A spillover from last week’s Cyborg-a-thon, Wired has put together a list of the top 10 cyborg videos. But not everything is about fusing man with machine.

As you can see in the sample videos above, sometimes we choose to make bionic monkeys and insects. Truly, it’s the weirdest of the weird sciences. Check out Wired for the complete list. [Wired]

And yes, that even means saying goodbye to Aimee Mullins. She was with us for three essays, all of which dealt with issues of prostheses from unexpected perspectives, that few of us will soon forget. In case you missed any, we’ll list them again right here:

Is Choosing a Prosthesis So Different than Picking a Pair of Glasses?
Racing on Carbon Fibre Legs: How Abled Should We Be?
Normal Was Never Cool: Inception of Perception

Of course, what we really tried to explore is that prosthetics are both around us already (is a smartphone with a Bluetooth headset anything but?) and will continue to be integral in our self-improvement, from implantable computers to programming our body’s biological robots to do our bidding.

A big thanks to Aimee Mullins, Marc Hodosh at TEDMED and all of our contributors to the week:

Michael Specter at The New Yorker
Synthetic Biology: Why Not Pursuing Crazy Biotech Is Dangerous

Anna Jane Grossman
Psychic Powers, Cochlear Implants, and My Bionic Ex-Boyfriend

Dr. Debby Herbenick from The Kinsey Institute
Becoming a Sexual Cyborg (NSFW)

Daniel H. Wilson
Me and My Exoskeleton: The Trick to Super Strength

And in case all of that wasn’t enough, to read all of the stories from This Cyborg Life, use this link.

The questions were thrown at me by our dear Brian Lam with a disclaimer of “I may have been under narcotic substances when I came up with this idea.” But, despite that disclaimer, he’s onto something. After all, we’ve looked at concept models of gadgets intended to be powered in that precise manner and there’s been some success in recent bio-battery research. So, why aren’t we using our bodies as power sources yet?

It turns out that the bio-batteries closest to reality at this time have a major problem with waste products. That waste is created as those particular batteries involve microbial yeast-based fuel cells that steal “some of the electrons produced when the yeast metabolises glucose” in order to create a small current. The entire process works just fine, but the yeast cells are at risk unless the waste products are removed. As the waste can’t very well just be dumped into the bloodstream, a proper cleaning process needs to be invented. Until such a process is sorted out, the batteries could pretty much be considered either suicidal or homicidal in nature as either they die off or they poison your bloodstream while trying to survive.

That trouble aside though, the research is quite encouraging and a huge first step in the right direction. So while it may still be many years away, one day we will in fact sate both gadget lust and hunger in the same bite. Please pass me the Häagen-Dazs while I wait for that day when fat bottomed girls could really make the rockin’ world go ’round. [New Scientist]

My ex-boyfriend Josh was born mostly deaf, but had some hearing in one ear thanks to a cochlear implant (CI) — a spiral of electrodes threaded into his cochlea to stimulate the auditory nerve, bypassing damaged parts of the ear. The surgery, which is irreversible, wipes out any residual hearing in the operated ear. (It’s a major invasive procedure — fortunately a one-time thing — that puts the patient at risk of facial paralysis.) A microphone connects to a removable external processor that converts sound to digital code; the code is transmitted to the implanted mechanism by way of a magnet. When fed through the cochlea, the decoded digital information is perceived as sound.

Josh wore the external part of the CI during most of his waking hours and we got by with lip-reading and basic signing whenever he took it off. He never once complained about my snoring. If I wanted to have a private conversation with him in the room, I could just detach the magnet on the side of his head. It was also a fun party trick to announce that my boyfriend’s head could stick to the fridge.

Not everyone likes a cyborg, however. In fact, many deaf people would be offended at the suggestion that they do something so drastic to artificially augment their hearing. Last year at Gallaudet, the federally chartered university for the deaf in DC, Josh and the writer Michael Chorost co-taught a class designed to address the deaf community’s division regarding the use of cochlear implants. There’s concern that the technology will eventually render an entire language — American Sign Language — obsolete.

A majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many who would sooner opt for insurance-covered implants for their kids than years of sign education, audiologist visits and hearing aids, which are pricey and usually are not covered by medical insurance. Those against CI argue that sign language is categorically better than oral language, and that orally educated deaf children with CIs are missing out on gaining entrance into a rich community and culture. If the CI business “cures” all deaf people, the implications for the signing community are dire.

Gallaudet is a signing university with a vociferous pro-ASL population. In 2006, a newly appointed president was voted out of office ostensibly because she had been educated orally and didn’t learn sign until her twenties. Mike and Josh’s class looked at how other minorities have dealt with “threats” to their communities and tried to apply the lessons from those experiences to suggest ways that signing deaf people can survive the increase use of CIs.

The other day I asked Mike — who wrote Rebuilt and the amazing cochlear implant story in Wired — what he thought was the most exciting stuff happening in the world of CIs right now. Really, I was fishing for things that would improve my life, should I ever date another half-bot: How about solar-charged receivers that don’t require batteries (which used to die so conveniently during fights)? A line of accessories that could keep the thing in place during snogging? A remote control that could allow me to manipulate his every move, want and desire?

Mike didn’t think there was that much to report — I was a little disappointed he didn’t mention cat CIs! The future, according to Mike, is technology that facilitates two-way communication. Hearing people who dream of super-human auditory abilities probably won’t be lining up to get CIs any time soon.

“The engineering is too difficult and the risks are too great,” Mike told me. He sees implantation surgery going in a more practical direction. “People might be willing to get them to facilitate new forms of communication that to us would seem like telepathy,” he said. “I don’t mean the transmission of speech; there’s no point to that, since we can do that. I’m talking about the transmission of brain states — fear, alertness, anger — and, in a certain sense, of memories.”

In short, CI technology, as crazy science-fiction-esque as it seems, is already looking like the old grandpa in the rocking chair, nodding knowingly while the pro-CI and anti-CI groups still battle on like so many Hatfields and McCoys. “The real breakthroughs in neurotech will come not from doing existing things better, but from doing entirely new things,” he said. From an outside perspective, it seems that, if the two sides were to unite and embrace implant technology, the deaf community could come out at the forefront of cyborgology. The deaf community has already been profoundly effected by neurotechnology. It’s a point of view Mike argued elegantly in a much-debated 2007 speech he gave at Gallaudet:

We are heading into a future where the technology is opening up profoundly new possibilities for communication and group awareness…Cochlear implants are the cutting edge of a field called neurotechnology—the science of developing completely new kinds of ways of interfacing with the body and the brain…Who better than the deaf community to actively seize the lead in developing communications technologies that interact directly with the nervous system? And to experiment with new social forms to explore their uses? We already have one foot—more than one foot—in that world.

Tomorrow, I may get a brain implant that will help me not repeat myself or remember where I put my keys. Or remember where I put my keys. A large part of the deaf community, however, have already ventured farther down that road than I may ever see. Or, for the matter, hear.

Anna Jane Grossman is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of iamobsolete.net. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Meet Ged Galvin, a 55-year-old chap from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, who is currently in possession of a very special remote control. A remote control that, when engaged, controls Galvin’s bowels and allows him to go to the bathroom with dignity. Dignity that was, sadly, robbed from him in the wake of a horrific motorcycle accident that nearly killed him.

At first, the operation that saved his life left him unable to control his bowels. That meant a colostomy bag and all the inconvenience and potential embarrassment that comes with such an arrangement. But then in stepped more doctors. They had a plan. They could rebuild him, make his sphincter stronger. And that’s exactly what they did.

Using muscle from Galvin’s knee, the doctors wrapped his sphincter muscle and attached a number of electrodes to the muscle nerves. Enter the remote control, which Galvin compares to a chubby mobile phone, and bowel function was restored. It’s as easy as an on/off switch, he said in an interview with the Telegraph, “just like switching on the TV”.

Britain is calling him the man with the bionic bottom, and he’s just fine with that. After all, he could be dead. This is better, and while he’s not as beautiful as guest editor Aimee Mullins, he’s a great fit for This Cyborg Life, and I wish him well. [Telegraph via Geekologie]

Remember handwriting? We have all but abandoned it, but the torch is being taken up by robots like Kuka, who has been put to work writing out copies of the Martin Luther bible. [BotJunkie]

Developed by Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge, Adam the robot was the first machine to independently discover new knowledge.

Using artificial intelligence, Adam hypothesised that certain genes in baker’s yeast code for specific enzymes which catalyse biochemical reactions in yeast. The robot then devised experiments to test these predictions, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results and repeated the cycle.

The results of the experiment were later replicated and confirmed by a team of human scientists. So, it appears that computers are not only doing our calculations, but they have begun thinking for us as well. [Scientific Blogging and Gizmodo]

Are you lactose intolerant? Do you have frequent heartburn or constipation? Perhaps one day your defective digestion system could be replaced with a more advanced version of the Cloaca machine. This thing simulates actual human digestion and, in the end, produces a turd you would be proud of. [Cloaca via Gizmodo]

Dishwashers have been around for decades, but we still have to physically put the dishes into the machine. This is completely unacceptable. Panasonic’s robot takes care of the entire cleaning process from start to finish. [Gizmodo]

Seriously, what don’t smartphones do for us these days? At the most basic level, these phones are how we communicate, how we entertain ourselves and how we gather information. Thanks to apps, smartphones are taking on even greater roles — like helping us keep our girlfriends happy without actually having to do any work. Girlfriend Keeper sends automatic texts and emails to your significant other depending on the intensity of your relationship. [Girlfriend Keeper]

If you are tired of your co-workers being promoted over you, just wait until a robot becomes your new boss. JAST or the “Teamworkbot” has the ability to observe and mimic human behaviour. As you will see in this video, JAST already knows how to complete the task, so it observes the human’s actions, anticipates his next move and dresses him down when he gets it wrong. [Gizmodo]

I’m pretty sure that allowing robots to take a critical role in surgery qualifies as crossing a Rubicon with respect to our level of trust in machines. The Da VInci robot enables a surgeon sitting at a console to control movements and equipment with greater precision — resulting in a procedure that is minimally invasive. [Wikipedia]

It’s only a matter of time before technology becomes advanced enough to allow lazy parents to turn over the duties of child-rearing to robots. In fact, it’s already happening in Japan where robots like Tmsuk babysit kids in shopping centres thanks to RFID badges. They even have robot teachers like Saya that terrify elementary schoolchildren into doing their work.

The Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) was developed by MIT to help drivers navigate, bitch about their driving when necessary and keep them company on long trips.

“When it merges knowledge about the city with an understanding of the driver’s priorities and needs, AIDA can make important inferences,” explains Assaf Biderman, associate director of the SENSEable City Lab. “Within a week AIDA will have figured out your home and work location. Soon afterwards the system will be able to direct you to your preferred grocery store, suggesting a route that avoids a street fair-induced traffic jam. On the way AIDA might recommend a stop to fill up your tank, upon noticing that you are getting low on gas,” says Biderman. “AIDA can also give you feedback on your driving, helping you achieve more energy efficiency and safer behaviour.”

[MIT via Gizmodo]

While the AIDA robot helps you navigate, there are plenty of engineers working on cars that do all of the driving for you. Chevy’s “Boss” Tahoe is one of the higher profile projects that have come out in recent years, winning the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007 after successfully navigating a 100km course littered with obstacles. [Technology Review]

Vagus Nerve Stimulation: $US95,000. Deep Brain Stimulation: $US40,000. Sacral Nerve Stimulation: $US16,000. I don’t need most of these things (or even know what they are), but I’d still love a spending spree in the Bionic Body Shop.

While most of these upgrades aren’t exactly available at this time, it doesn’t mean we can’t play around with the options. My personal favourite is the Brain-Machine Interface, but what would you break the bank for? Or do you require something so incredible that it’s not even in the Bionic Body Shop? [IEEE Spectrum]

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.

The 26-year-old construction worker ate the metal for months, and told Peru’s Channel 9 television that he may now do it in public “as sport.”

“I swallowed 17 nails in February and didn’t die,” he said. “Five-inch nails, all in one day.”

Doctors weren’t surprised to find that Abanto had torn a hole in his stomach, so let this be a lesson to the kids out there — eating your way to a cyborg body isn’t the best idea. Naturally, the man’s mental health is being evaluated while he recovers. [AP via Metro Image via blurradial]