Neurologist Phil Kennedy made global headlines in the late 90’s by connecting the brain of a paralyzed man to a computer. He was compared to Alexander Graham Bell and became famously known as ‘The Father of the Cyborgs’. Then in 2014, he shocked the medical and scientific community and his family when he traveled to Belize to implant his own brain in an attempt to continue his research.

That brazen act nearly incapacitated him for life. Undeterred, the controversial inventor now wonders if the field he pioneered may lead to unintended consequences in a future where technology and human brains seamlessly combine and create class differences as a result of such extreme cognitive advantages.

Father of The Cyborgs explores Kennedy’s single-minded and relentless quest to unlock the mystery of speech for locked-in patients, the knotty history of brain-computer interfacing and mind control, and the emerging debate about neuro-ethics and mental privacy.

Additional contributors include Rafael Yuste of the BRAIN Initiative, Christof Koch of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Rajesh Rao of NSF Center for Neurotechnology + more.