{"id":237898,"date":"2026-05-28T10:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T15:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/nigel-ackland-ordinaryextraordinary-life-with-a-bionic-arm"},"modified":"2026-05-28T10:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T15:04:28","slug":"nigel-ackland-ordinaryextraordinary-life-with-a-bionic-arm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/nigel-ackland-ordinaryextraordinary-life-with-a-bionic-arm","title":{"rendered":"Nigel Ackland: Ordinary\u2026Extraordinary \u2014 Life with a Bionic Arm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nigel-ackland-ordinaryextraordinary-life-with-a-bionic-arm.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><audio controls style=\"width:625px;\"><source src=\"https:\/\/feeds.soundcloud.com\/stream\/202624866-singularity1on1-nigel-ackland.mp3?_=1\" type=\"audio\/mpeg\"><\/audio><\/p>\n<p>I shook his hand once. I have never forgotten it.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Nigel is gone now. We miss him. He called himself ordinary. He was anything but.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013, those were thought experiments. Last weekend in Las Vegas, they sold tickets.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/nigel-ackland-ordinaryextraordinary-life-with-a-bionic-arm\">Continue reading \u201cNigel Ackland: Ordinary\u2026Extraordinary \u2014 Life with a Bionic Arm\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1499,64,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cyborgs","category-singularity","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}