14 DAY TRIAL // You need to have a certain degree of eccentricity to build yourself a third ear in your arm, or have a third arm robotically implanted into your real one and have your muscles controlled remotely via a computer.
Exactly this sort of eccentric is Professor Stelarc, who as a performance artist grew a third ear into his arm and now wants to connect it to the internet. The artificial ear implanted in his body began as a ear-shaped biopolymer scaffold that had veins, skin and flesh wrapped around it, and now Professor Stelarc plans to make it Wi-Fi ready.
However, Stelarc with his more or less bionic ear isn't the first person to voluntarily augment his body with implants. Kevin Warwick began this transhumanist adventure back in 1998 by implanting an RFID transmitter beneath his skin, which was used to control doors, light and other electronic devices in his proximity.
Grinders, or the first cyborgs
Since then, this trend went on an ascending route, with the number of enthusiasts of electronic implants growing by the day. Known as grinders, these "cyborgs" get all sorts of electronics under theirs skin, from LEDs to battery supplies and magnets, while others decide to implant a device that could command the thermostat that controlled the temperature inside a room, while also being able to send text messages if its temperature went higher than usual.
Another user preferred to implant his headphones in his head to avoid having to look for them every time he needed them. What he did was to implant tiny magnets inside his ears that would pick up signals sent by a wire coil around his neck that was connected to a music player. This way, he could listen to music without anyone knowing.
In short, this sort of examples bring us closer to an age of transhumanism, or to put it in more popular culture-friendly terms, mutants. Although at the moment there isn't a single implantable thing that can enhance a perfectly healthy body, a desire for perfection beyond the human body may obsess some people, maybe all the way to insanity.