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KEVIN WARWICK, professor of cybernetics at Reading University, has a lifelong wish: “I want to be a cyborg.” His early role models were the sinister Daleks of Dr Who.

For “Captain Cyborg”, as IT news website The Register disrespectfully nicknames him, the essential goal is enhancement through surgically implanted technology. So Stelarc, the performance artist who interacts with computers and the Net through muscle sensors and stimulators attached to his skin, doesn’t count. Warwick resolved to become the first cyborg “apart from hip replacements, cochlear implants, heart pacemakers and the like.” They don’t count either.

His first cyborg experiment was faintly anticlimactic. Implanting a transponder over which he had no actual control but which caused suitably equipped doors to open for him was faintly anticlimactic. It seemed more performance art than science, and was followed immediately by a press conference: “The room was lit with a spooky blue light, with a spotlight on me…” Naturally, Warwick’s media-wise promotional tactics irritate many other scientists.

The latest venture began with a wince-inducing operation. Warwick attached an array of tiny electrodes to his median arm nerve. Our cyborg could issue detectable electric impulses by finger-wiggling, and control devices ranging from a wheelchair to trifles such as the LED jewellery worn by his wife. It’s of almost religious importance to Warwick that this simple control is achieved directly from a nerve, not via muscles activated by the nerve.

Unfortunately, in informal, autobiographical mode, Warwick is a poor writer. Clich’s abound, as do gushing adjectives such as “incredible” and “fantastic”. Calmer passages of semi-technical exposition come as a distinct relief. After doomy hints that removing the electrodes could be hazardous, Warwick tiresomely ends his narrative three days before the event. Can publishing when the story is still hot be more important than completing the experiment?

Instead, I, Cyborg closes with a dotty science-fictional vision of a 2050 Utopia where “cyborgisation” has somehow brought free energy and intergalactic travel. The views of others on cyborgs and their implications are relegated to bare bibliographical entries. No index is included. Despite interesting and provocative nuggets, there’s less to this book than meets the eye.