I’ll be dating myself here, but The Bionic Woman was a show from the late seventies about Jamie Sommers, who is saved from near death by bionic implants that giver her superhuman abilities. It was an offshoot of The Six Million Dollar Man, in which main character Steve Austin is given extraordinary abilities such as superhuman speed, vision, sight, and jumping ability from the same type of procedure. It also, incidentally, contains one of the most well-known opening scenes/monologues in television history. Both of them were fascinating shows back then, when we could only imagine a future in which human beings could be enhanced by bionics.

Well guess what? Some of you may remember back in mid-2102, a tragic story made national news in which 24-year old Aimee Copeland fell from a zip line and contracted flesh eating bacteria through a gash in her leg. Afterwards, she lost both arms below the elbow and one of her legs to the infection.

Well, believe it or not there is a bionics-related upside to the whole thing. She was the first person in the world to be fitted with the most advanced, articulate prosthetic arms available at that time, the iLimbs, created by Touch Bionics. Their web page has some amazing information about where this kind of thing is going. They cost $100,000 each, and they take training to use, but ultimately they move the same way we all move our hands *now.* Our brain sends a signal saying ‘move your arm’ and our arm moves thanks to electrical signals stimulating the muscle. Same for her, except the electronic signals move her prosthetic.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Watch the video below for a real glimpse of the future.