Is It Possible to Restore a Sense of Dignity?

Author Harry Parker visits Google to discuss his book "Hybrid Humans: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Man and Machine". This book is a gripping, eye-opening firsthand account of how technology is altering our understanding of what it means to be human. Harry Parker’s life changed overnight when he lost his legs to a bomb in Afghanistan. He now wears prosthetic legs from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to bed, reliant on them to move about the world. The tech he relies on is now so advanced it can seem as good, if not better, than human biology. But the benefits and freedom it gives him come with costs: the cost of pain, of damage to his body, of being stared at and being seen as other, of anxiety and dependence. In "Hybrid Humans", Parker takes us on a journey at the frontiers of man and machine, meeting those pushing the limits of our bodies and brains—the former soldiers having cutting-edge osseointegration, the very first DIY cyborgs and biohackers tinkering in garages, and the scientists, surgeons, artists, and disabled pioneers developing the latest robotics and implants. Grappling with his own new identity and disability along the way, Parker traces how new technologies might lead us to powerful, liberating possibilities for what a body can be—and how to be human is to be hybrid.

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