulin-dispensing device for a diabetic so that it predicts and corrects the direction of blood sugar changes rather than simply being triggered by very deviant blood values) and sometimes a desire to develop a new sense (such as an ability to hear nearby wifi networks, to know the direction of north or to be able to sensitively detect seismic events). Occasionally, the sense was utilised in art. There seemed to be at least 2 serious issues requiring attention. The first is that the cyborg modifications are currently unregulated and issues around legal and moral responsibility seem far from clarified (e.g. if an individual hacks a device and something goes wrong, is it that individual's responsibility or the manufacturer's for selling an easily hackable device?). The second is that criminals may also be able to hack some devices in cyborgs to take information from them or even, in some cases, to kill them.
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