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KEVIN WARWICK, professor of cybernetics at Reading University, has a lifelong wish: “I want to be a cyborg.” His early role models were the sinister Daleks of Dr Who.

For “Captain Cyborg”, as IT news website The Register disrespectfully nicknames him, the essential goal is enhancement through surgically implanted technology. So Stelarc, the performance artist who interacts with computers and the Net through muscle sensors and stimulators attached to his skin, doesn’t count. Warwick resolved to become the first cyborg “apart from hip replacements, cochlear implants, heart pacemakers and the like.” They don’t count either.

His first cyborg experiment was…

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