These days I’m just excited all the time, because they keep on improving the arm. One day I’ll be able to feel things with it and clap my hands together in time to the songs my kids are singing.”
Kitts is one of “tomorrow’s people,” a group whose missing or ruined body parts are being replaced by devices embedded in their nervous systems that respond to commands from their brains. The machines they use are called neural prostheses or—as scientists have become more comfortable with a term made popular by science fiction writers—bionics. Eric Schremp, who has been a quadriplegic since he shattered his neck during a swimming pool dive in 1992, now has an electronic device under his skin that lets him move his fingers to grip a fork. Jo Ann Lewis, a blind woman, can see the shapes of trees with the help of a tiny camera that communicates with her optic nerve. And Tammy Kenny can speak to her 18-month-old son, Aiden, and he can reply, because the boy, born deaf, has 22 electrodes inside his ear that change sounds picked up by a microphone into signals his auditory nerve can understand.