When he was a 21-year-old college student, Noland Arbaugh had a diving accident that left him completely paralyzed from the neck down. Today, he is known as “P1,” the world’s first cyborg, or by his alias “ModdedQuad” — all of which are references to him being the first patient in Neuralink‘s human trial of its “generalized brain interface.”
Within mere weeks of receiving the small chip implant into his skull, Noland has become able to do things no other quadriplegic can do. He routinely beats the Neuralink team at chess on his computer. He plays Mario Kart. He even stayed up all night one time, playing Civilization VI, one of his favorite video games, which he hadn’t been able to play with his usual persistence in years due to his disability.
And how? How does Noland does all of this? With nothing but the power of his mind. “It was like using the Force on a cursor,” he says, “and I could get it to move wherever I wanted.” Of course Neuralink requires software and a wireless connection to function, but now, wherever those prerequisites allow for it, Noland can control digital devices telepathically — and according to Elon Musk, the company’s founder, that’s only the beginning. From restoring speech to smell to motor functions, in theory, the possibilities are endless.
The road is still long, and Noland is only one of thousands who’d want and deserve this technology. And yet, already, he says: “It completely changed how I live. I’ve heard that people who stay up late at night, it can be a sign that they don’t have anything to look forward to the next day. That’s basically how I lived for eight years. Since I started doing all this, I’m in bed by 9-10 PM. I’m waking up at 6-7 in the morning, just excited for the next day — and that’s something that I never thought would happen to me ever again.”
If Noland’s words, tenacity, and spirit are anything to go by, the future will look a lot brighter tomorrow. For today, this Star Wars Day, we take pride in the fact that Yoda and his allies are no longer the only ones to wield the Force — and we’re grateful that, after chasing their vision for 50 years, even those of us who can’t walk at all are finally getting a chance to catch up.