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Transcriber: Ivana Korom Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz
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Like many people
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who have been fortunate enough to be more or less healthy,
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I spent most of my life never thinking much about my body.
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Something that I relied on to get me around,
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not to mind the occasional bash
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and not to complain too much if I wasn't getting enough rest.
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But that all changed for me when I became pregnant.
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Suddenly, my body was this machine performing an incredible task.
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That was something that I had to take notice of
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and look after, so that it could do its job.
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I've been a documentary photographer for nearly 20 years now
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but I never turned the camera on myself until that time.
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And then suddenly, I found myself fascinated
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by how we feel about our bodies
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and how we express strength or fear,
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courage or shyness in the way we carry ourselves.
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I spent several years making work that examined the relationship
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that we have to our bodies as humans.
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More recently, though,
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I've been exploring a new frontier in the human body.
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A transformation of bodies with technology.
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As humans evolve along with technology,
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and the lines between the two become increasingly blurred,
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I set out to document our evolution into a new kind of human
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and to play with that age-old question:
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Can we ever see a real humanness in machines?
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Sight is perhaps the most personal and intimate of our senses.
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Classically called the window to the soul.
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We connect with each other, recognize each other
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and communicate with each other through our eyes.
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If we lose an eye, we might wear a dummy replacement
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so that our face resembles what it did before.
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Filmmaker Rob Spence took that a step further
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when he installed a video camera in his replacement eye
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so that he could record his vision.
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Rob is part of a known network of cyborgs
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and he told me that he found it curious
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when he started to receive hate mail from people
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who felt threatened by him having this extra ability.
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Was his right to change his body
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less important than their right to their privacy?
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So as I photographed Rob,
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he filmed me using the camera in his eye,
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and we recorded it on a special receiver.
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But perhaps in response to the speed with which we all move
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and make images these days
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I wanted to make this work in a way that was slow and purposeful.
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Most of these images are shot on a large-format camera.
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These are big and cumbersome,
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taking only one frame at a time before you have to change the film.
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To check the focus,
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you have to put your head under a black cloth
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and use a magnifying glass.
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So as I photographed Rob using this very old technology,
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he filmed me using the camera in his eye,
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somewhat the opposite end of the technology spectrum.
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But I wanted to delve deeper
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and explore more of what it could mean to lose a part of ourselves
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and replace it with technology.
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At MIT Media Lab
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they are doing some of the most cutting-edge work in biomechatronics,
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developing motorized limbs for amputees.
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Originally set up by Hugh Herr,
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a double amputee who was able to develop and test the equipment on himself.
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He went on to create a set of legs that can walk,
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run and even jump
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without seeming to be mechanical at all.
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The gait more closely resembles that of a human foot and leg
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because the motor gives the wearer a push off the floor
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to move the foot forwards from the ankle.
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The technology here,
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continuing to be developed by Matt Carney and his colleagues at MIT,
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is really quite impressive,
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with the prosthesis connecting directly into the amputee's bone for stability,
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and sensors reading pulses from the amputee's muscles
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to tell the limb how to move.
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Ultimately, the wearer should be able to think about moving their foot
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and the foot would move.
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They're impressive to look at by themselves.
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But of course, the prostheses don't move on their own.
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In order to show their relationship to humans,
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I wanted to show how they enable amputees to move with ease and fluidity.
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But how do you photograph gait?
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At this point, I was inspired by the work and photographs
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of Eadweard Muybridge,
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who is famous for his series of images of a running horse, made in 1878,
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to prove that there's a moment when all four of the horse's feet
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are off the ground at the same time.
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He went on to make hundreds of series of images of animals and humans in motion.
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It was groundbreaking work
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and gave us one of the first opportunities to study the anatomy of motion.
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So I wanted to try and create similar kinds of motion studies
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of amputees walking, running, jumping, using this technology,
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and to think of them as motion studies of an enhanced human motion.
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One of the things I learned at MIT
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was the incredible importance of balance
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and the complex system of reactions and muscles
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that enable us to stand on two feet.
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Those of us with children will remember with fond nostalgia
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the moment our kids take their first steps.
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But what we think of as endearing
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is actually an incredible feat of balance and counterbalance.
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It can be quite daunting.
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This is my daughter Lorelei standing for the first time
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without any support.
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It lasted only a few seconds.
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Dance, in particular,
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is all about balance and mastering the fluidity of movement.
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Pollyanna here lost her leg in an accident when she was just two years old.
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She's learned to dance with the aid of a blade prosthesis
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and she now competes in a class alongside nonamputees.
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But the skill of moving around on two legs
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and navigating often uneven ground
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is incredibly difficult to replicate.
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Over at Munich's technical university they've developed LOLA,
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a biped humanoid robot that can move on two legs
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and make her way around a series of obstacles.
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As she strides along, she looks powerful and impressive.
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But her movement is also somewhat clunky and mechanical
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and not as spontaneous or unpredictable as that of humans.
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At the end of it all, when she switched off,
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she hung down on her cables and looked kind of forlorn.
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And in that moment, I saw her as more human
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than I had done when she was walking along.
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I felt almost sorry that she had been switched off.
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Her exterior might be cold and mechanical,
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but when vulnerable, she looked more real to me.
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Alex Lewis is a quadruple amputee
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who lost his limbs and part of his face when he fell ill with strep A.
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One of the most inspiring people I have ever met.
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His journey to recovery has been an incredibly tough one.
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He now has a chip in his arm to open his front door,
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a set of mechanical arms,
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and a handcycle to get around.
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Depending on what he is doing,
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be it throwing a ball for the dog, riding his handcycle, or even canoeing,
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he has a different set of hands that he attach to the end of his arms.
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It's been a very tough journey,
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but the hardships he's faced have given Alex a superhuman ambition.
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He genuinely told me
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that his ordeal is the best thing that ever happened to him.
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He now goes on expeditions, climbing mountains in Africa,
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he's planning to cycle across Mongolia,
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and he works with London's Imperial College,
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helping to develop a motorized hand,
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much like the legs they are developing at MIT.
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He may be less physically able than before,
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but understanding his weaknesses
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has made Alex emotionally very strong
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and opened up a world of opportunity for him.
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It made me realize
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that our emotions and understanding the limits of our physicality
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are also a huge part of what makes us strong.
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In Osaka
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I meet professor Ishiguro,
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who makes robots with uncannily human faces and expressions.
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First, I meet Geminoid,
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the robot he created in his own likeness.
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On the grid here you can see three pictures of the robot,
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one of the professor.
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Can you tell which is which?
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One of his more recent creations is Ibuki,
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a robot made to look like a ten-year-old boy,
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who can wave and show a range of facial expressions.
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In those expressions, I saw a certain vulnerability
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that made Ibuki feel very real to me.
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When he was angry or sad, it resonated.
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And when he smiled, I wanted to smile back.
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I feel I was drawn to Ibuki as I might have been to a real child.
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And at the end of it all,
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I felt I wanted to thank him or reach out and shake his hand.
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So if understanding the limits of our physicality
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can help to make us stronger,
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then seeing the vulnerability in Ibuki's expressions
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made him feel more human to me.
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So where do we go from here?
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In Tokyo, I meet professor Takeuchi
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who's developed a form of synthetic muscle
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that can respond to an electric pulse
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and expand or contract just like a real muscle.
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As it does so, the little limb here moves back and forth.
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Now this sample is only tiny,
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but imagine the possibilities
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if synthetic limbs could be made out of this.
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And what if that could be combined with the technology
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that reads nerve pulses from the end of an amputee's limb?
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Perhaps it could respond to touch and feel something hot or sharp,
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sending a message back up to our brains,
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just like it does in our body.
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Understanding those vulnerabilities would make the technology stronger too.
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Throughout the course of making this work,
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I've met some incredible people,
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both using and creating technology.
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I've seen crazy possibilities
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for how we'll mend and enhance our bodies.
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But I've also smiled at a robot,
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seen a young girl leap through the air on a blade
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and shaken the hand of a man with no hands
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who towers emotionally above us all.
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I'm left in awe of the complexity of the human body.
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But I also feel that it's not just our bodies,
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bionics or not,
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that make us strong,
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but our emotions and understanding our weaknesses.
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But I'd like to think of these works as studies,
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something that we can come back to
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and carefully observe.
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A point in our evolution
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before time runs away with us all.
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Thank you.