I shook his hand once. I have never forgotten it.
It was a bionic hand, and Nigel Ackland gripped mine like any man would, except this one whirred and clicked and carried more meaning in a single gesture than most of us pack into a lifetime of handshakes.
Nigel is gone now. We miss him. He called himself ordinary. He was anything but.
Thirteen years ago, on Singularity 1 on 1, we sat down to talk about life with a bionic arm. And somewhere in that conversation we wandered into territory the world only just got around to naming this month: the Enhanced Games.
We asked whether people would one day volunteer to be enhanced. Whether the line between fixing a body and upgrading one was ever as solid as we pretended. Whether the Paralympics might one day be the more interesting show.
In 2013, those were thought experiments. Last weekend in Las Vegas, they sold tickets.
Nigel understood something the headlines are still catching up to: the deepest impact of enhancement is not mechanical, it is psychological. It is about feeling human again, or feeling more than human, and who gets to decide which is which.
So here is the question he left me with, and I will pass it to you: When enhancement stops being repair and becomes choice, where do you draw your line? And who gave you the right to draw it for anyone else?
Watch the full conversation. It has aged into something I did not expect.
Nigel Ackland says he is ordinary. But, after seeing his speech on living with a bionic arm, I disagree. Check out his interview to find out why.