NOVA

(futuristic music) When we have all these bionic interventions at our disposal, the individual will be able to design their own physicality, design their own cognition and emotional experience, will be able to sculpt their own identity. In that future, when we look at the normal innate biological body, we will go (yawns) so boring. (chuckles) I think society in response to enhancement, in response to bionic body parts will be a lot of people who will be scared. They may call out things like cheating. They may say that things are unfair if someone with bionic body parts has easier access to things, and I think that's really at the heart of it. So there's already disparities that are beyond our control that affect our lives. You can think of disparities in access to health insurance, particularly private health insurance. So if Black and Latinx people, for example, have lesser access to health insurance, that means they have lesser access to artificial limbs, particularly those that are very technologically advanced, like bionic limbs. One way that we can rethink access and make it more equitable to people is to rethink the way that we think about these artificial limbs and bionic limbs. We think of them as enhancement, almost cosmetic, that you don't really need these limbs to live a good life and if you do want them, then you're gonna have to pay for them because we think of it similar to rhinoplasty or augmenting the body in some cosmetic way. But if we think about bionic limbs as more of therapy, as treatment, as more of something that helps people live an average life, then we can start to take away some of the disparate access to artificial limbs that are very technologically advanced. We want to really provide a delivery platform for bionics to everyone in the world, so we want to launch a mobile delivery platform for bionic limbs in Sierra Leone, Africa. So the framework is to have a mobile rugged vehicle and inside it has CT scanning, 3D printing, computational computers. And we'll literally drive around from village to remote village and build limbs and fit people with limbs. We not only want to create the future of functionality and bionics but we also want to create the future on how that technology is delivered to people, independent of where they live across the world. (white noise)