Machines Like Us

As Kevin Warwick gently squeezed his hand into a fist one day in 2002, a robotic hand came to life 3,400 miles away and mimicked the gesture. The University of Reading cybernetics professor had successfully wired the nerves of his forearm to a computer in New York City's Columbia University and networked them to a robotic system back in his Reading, England, lab. "My body was effectively extended over the Internet," Warwick says.

It's a far cry from his vision of transforming humanity into a race of half-machine cyborgs able to commune with the digital world -- there is no spoon, Neo -- but such an evolution is necessary, says 54-year-old Warwick.

Read full story at Scientific American.