The Birth of Biological Machines

Fusing man with machine may not yet involve implanting computer chips into the body, but it might include combining nerve cells with semiconductors. “Researchers have just added nerve cells to specially-constructed semi-conductors, and the results seem to indicate that one day, biological nerve cells will be strung through computers. We won’t put the ghost in the machine—we’ll put the meat in it. This particular step in human/machine evolution was taken at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Researchers constructed little tubes of silicon and germanium.”