"If the future is to be partly science fiction made real, Geary provides an enthralling and persuasive account of how the human brain and mind will be enhanced by prosthetic devices made of silicon and even how robots may learn to think."Sir John Maddox, Emeritus Editor, Nature, and author of What Remains to be Discovered

Marie, a sixty-three-year old Belgian woman, has been totally blind since the age of fifty-seven. But now, thanks to electrodes implanted around her right optic nerve, she can see lights, shapes, and colors again. A motorcycle accident in 1993 left Brian Holgersen, a thirty-year-old Dane, paralyzed from the neck down. But he can now hold a cup, lift a fork, and grasp a pen thanks to advanced electronics embedded in his right arm and hand.

Marie and Brian are two of a handful of people around the world who have had computer chips implanted in their bodies to extend, enhance, or repair their senses. This remarkable convergence of biology and technology is being brought about by melding advanced computers with the human nervous system, a merger that holds the promise of devices that can restore sight to the blind and mobility to victims of paralysis. This same technology might also one day provide us with bionic senses, such as the ability to see infrared radiation or feel objects at a distance. By linking neurons in the brain directly to silicon chips, scientists are also exploring the possibility of creating virtual eyes, ears, and limbs on the Web, thus allowing people to control appliances by thought alone. Machines are getting silicon senses, too. Researchers are endowing computers with the ability to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Once a computer has its own sensorium, its conceivable that it could at some point learn to think.

Drawing on fields as diverse as artificial intelligence and biology, The Body Electric provides an exciting synthesis of the people and technology making this convergence possible. Because this merger of man and machine affects more than just our bodies and computers, The Body Electric addresses the psychological, social, and philosophical implications of these startling developments. Are you any less "you" after a bionic implant? If all our senses are electronically enhanced, how will we tell the difference between virtual reality and the actual world? Will it matter? How can privacy be ensured when computers are watching and listening to everything we do and say? Will transmitting smells and tastes over the Internet enrich the users experiences or merely provide another way for corporations to sell us stuff?

This merger of ourselves and our technology is already beginning to change the way we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think about the world, opening up the doors of perception just another crack. The Body Electric explains how the new bionic senses might one day blow those doors completely off their hinges.

James Geary is an editor with Time Magazine.