In this context, cyborgs and centaurs are (usually mentally) augmented humans.
Early in 2024, Neuralink announced their first patient implant, a simple mouse controller. Instead of a hand, thoughts control its movements. This is an example of a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), though not the first such experiment over the past decade.
William Gibson’s first novel, Neuromancer (1984), swept most of the literary SF awards, introducing terms such as ‘cyberspace’. One of the characters (razorgirl) had a BCI. The genre is known as ‘cyberpunk’. However, the concept goes far beyond, into other books, films (eg. Johnny Mnemonic (1995), another Gibson story), and games (eg. Deus Ex (content warning))
Is BCI technology a parlor trick or a watershed moment for human evolution?
I have a predilection for North American authors, especially Canadians. This is more than just nationalism - it’s about familiar idioms and lingo. For example, some of William Gibson’s ‘Sprawl’ novels use Vancouver-like scenery* and Toronto street slang.
The opening line of Neuromancer is, The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
So, I must recommend a Peter Watts novel, Echopraxia (2014) - a companion novel to his Blindsight (2006). It includes ideas like a ‘God’ virus, human augmentation, and a deeply ingrained form of empathy not unlike the term ‘syntonicity’ which I use a lot. If you don’t wish to hear about syntonicity, computational psychohistory, and FORTH, you should stay clear of my posts
In the Star Trek TOS episode Spock’s Brain, a one-way BCI called ‘The Teacher’ enables humans to instantly, yet temporarily, acquire vastly advanced knowledge. A sort of phantom centaur.