In one sense, our hands define our humanity ...

… and just perhaps, they will help to define the most familiar and comforting path toward substrate-independent posthumanity … SmartHand device. (Credit: Image rights American Friends of Tel Aviv University)

Ekenstam told a television interviewer, "I am using muscles which I haven't used for years. I grab something hard, and then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don't have them anymore. It's amazing." The team first chose to build a hand, however, because of its unique challenges. "The fingers in the hand are the most complex appendages we have," Prof. Shacham-Diamand observes. "The brain needs to synchronise the movement of each digit in a very complicated way." While the prototype looks very "bionic" now, in the future SmartHand scientists plan to equip it with artificial skin that will give the brain even more tactile feedback.

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