By Giacomo Cadeddu

AFTER LOSING BOTH LEGS AT SEVENTEEN, HUGH HERR TURNED LIMITATION INTO DESIGN, ENGINEERING PROSTHESES THAT SEAMLESSLY CONNECT FLESH, SKIN, NERVES AND CIRCUITS THROUGH BIDIRECTIONAL NEURAL INTERFACES

HUGH HERR – TURNING CYBORGS INTO REALITY. IT ALL STARTED WITH AMPUTATED LEGS

«I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess». American philosopher Donna Haraway wrote that in 1985, in her Cyborg Manifesto. It was not about robotics. It was about identity, about dissolving boundaries — human and machine, organic and synthetic, self and system. Forty years later, this cyborg as an only entity between flesh and construction is no longer a metaphor. We’re not talking about steel monsters, but humans with body parts that can overcome existing physical impairments. If there is a laboratory where the cyborg discussion has shifted from philosophy to engineering, it is at the MIT Media Lab, where American scientist and bioengineer Hugh Herr directs the Biomechatronics group and co-directs K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics. It’s a world where technology mixes seamlessly with human physiology and electromechanics.

Herr is not only a scientist of the body. He is, himself, its own reconstruction. As a teenager, he was already a prodigy climber. In 1982, when he was 17 years old, while ice climbing on Mount Washington, a blizzard trapped him for days. Severe frostbite led to the amputation of both legs below the knee. The medical prognosis was limitation. Herr responded with design. He was never a good student before, but urgency turned him into one. He was given «passive» prostheses, made with wood, foam and metals. His body was amputated with the same technique that was used during the American Civil War.

In a slightly twisted way, the incident was fortunate. Herr began modifying his own prostheses to return to a full life — not just to walk again, but to climb at elite levels, even better than before. Today, he holds multiple patents in bionics. His work has redefined what a prosthesis can be and what it can allow a human with disability to do. Skip, jump, dance, run, climb. He made it a mission: Time Magazine referenced him as the leader of the bionic age.