The Cybernetic Man

The prophet Ezekiel's vision of celestial creatures with human faces and torsos, but with wheels instead of legs, has generated much abstruse speculation among the mystics. No one, however, would have envisioned then the existence of such a combination of the human and the mechanical here on earth. It was left to modern electronic engineers to bring reality closer to this fantasy. A paraplegic patient pushing the button of his electrically powered wheelchair—its speed and direction controlled through electronic circuits—is already in a sense a part of a man-machine complex. Even more so is the quadriplegic in whose lapboard these circuits are controlled by an electronic upper extremity device.¹ And, in fact, it is this device rather than the electrically manipulated wheelchair that overwhelms us with a sense of man-machine union.

Much research effort has been devoted in the past few years to externally powered devices and their control