I think there are also the immediate short-term paybacks. One of the things we're doing is looking at possibilities of helping people with spinal injuries and we're linked with the National Spinal Injury center in the UK. I think in that area just the whole things of movement, can we pick up signals concerned with movement, neuro signals. Can we then play them back again to bring about movement? We're yet to do any of that latter part; we're still a week or two away from actually playing signals back. …

The big question is what does the brain make of it all and that will be interesting to find out. I think helping in the area of people with spinal injury, with problems with their spine, with cerebral palsy, all sorts of different areas, I think there is going to be a fairly short term pick up of using this sort of technology in those areas.

Q: Certainly there are plenty of medical applications.

A: And I think that is important as well, pushing forward ethically, getting clearance for people trying things like that. This implant really, we have ethical approval to do it or we wouldn't have done it. But… [the medical applications] help get the technology to be acceptable as well.

Q: What are some of the issues that you foresee? For example, are we going to get to the point where in order to be competitive in the workplace, people will have to have an implant of some sort?

A: Well, you know there are those possibilities, and then much more than that. What we intend to look at over the weeks ahead is extra sensory input. And we want to look at ultrasonics in particular and see when we're feeding ultrasonic signals down on to my nervous system, can my brain make sense of them, can it use them? I can't really see a problem with that, and that opens up all sorts of things like infrared and ultraviolet and you name it so giving people different sensory input. Then there is looking at pain signals and so on, monitoring pain signals and then trying to counteract the effects of pain by putting signals in.

I think the big leaps or the big steps probably will come when we get closer up to the brain, maybe to the brain itself and linking to the brain rather than just the nervous system. I think the nervous system is perhaps a learning step as far as the technology is concerned and how it's going to work and getting to the brain then you get the biggies. Can we upgrade memory? Can we give people direct radio links to a computer so that they can tap into the mathematical capabilities? And that probably comes back to your point, as far as people no longer people but cyborgs have to have this other technology in order to have certain roles in society because they will have capabilities that humans won't have. So the answer would be yes to that.

Q: Have you experienced any sensations that you didn't recognize as a result of the implant?

A: I guess particularly when the implant was first in. Every day I'd get the odd sort of zing down fingers or thumb. That might be just simply the thing settling down, the pin settling down in the nerves or it might be picking up static and things like that. In a way, not yet. I think when we play signals down is going to be the interesting thing on that one, so it's probably a case of stay tuned. In terms of the things we're picking up yes, it's all over the place.

It's going to take ages for us to try and comprehend what all the signals mean. I was amazed, some critics before we did it said oh, you're just going to get an average noisy mishmash and that's not the case at all. The signals are loud and clear, but it's difficult to work out what the hell the signals mean. I think getting a bit more of an understanding is really going to push us forward.

Q: It sounds like making contact with an alien intelligence.

A: Oh yes, very much so, very much so. When we do understand the signals a lot more, what we can do with them I think — well, it's very exciting.

Q: Is there an aspect of the social process that needs to be brought into this as well? The technology advances so quickly that I think there are a lot of people who don't understand what you're doing and would just have a gut reaction against it without really understanding the goals or the methods.

A: Yes, you're right there. I think it's good that people like yourself are actually reporting on it and saying what's going on because the more the message gets out there as to technically what's possible and what's happening, the more people can start talking about it. I think genetics with cloning and so on has had quite an airing over the last few years, and really the whole cyborg issue needs to have a similar or even a bigger airing which it hasn't had yet. I think largely it's still within the realms of science fiction and people have largely probably felt it's something way into the future when it's not. It's starting to happen now very much so and there are enormous ethical questions.

The whole thing…it's all right to use this technology to help someone with a disability but upgrading humans, giving them extra abilities is raising all these questions. Who gets the technology? Who controls the technology? Should it be left in commercial hands and all those things really should be out in the open, being discussed. So I think people, many of them, would be right to be a little wary of where it's going and perhaps right to be a little bit scared because we're not really sure what it will actually mean. We can have a best guess at it but we don't know. I think part of hopefully what I can achieve with the help of people like yourself is put the facts on the table and say that the technology is with us so that people can consider it and discuss it and have debates and it is an important part of it.

Q: How has your family reacted to this?

A: [Laughs]. My kids have said no way we're having anything like that. On the other hand, I think they're very interested in what's actually going on. They're always pumping me for information all the time. But of course my wife hopefully, she will be part of it in maybe a month, month and a half time because one of the things we want to look at in a very simple way is sending signals from one person's nervous system to another. A basic form of communication I guess. I don't know that she will have the full sort of implant that I've got but it will probably be more in terms of an electrode or two pushed in from the outside a more standard type of procedure. But we certainly want to look at that. She's very, very much up for that. She's not a scientist in any way but she's very excited about what's going on and the possibility of us looking at the basic form of communication which ultimately when we get back to the brain, link ups would mean being able to send signals from brain to brain or literally thinking to each other in a very rudimentary way.

Q: Might put an end to cell phones ringing in the cinema.

A: Oh, completely, yes, yes. We won't need phones anymore where we're going. I think the possibilities are extremely exciting but they do have a profound impact on humanity.

Q: Who do you expect to be the early adopters of this sort of technology? The tattoo and body alteration crowd, in addition to medical patients?

A: Yes, I mean you have got the medical patients and I know in the U.S. there have been one or two. Out in Atlanta, Kennedy's work has been with stroke victims. In a way they are ideal volunteers. I get enormous number of e-mails from a whole range of people that are serious volunteers. Quite a few of them, there's a medical problem and maybe this can be sort of a miracle cure for them or maybe it can change their lives a little bit which is understandable. But a lot of them are just regular guys, regular guys and gals I should say. People who are interested in the technology and are only too willing to take part.

I would say maybe one or two of them are a little bit crazy, maybe one or two of them if you actually said right now, you've got to have the operation tomorrow might back down. But I do believe that quite a large number of them would go through it.

Q: How do you define 'cyborg'?

A: The Terminator definition is part human, part machine so you've got to have that. But I don't know that I go for this people wearing glasses or people riding bikes otherwise, just about everybody is a cyborg. It almost makes it pointless. With the first implant I had in '98, because it was implanted, mentally I felt that it was part of my body and that's something people that have a heart pacemaker and [cochlear] implant, they feel the same way about the technology, and that for me makes a difference--where the technology becomes part of you. … So I think it's when the body is not just the human body but the body is partly machine.