When I finally managed to meet Ackland, I asked him what he thought about all the attention.

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“I absolutely love it,” he told me. “And it certainly beats the alterative — being completely ignored.”

He was referring to the previous six years — a challenging period of time before the artificial hand when very few people approached him on account of his hook. The artificial hand, it would seem, has certainly changed his fortunes.

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“Having a bionic hand makes me feel like a human again,” he told me.

I’ll be covering more from the GF2045 conference over the coming days and weeks, so stay tuned for more.