Cyborg: this film explores life beyond the limits of human biology

For many years, humans have obsessed over the prospect of merging our bodies with machines. This is obvious in art and fiction, from short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, to art by HR Giger, or films such as RoboCop or Ghost in the Shell, but the phenomenon is increasingly leaking into our real lives as well, as we become more entangled with the technologies we create.

To date, the pioneers of this merge between the human and the technological have mainly focused on correcting or restoring biological deficiencies or disabilities. Bionic limbs restore mobility to amputees, voice simulators act as a replacement for lost vocal cords, and cochlear implants correct hearing loss. Very few people would argue that these advancements are bad for humanity at large. At the more experimental end of the scale, though, the lines are blurrier, raising a whole host of social and ethical questions.

To take an obvious example, on January 28, 2024, Neuralink – a neurotechnology company launched by Elon Musk – announced the first implantation of a controversial computer chip into the human brain, which aims to enable a paraplegic patient to control digital devices with their mind. This, in itself, appears to fall into the inarguably-good, restorative section of the cyborg spectrum. For Musk, however, “telepathy” is just a stepping stone. In the past, he has stated that the ultimate goal of Neuralink is to “achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence” and avoid being “left behind” by superintelligent machines. But do we actually trust tech billionaires enough to let them inside our heads? And who can even afford to reap the benefits?

In her new film, Cyborg: A Documentary, the filmmaker Carey Born aims to bring this conversation to a broader audience, following the life of colourblind artist Neil Harbisson, AKA the world’s first formally-recognised cyborg. Since 2004, Harbisson has had an antenna surgically implanted into his head, which enables him to “hear” colour as different frequencies. The antenna curves over from the back of his skull (usually following the shape of a blonde bowl haircut) and ends in a sensor at his forehead, which picks up colours and transmits them to his brain as audio tones.

In the documentary, Harbisson explains that his first foray into transhumanism wasn’t just about replacing his lost sense of colour, but also going beyond the limits of human biology, to sense shades beyond the visible spectrum, like ultraviolet or infrared. As the co-founder of the Cyborg Foundation, he has continued to push these boundaries, experimenting with devices that sense the passing of time, as well as a tooth-to-tooth communication system that he shared with his partner, the avant-garde artist Moon Ribas. In 2017, he also founded the Transpecies Society, which “gives voice to non-human identities” and “advocates for the freedom of self-design”.

Harbisson’s transhumanist aspirations have been controversial, to say the least. On the one hand, Cyborg illustrates the beauty of life as a cyborg. At one point, Harbisson explains how his close friends can transmit the colours of a sunset directly to his brain from halfway across the world (yes, the antenna has WiFi). At another, he describes how sound and colour have become inseparable in his mind, and every time he hears the “pips” that play on the hour on BBC radio, he “sees” his mother’s eyes.

On the other hand, the film shows a darker side to the transhumanist project, with Neil and Moon forced into hiding by death threats based on the claim that they’re subverting nature – or the will of God – by experimenting with technological enhancements. “I think that’s driven by fear,” says Born, but she doesn’t believe that we need to be fearful (although Cyborg is littered with visions of dystopian futures, courtesy of films like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis). What’s more important is that we talk about issues like cyborgism before they actually, and inevitably, enter the mainstream. That way, we have some hope of making life better in the future, and sticking around long enough to see it unfold.

Read more about Born’s time with Neil Harbisson, her thoughts on transhumanism, and her doubts about Elon Musk’s intentions for Neuralink, below.

What first attracted you to cyborgism, and specifically, Neil Harbisson, as a subject?

Carey Born: A friend happened to mention Neil Harbisson to me, this chap who had an antenna implanted in his head. This was a number of years ago, and I just couldn’t believe it. Anyway, I emailed him and, by complete chance, he was coming to London about 10 days later for a talk. I said, ‘Could we have a coffee together?’ So we met up, and we hit it off. 

I liked him, and I thought he was extremely intriguing. The thing with Neil is that he’s on the cusp of being a medical case, because he’s completely colorblind. On the other hand, he absolutely didn’t want [the modification] to be a substitution. He was looking to create an augmentation, or an enhancement. I thought that was a really interesting dichotomy. It raises all kinds of questions.

What were your thoughts on transhumanism going into the film, and did they change over the course of the project?

Carey Born: Oh my god, completely. I’ve gone through so many iterations of thinking: ‘Oh, my God, this is terrible. This is amazing. This is terrible. This is amazing.’ Ultimately as a filmmaker, or as an artist, you should have some detachment, and you should not be giving answers but asking questions. That’s where I’ve come to.

It’s so important that we’re talking about this stuff before it happens, and before it arrives in the world. I’m old enough to have seen the evolution of mobile devices. Nothing like this existed in the late 90s, so over the period of 20 years, these things have completely come to dominate and shape our lives. I’m guilty. I’m just as engrossed and absorbed as everyone else. But sometimes you look up, and you think, ‘God, where are we going to be in another 20 years?’ I think we should be looking up a bit more.

The film spends time with a few pioneers of cybernetic enhancement. What were they like in person?

Carey Born: The common thread is that the people are quite thoughtful, and they see things differently. They think about things differently. And they are people who, without exception, are really quite courageous, and unafraid to be challenging and not follow the crowd. 

Why do you think Neil has become such a popular spokesperson for cyborgism?

Carey Born: Intrinsically, he is an artist, so he was coming from a place of humanism and individual expression. He challenges people’s perceptions, and he brings awareness to the miracle of existence. He reminds you of the extraordinary thing that is vision and sound. I also liked the fact that Neil was grasping the nettle, to go forward and be visionary and say, ‘This is happening.’ That’s the core of the film: this is happening, and it’s gonna happen, and we can shape it like this.

A big part of Neil’s outlook, as you said, is that he doesn’t just want to replace missing senses, but to add whole new capabilities, like seeing beyond the visible light spectrum.

Carey Born: Absolutely. There’s a whole spectrum – no pun intended – of transhumanism, and it’s a huge and expanding area. To break it down, there’s ‘substitution’, which is what a lot of medics and academics talk about, places like Ottobock in Berlin, which is at the forefront of prosthetics, and places in the UK, Scandinavia, and America. These are things that enable people to live a more full existence in a normative society. Nobody can really deny that this is a worthwhile, incredible thing to be doing. 

The next thing is what you’d call ‘enhancement’ or ‘amelioration’. There’s the biohacking movement, [which] is very much aimed at the rich, the upper echelons of society, where you can buy a better, longer life. Then, there’s a subsection of that where people call themselves transhumanist. There are quite a few very rich, influential, and clever people involved in this rather small organisation, which is trying to push the bounds of human longevity. It’s about enhancement or augmentation.

“Behind closed doors, this stuff is happening really fast... People need to be prepared and forewarned” – Carey Born

The third section is ‘augmentation’, which is about enhanced memory... enhanced everything, potentially. Ethically, that’s where it gets into complicated waters, because it’s about augmenting human beings, and who’s going to be able to afford that. 

This is all really complex stuff, and we’re at the beginning of it, except we’re kind of not, because behind closed doors – without sounding like a conspiracy theorist – this stuff is happening really fast, it’s going at breakneck speed. We need the conversation to catch up a bit. People need to be prepared and aware and forewarned.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people pushing back against the technology, and Neil even receives death threats for his work. What provokes that kind of response?

Carey Born: I think that’s driven by fear. That’s really why I made the film, to say: ‘Hey, we don’t need to be fearful. This is being created by humans. We have some power to determine all this, we don’t just have to sit back and wait for it to happen.’ I think it’s awful that Neil, or anybody, receives death threats and hate mail. What’s the point of that? Where does that get us? It gets us to the state of the world at the moment.

What do you make of the latest advancement at Neuralink, which saw the first implant of a brain-computer interface?

Carey Born: Potentially, it’s extraordinary. I do think it’s dangerous when there’s so much power in the hands of very, very few people. I don’t know the power structures of Elon Musk’s own business, whether there are people challenging him and so on, but when individuals have so much money and so much power and so much influence, I think that it’s potentially problematic. But in a way, that’s how these innovations happen. So again, it’s very difficult. I don’t think Elon is a bad man or a good man. I think he’s doing what he believes in. But it might be better if we were all part of the conversation somehow.

Musk has been criticised for moving too fast and ignoring regulations, and Neil Harbisson has also taken things into his own hands, bypassing bioethical committees. Do you think there’s a significant risk to these kind of experiments?

Carey Born: I think it’s all about intention. And do we even know what our real intentions are? Do we really know what Elon Musk’s intentions are? It would seem that his intentions are to make more money, even more billions. But maybe not.

If you want to modify your own body, for good or ill, that is your right. Unfortunately, some people have very destructive drives in them, but some people want to do it because they think it’s extraordinary and interesting. Of course, there’ll be so much marketing that maybe [people will be]  persuaded. It’s a bit like cigarettes: in previous generations, everybody smoked, it was the cool thing to do, and then, when there was an idea that something else was going on, the money and the investment in that industry was so embedded that it took a huge, titanic shift to change direction.

Whereas Cyborg is about trying to anticipate the conversation before it actually happens?

Carey Born: I think we should be doing this stuff before we get to the iceberg.

Watching the film made me think about everything I’m missing, that’s beyond my sensory perception. Did following Neil’s story highlight any sensory deficiencies for you?

Carey Born: Yes, actually. I realised I’m going a bit deaf, and I did think, ‘God, it would be quite extraordinary to hear ultraviolet.’ It made me think about what animals see, and what insects perceive. And it made me really conscious of all the things I take for granted. That’s what I really like about Neil, is that he makes you think about all these things you take for granted every day, and don’t really pay attention to, and it’s pretty incredible. Humans are pretty incredible.

CYBORG: A DOCUMENTARY is in UK cinemas autumn 2024.