Seminar Cyborgs (2)

7/30/2019 Seminar Cyborgs (2)

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ABSTRACT

The cyborg, a combination of hardware, software and wetware, stands as one of the

most visible figures of the cybernetic age. A combination of two words, cyberneticand organism, the term cyborg refers to a biological being with a kinetic state that

can be transferred with ease from one environment to another, able to adapt to

changing environments through technological augmentation. The first living

cyborg to find its way into the human family tree was a rat.

With the emergence of the world wide web, the cyborg has strategically evolved in

our imaginations as a metaphor of our times. Kevin Warwick, a professor of

cybernetics and robotics, in his autobiography, I CYBORG,unveils how he became

the first human cyborg through a series of path-breaking experiments. He begins

his narrative by saying, I was born human. But this was an accident of fate- a

condition of time and place. I believe its something we have the power to change.

In this report, i seek to explore the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an

author or translator, who is able to navigate between the different binaries of meat-

machine, digital-physical, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one

system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. What does the

cyborg as a translator add to our understanding the process of translation? How

does the figure of the translating cyborg enable an analysis of the cyborg as

materially bound and geographically contained, rather then the earlier ideas of thecyborg as residing in a state of universal placelessness. Also this paper does a

close reading of an instance of particular cyberspatial form-the social networking

system-to illustrate the dual processes of translation and the textuality of the texts

involved.

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INTRODUCTION

The computer is now making possible the augmentation of the human being. For

the first time,through electronic technology, human biology is no longer destiny.

Through bionic prostheses, bio-implants and biochips electronic technology can be

integrated into human organism, projects like the Human Genome Initiative are

made possible by the use of massive supercomputers allowing the operators of

DNA sequencers to practice new form of positive eugenics previously unrealizable

by any propagandists for the master race. New forms of human-computer interfaces

are making possible human-computer interaction that rivals the most imaginativedescriptions from science fiction.

Though this technology seems science-fictional, there have always been electronic

medical devices available for people ever since the civil war. People are already

benefiting from pacemakers, artificial hearts, prosthetic limbs, hearing aids and

hormone-producing implants such as Norplant. These technologies interface with

the human nervous system and other biological system at the most basic level.

Nanotechnology and Nanomachines may be able to affect biological changes at

the intercellular level, causing changes in the human biological structure that might

be unprecedented.

It is disturbing but perhaps at least acceptable for people to face the fact that they

have a large degree of kinship with other forms of life on the planet, and that their

genes might be interchangeable with all of its myriad species. However,

bioelectronics research suggests a kinship between humans and computers that is

perhaps even more troubling. While cognitive scientists and artificial life

researchers have alluded to this kinship in theoretical ways, bioelectronics

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researchers are demonstrating it in a very practical way in the laboratory. The

integration of biological and electronic processes suggests that they may be very

similar in their mode of operation, and only based on different physical

constituents.

Interest in technologizing the human body did not begin with the invention of the

computer, however. The concern with control and mastery over human

performance began in military and only later spilled over into economic production

with the introduction of scientific Taylorism and its time-motion studies onto the

factory floor. Information theory began to be applied to vexing problems in

linguistics, sociology, phychology and education. But the military and captains of

industry wanted more. Where autonomous robots and AIs would not do, it became

essential to upgrade the performance, efficiency and utility of human beings in

carrying out directives.

Science fiction clearly has been fascinated about the integration of the organic and

the technological for a long time. One of the first incarnations of the artificial

human was the robot or android,which made its first appearance in the movie

Metropolies in the 1920s.But such robots were often simple pure electronic devices

molded into a humanoid form, but there is no organic component. However by

1960s,science fiction writers had turned into a more imaginative construct, the

cyborg. This being was a sort of hybrid, a mesh of flesh and steel, neurons and

wires, blood and circuits. It was a human being partially transformed into a

machine. While some of this technology remains the domain of science fiction,

some of it is appearing here and now today, in the form of exoskeletons, artificial

limbs and prostheses, biological implants and electronic devices for restoring

vision to blind.

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CYBORGS

A cybernetic organism (cyborg) is a biological creaturegenerally a human being

whose functioning has been enhanced through integration of mechanical, electrical,

computational, or otherwise artificial, components.Presentations of human-

machine hybrids have frequently acted as tropics in social arguments and literary

imaginations that attempt to conceive the proper roles and deeper meaning of

humans themselves, of machines, of the moral worth of each, and of the

interactions among them.

Following the popularization of the term cyborg, especially in science fiction of the

1960s and 1970s, a number of further neologisms with the cyber- prefix have

developed that refer chiefly back to cyborgs, rather than directly to cybernetics.

These include cyberpunk (fiction), cyberfeminism (theory), cyberspace (electronic

networks).Indeed, ad hoc usage of the prefix is common in journalism and popular

writing.

The fact is that many of us are low-level cyborgs at this moment. Artificial organs

(hearts, kidneys), implanted pacemakers, cochlear implants, artificial joints, and on

and on show that we arent (generally speaking) morally or ethically opposed to

using substitute parts to enhance our biological bits. Really, its just a matter of

degree.What will it take to adapt to space? If we remove cosmic radiation from the

equation, there are two major problems with low-gee habitation: bone loss and

muscle atrophy. The fact is that the human body adapts very readily to low-gee

conditions. Too readily. After only a few years, returning to a gravity environment

becomes increasingly problematic.

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TECHNOLOGY AND FORMS OF CYBORGS

Organic capabilities enhanced in cyborgs vary in kind, as well as in extent. The

enhancements addressed in fiction or essaysor, indeed, by practiced technologies

follow both the rhetorical or literary purposes of their creator and the evolving state

of societal technical capabilities. With inventions in genomics and nanotechnology

at the start of the 21st century, visions of cyborgs often discuss augmentation of

human health and longevity.Diverse thinkers set very different boundaries for what

artificial additions make a human into a cyborg. In a broad sense, all humans in the

last several thousand years been intimately shaped by the utilization and presence

of technologies around them, or physically manipulated or attached to them. A

spear, or even a stick, extends human capabilities for hunting or warfare; writing

extends human memory, cognition,and information transmission. Inclusive

thinkers, including those embracing the labeltranshumanism, focus on this broadest

sense, usually with the intention of extending human-machine interactivity.

The everyday embodied cyberspace cyborg thus becomes subject to the state as

well as the technology.People who enter the digital matrices are made accountable

for their actions and travels in cyberspace. There is an increased anxiety around

monitoring these process of translation, of reverse translation and production of

translated cyborg identities that are becoming such an integral part of cyberspatial

platforms. The virtual avatars are re-mapped onto the body of the user, thus

reconfiguring the notion of the self and the body. The state, through its efforts,

becomes a major player in the authoring of the cyberspace cyborg.

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Cyborgs were a minor research area in cybernetics,usually classified under the

heading of medical cybernetics, in the USA and Britain from the publication of

Wieners Cybernetics in 1948 to the decline of cybernetics among scientists in the

1960s.During that period cybernetics held multiple interpretations of their

field.Most of the research on cybernetics focused on the analogy between humans

and machines-the main research method of cybernetics-not the fusion of humans

and machines,the domain of cyborgs.Although many cyberneticians in the USA

and Britain vieved cybernetics as a universal discipline, they created contested,

area-specific interpretations of their field undr the metadiscourse of cybernetics.

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FOUR KINDS OF CYBORGS

There are mainly four kinds of cyborgs. They can be classified as,

Restorative

Normalizing

Reconfiguring

Enhancing

Cyborg technologies can be restorative in that they restore lost functions and

replace lost organs and limbs. They can be normalizing in that they restore some

creatures to indistinguishable normality. They can be reconfiguring, creating

posthuman creatures equal to but different from human,like what one is now when

interacting with other creatures in cyberspace or in the future the type of

modifications proto-humans will undergo to live in space or under the sea having

given up the comforts of terrestrial existence, and they can be enhancing, the aim

of most military and industrial research and what those with cyborg envy or even

cyborgphilia fantasize. The latter category seeks to construct everything from

factories controlled by a handful of worker-pilots and infantrymen in

mindcontrolled exoskeletons to the dream many computer scientists have

downloading their consciousness into immortal computers.

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CYBORG PERFORMANCE

Cyborgs are a very complex creation of the future. The general concept is that they

cannot be recognized as non-humans. Although it has a programmed mission,this

unit thinks and reacts on its own.The understructure is made of very strong material

that resists many dangers,for example,gunshots and fire. Cyborgs are self-

contained unit under a layer of human flesh.The layer of human flesh that covers

the frame is a biological organism.It has different layers and has a capillary system

that is flowing with blood.

Its difficult to imagine technology as an extension of our bodies, of ourselves. We

use technology,we exercise all of a piece of a technologys resources,and then we

dispose of it and replace it with a new, and frequently more advanced technology.

But if examined closely,it is evident that technology is not just a means of

achieving desired results,but has become an integral and essential part of our

lives.Shirts,heating,forks,machines, all of these are technologies that we use to

enhance ourselves and our lives.In books the trerm cybernetics is used to describe

computer gadgets and electrical physical enhancements,like robotic

arms.However,cybernetics is more encompassing than that, and includes anything

we use to enhance our natural state. In this regard, clothing, utensils, and the simple

machines we use in our homes all count as cybernetic enhancements.

CYBORGS ARE ALREADY HERE

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1.Cyborgs actually do exist.About 10% of the current US population are estimated

to be cyborgs in the technical sense,including people with electronic

pacemakers,artificial joints,drug implant system,implanted corneal lenses and

artificial skin.A much higher percentage participates in occupations that make them

into metaphoric cyborgs, including the computer keyboard joined in a cybernetic

circuit with the screen, the neurosurgeon guided by fiber optic microscopy during

an operation, and then the teen gameplayer in the videogame arcarde.Terminal

identity Scott Bukatman has named this condition, calling it an unmistakably

doubled articulation that signals the end of traditional concepts of identity even as

it points towards the cybernetic loop that generates a new kind of subjectivity.

2.This merging of the evolved and the developed, this integration of the constructor

and the constructed,these systems of dying flesh and undead circuits, and of living

and artificial cells have been called many things,bionic systems,vital

machines,cyborgs.But the story of cyborgs is not just a tale told around the glow of

television fire. There are many actual cyborgs among us in society.Anyone with an

artificial organ limb or suppluiment,anyone reprogrammed to resist disease or

drugged to think/behave/feel better is technically a cyborg.

CYBORGS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) as characterized by Julian Hilton is the attempt to

replicate in machines the reasoning and imaginative powers of the human brain.

Hilton points out that works on AI projects Presupposes that we have some

knowledge of what these powers are. AI may learn a great deal from examining

the theatres extended investigation into the nature of human intelligence.

KEVIN WARWICK I, CYBORG

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Professor Kevin Warwick , the worlds leading expert in cybernetics who became

the worlds first cyborg in a ground breaking set of scientific experiments. The

cybernetic pioneer who is upgrading the human body started with himself.

Humans have limited capabilities. Human sense the world in a restricted way,

vision being the best of senses. Human understand the world only in three

dimensions and communicate in a very slow, serial fashion called speech. The

possibility exists to enhance human capabilities, to harness the ever increasing

capabilities of machine intelligence, to enable extra sensory input and to

communicate in a much richer way using thought alone. Kevin Warwick has taken

the first steps on this path, using himself as a guinea pig test subject receiving by

surgical operation, technological implant.

On 24th August 1998, Professor Kevin

Warwick underwent an operation to

surgically implant a silicon chip

transponder in his forearm.Dr.George

Boulous carried out the operation at

Tilehurst surgery,using anaesthetic

only.This experiment allowed a computer

to monitor Kevin Warwick as he moved

through halls and offices of the Department

of Cybernetics at the university of

Reading,using a unique identifying signal emitted by the implanted chip.He could

operate doors,lights,heaters and other computers without lifting a finger.

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On the 14th march 2002, a one hundred electrode array was surgically implanted

into the median nerve fibres of the left arm of professor Kevin Warwick. The

operation was carried out at Raddiffe Infirmary by a team headed by the

neurosurgeons Amjad Shad and Peter Teddy. The procedure which toot a little over

two hours involved inserting a guiding tube into a two inch incision made above

the wrist, inserting a microelectrode array into this tube and firing it into the

median nerve fibres below the elbow joint.

A number of experiments have been

carried out using the signals detected by

the array, most notably professor

Warwick was able to control an electric

wheelchair and an intelligent artificial

hand developed by Dr.Peter Keyberd

uging this neural interface.In addition to

being able to measure the nerve signals

transmitted down Professor Warwicks

left arm, the implant was also able to

create artificial sensation by stimulating

individual electrodes within the array. This was demonstrated with the aid of

Kevins wife Irena and a second, less complex implant connecting to her nervous

system.

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Another important aspect of the work undertaken as part of this project has been to

monitor the effects of the implant on Professor Warwicks hand functions. This

was carried out by Allesio Murgia,a research student at the department, using the

Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure(SHAP) test. By testing hand

functionality during the course of the project the difference between the

performance indicators before, during and after the implant was present in Kevins

arm can be used to give a measure of the risks associated with this and future

cyborg experiments.

WHERE ARE THE CYBORGS IN CYBERNETICS?

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Cyborgs cybernetic organisms, hybrids of humans and machines have

pervaded everyday life, the military,

popular culture, and the academic world sincethe advent ofcyborg studies in the mid 1980s. They have been a recurrenttheme in

STS in recent decades, but there are surprisingly few cyborgs referred to in the

early history of cybernetics in the USA and Britain. In this paper, I analyze the

work of the earlycyberneticians who researched and built cyborgs. I then usethat

history of cyborgs as a basis for reinterpreting the history of cybernetics by

critiquing cyborg studies that give a teleological account of cybernetics, and

histories of cybernetics that view it as a unitary discipline. I argue that cyborgs

were a minorresearch area in cybernetics, usually classified under the headingof

`medical cybernetics', in the USA and Britain from the publication of Wiener's

Cybernetics in 1948 to the decline of cybernetics among mainstream scientists in

the 1960s. During that period,cyberneticians held multiple interpretations of their

field.Most of the research on cybernetics focused on the analogy betweenhumans

and machines the main research method of cybernetics not the fusion of

humans and machines, the domain ofcyborgs. Although many cyberneticians in the

USA and Britain viewed cybernetics as a `universal discipline', they created

contested, area-specific interpretations of their field under the metadiscourse of

cybernetics.

RESEARCHING CYBORGS

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Cyborg was originally conceived as a term for describing how people might,

through technology, adapt themselves for space travel. The cyborg was described

by the inventors of the world in exceedingly unfriendly term as the exogenously

extended organizational complex functioning as a integrated homeostatic system.

The hybrid represented within the mechanic-organic body of the cyborg is a

powerful metaphor through which science fiction authors explore humanitys

relationship to technology. Early cyborg fictions dealt with questions concerning

the breakdown of the notion of humanity, often attempting to determine the point at

which a cyborg loses its humanity. Authors also deal with issues of human

becoming enslaved by their own technologies. With the dawn of information age

and the rise of the personal computer, the cyborg came to be viewed as a positive

force, a hybrid that had not lost its humanity out, instead gained a host of new

talents and powers.

POSITIVE ARGUMENTS

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Certainly, there have been a number of positive responses to the cyborg

phenomenon.They are discussed below.

1. There have been a number of AI researchers like Hans Moravec who have

unabashedly declared that it may be time for carbon-based biological life to

yield control of the planet to its mind children, silicon-based life. If

evolution is theorized from an abstract perspective as an attempt to increase

the information processing power latent in matter, in the struggle against

entropy, it is clear that hardware(artificial life) will eventually win out

against wetware(organic life) since it is more durable and more efficient.

These extropians see this as perhaps bad news for the human race ,but in the

long term at least good news for the planet and apparently the universe.

2. There are other who foresee perhaps a more peaceable coexistence for

human beings and electronic life, however. One recent theory that has been

bantered about lately is that the human race may have reached a the

saturation point for economic growth, but this is fortunate since it has arrived

in time for it to work on human growth, that is the reengineering of the

human species. Indeed, there are those who feel without technological

modification, the human beings might be simply too shortchanged from an

evolutionary standpoint to accomplish the races greatest dreams, such as

peaceful coexistence, evolutionary sustainability, and space exploration.

3. Some more realists feel that human biotechnology, will be an inevitable

necessity in light of coming changes. Human genetic structure may be

irreversibly altered for the worse as levels of radiation, chemical pollution,

and so on continue to increase. Global climate is likely to change drastically

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due to global warming and ozone depletion.Pessimists who suspect many of

these global changes may be irreversible sometimes have taken the position

that the only way for the human race to avoid perishing as a species is to

make some rapid technological changes in its biological adaptability.

4. Other scientists have argued that the sort of hyperintelligence made possible

by bioelectronics may be necessary to save the human race from itself.

Today bioelectronics researchers suggest that augmented human beings may

be able to cooperate with technology in unprecedented ways to reassert

rational management of the planet and its resources, and stave off the

irrational impulses of xenophobia and paranoia that might lead to its nuclear

destruction.

5. Lastly, there are the postmodern theorists, normally noted for their

antitechnological stance, who have taken a favorable position on the coming

of the cyborg. The cyborg anthropolpgists have followed the line of Donna

Haraway, who declared that she would rather be a cyborg than a goddess any

day, in a sort of cynical repudiation of ecofeminism and the fetishizing of

nature. Haraway , a researcher interested in the links between humans,

primates and computers, feel that the cyborg is an important metaphorical

identity for human beings in the 21st century, in that it resists essentialism

and helps to display the fluidness, hybridization and boundary-transgression

of postmodern identities.

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

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The critics of bioelectronics and biocomputing foresee numerous potential negative

social consequences from the technology. Some of them are discussed below.

1. Human race will divide along the lines of biological haves and hav-nots.

People with enough money will be able to augment their personal

attributes as they see fit as well as to utilize cloning,organ

replacement,etc to stave off death for as long as they wish, while the

majority of human continue to suffer from plague, hunger, bad genes,

and infirmity.

2. Its inevitable that there will be those who see the potential of a sort of

master race from this technology. It is not clear that these cyborgs would

not turn on their creators. Indeed, there is no reason at all to think they

would forever allow themselves to be controlled by inferiors. They could

easily become a new sort of dominant caste, forcing the rest of

untechnologized humanity into serfdom. Or perhaps they might decide

simply to eliminate it.

3. One of the other dangers inherent in bioelectronics might be the ability

to control and monitor people. Certainly, it would be easy to utilize bio-

implants that would allow people to trace the location and perhaps even

monitor the condition and behavior of implanted persons. This would be

a tremendous violation of human privacy, but the creators of human

biotech might see it as necessary to keep their subjects under control.

Once implanted with bio-implant electronic device, cyborgs might

become highly dependent on the creators of these devices for their

repair, recharge and maintenance. It could be possible to modify the

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person technologically so that their body would stop producing some

essential substance for survival, thus placing them under the absolute

control of the designers of the technology.

4. Perhaps the most cogent arguments against this technology originate

from people who foresee tremendous possible risks towards human

health and safety. While there is widespread talk of improving the

human brain through the use of skill chips for implanting new

knowledge, many people suspect that such interventions may be even

more catastrophic because of the inability of the human nervous system

to regenerate. Millions of years of evolution produced only so much

capability within human organism, and it may be fatal to technologically

stretch its performance beyond those built-in-limits.

5. Many people foresee drastic consequences on religion from

biotechnology, especially with regard to the idea of the intrinsic sanctity

and integrity of human life and that human beings are created in the

image of the divine. Even those not spiritually inclined who still

nevertheless possess the feeling that there is something within humanity

which is not found in animals or machines and which makes us uniquely

human, worry that the essence of our humanity will be lost to this

technology.

THE ARGUMENTS ON BALANCE

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The proponents of bioelectronics are inevitably correct in suggesting that it holds

out incredible benefits for the human race. Likewise, it is undeniably the case that

some of the skepticism toward bioelectronics arises out of the superstitious attitude

that people hold toward computers and electronic technology, as well as medical

and reproductive procedures that they dont fully understand. However, they are

incorrect in arguing that regulation and oversight will only hinder research in this

area and prevent scientific progress in the relevant areas. In marginalizing the

social and ethical issues generated by research in biocomputing, these researchers

are showing a side of science that people have routinely expressed anger about-its

refusal to accept social responsibility for unforeseen consequences. In order for

bioelectronic research to progress, it will have to accept that the potential dangers

are real, and that the concerns of some skeptics are valid. Otherwise, something

disastrous might occur which night create a death-blow for the industry, much as

happened with nuclear power in the US, and nothing positive will ever have been

attained.

CONFIGURING THE CYBORG AS A TRANSLATOR

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The cyborg, as fashioned by science fiction narratives, cinema and cartoons,

Conjures images of human-machine hybrids and the physical merging of flesh and

electronic circuitry. Different representations of the cyborg abound in science

fiction narratives in print, film, animation and games, from reengineered human

bodies to large robotic machines of power and strength to sleek and save

microchip-implanted silicon-integrated human beings who work in their artificially

mutated enhancements. The cyborg has covered a wide imaginative range from

looking at a happy human-machine synthesis to a degenerate human body made by

machinistic implants to a rise of a potent cyborg community that threatens to

overcome the human world of biological certainty and mortality.

Arjun Appadurai 1996), in his formulation of post-electronic modernity, explores

how electronic media offer new everyday resources and disciplines for the

imagination of the self and the world. He argues that the individual body and its

ownership are wedded to the logic of capitalism and the notion of ownership that

characterized most of the 20th century. Appadurai suggests that the body becomes a

site of critical inquiry and contestation because a capitalist state grants the

individual the rights to his/her body and the choice of fashion that body through

consumption patterns. When talking of Technoscapes , Appadurai posits the idea of

a technically enhanced sphere of activities and identity formation that defy the

processes of capitalism and produce new instabilities in the creation of

subjectivities.

The cyborg as a translator, because it produces its identities through the same

techniques that produces the translated texts, internalizes the very techniques of

translation. However, this process of internalization, instead of making the

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techniques invisible, foregrounds them as essential to the comprehension and

understanding of the meanings which have been produced in this dual process of

translation.

Within cyberspaces, social networking systems, blogs, discussion boards, media

sharing platforms, etc, all create different conditions within which the physical

users, through their digital avatars, interact with each other and form complex

models of social networking and personal narratives.

The social networking system and the related profiles also draw our attention to the

dynamic interactions of the translated self within the digital domains. Through a

metonymic process, the digital profile-the translated self-comes to stand in for the

bodies of the users who not only create the translated self but also mark it with

desires and aspirations. The translated self is largely under the control of the

physical body. And yet, there are several ways in which the translated self does not

allow for the physical body to emerge as the original, the authentic or the primary

self within the dynamics of the site.

The second step in this process is a reverse translation. Even within role playing

games, where the alienation of the avatar from the body reaches its highest levels,

there is an invested effort on the part of the gamer to provide physical and material

contexts to the imagined bodies which they have created. With an increased

investment in the digital lives, users tend to shape their own physical selves around

their projected avatars. An increasing number of users start looking upon their

screen lives as a constitutive part of their reality rather than an escape from it The

cyborg exists in the intersitices of the different oppositions of the real and the

virtual, the physical and the digital, the temporal and the spatial, the biological and

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the technological. Moreover, the cyborg does not reside simply within the digital

domains but becomes and embodied technosocial being, with a material body that

enters into other realms of authorship and subjectification. It is necessary to

recognize that the cyborg is not simply a self authored identity but also subject to

various other realms of governance. These material cyborgs, then assert the need

for the body as central to their imagination.

CYBORG DETECTOR

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Visitors walk through the TCE system, which measures the metal content in and on

their bodies. Then they proceed to a clinic office where a digitally generated

"scientist" skilled in counseling cyborgs will interview them to determine their

cultural attitude toward, and usage of, technology and cyberculture. However, the

scientist seems to lack strength of character, because she/he changes shape in an

attempt to track the cyborgness of the interviewee.

Finally our Scientifically Accurate Cyborgian Knowledgebase calculates the

visitor's CQ and the scientist tells them their cyborg degree. But technological

calculation by a machine or a determination /categorization by humanoids or

cyborgs cannot realistically determine the state of a being. The final question -- that

the individual has to ask her/himself -- is: "Are you a cyborg?" - which is the most

important question.

The result gives the visitor an indication of their Cyborginess at the moment of

evaluation. If appropriate, the scientist also gives them a cyborg ID badge. This ID

is a microelectronic device with a specific resonance to sensors at the Ars

Electronica Center (at the Global Village, there is an Ars Electronica Tent where it

will work).

If a cyborg passes one of the sensors, such as the one at the entrance of the Ars

Electronica Tent, the sensor detects the cyborg and sets off the system's Visual and

Acoustic Cyborg Welcome Signal. The monitor also signals: cyborg detected.

Non-cyborgs who find themselves experiencing cyborg envy can apply for an

upgrade at a special terminal. There they can redesign their identity by

downloading information and integrating a piece of technological hardware into

their lives. Afterwards, they can go back and redo the cyborg test, and they may

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find that the virtual scientist has incorporated their hardware into his/her body as

well.

CULTURAL IMAGERY OF CYBORGS

The term cyborg is a combination of the terms cybernetics and organism.It was

originally coined by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in their 1960 article

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Cyborgs in space.According to the authors, a cyborg is that deliberately

incorporates exogeneous components extending the self regulatory control function

of the organism to adapt it to new environments.This definition arises from the

authors desire to formulate the way of successfully adapting human beings to the

rigors of outer space.They define cyborgs as a means of reshaping an organisms

body to the new and different environs of outer space.This make man free to

create,to explore,to think and to feel.

The hybrid represented within the mechanic/organic body of the cyborg is a

powerful metaphor through which science fiction authors explores humanitys

relationship to technology.Early cyborg fictions delt with questions concerning the

breakdownof the notion of humanity, often attempting to determine the point at

which the cyborg looses its humanity.Authors also grappled with issues of human

becomingenslaved by their own technologies.With the dawn of information age

and the rise of personal computer, the cyborg came to be vieved as a positive fore,

a hybrid that had not lost its humanity but,instead gained a host of new talents and

powers.With this shift,the cyborg became an even more important figure for

dealing with issues of technology with science fiction.

Scanners Live In Vain by Cordwainer Smith

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick

The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway

Beyond the cartoonish heros or villains of some popular fiction, a number of

intellectualswho have generally conceived cyborgs in their expansive sensehave

seen liberating potentials in cyborgs. For some, such as Haldane (1923) or Weiner

(1965),cyborgs simply represent an extension of the positive capabilities of

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technologies; most practicing doctors and medical researchers probably share this

attitude, albeit infrequently naming medically assisted humans as cyborgs. Another

trend in social thought, however, puts a positive light on cyborgs because of their

possibility of breaking down normative roles of gender, class, race, or other

subaltern status (perhaps as much by compelling metaphor as by direct

intervention). This tradition largely follows Michel Foucaults conception of

biopower; Haraway (1991) is a prominent thinker in this tradition

Recent fiction around cyborgs, particularly that labeled cyberpunk, both takes a

morally ambivalent attitude towards what it conceives as more-or-less inevitable

cyborg technologies, and also tends to focus on cognitive and communicative

enhancements over physical ones.

HARWAY ON CYBORG ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMAN-

MACHINE RELATIONS

Harway explained that the cyborg is a cybernetic mechanism, a hybrid of machine

and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social

reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-

changing fiction. The cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a fusion of the organic and

the technical forged in particular, historical, cultural practices. Cyborgs are not

about the machine and the human,as if such things and subjects universally existed.

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Harway proposes what she terms a cyborg anthropology to study the relation

between the machine and the human, and she adds that it should proceed by

provocatively reconceiving the border relations among specific human, other

organisms and machines. One result of the unexpected result of such a provocative

approach is the recognition that attempts to establish binary oppositions between

human and machine, people and technology, has disturbing parallels with racism.

The state of Cyborg

The cyborg, thus residing on the interstices of so many different paradigms, can no

longer be limited to anesthetized representations and narratives, but is becoming a

part of everyday practices of global urbanism. The range of human-machine

relationships is diverse and increasingly varied. We might not be complete cyborgs

but we do deal with intimate machines and live in cyborg societies. Different

organizations like the Military, Space Studies, Medicine, Human Research and

Education are using new forms of organism-technology interactions in the

increasingly urbanized world.

P OSTHUMAN IN POSTHUMANISM

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In critical theory, the posthuman is a speculative being that represents or seeks to

enact a re-writing of what is generally conceived of as human. It is the object of

posthumanist criticism, which critically questions Renaissance humanism, a branch

of humanist philosophy which claims that human nature is a universal state from

which the human being emerges; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of

free will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman

recognizes imperfectability and disunity within him or herself, instead

understanding the world through context and heterogeneous perspectives while

maintaining intellectual rigour and a dedication to objective observations of the

world. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives

and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical

theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable one; in other

words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but rather one who can

"become" or embody different identities and understand the world from multiple,

heterogeneous perspectives.

The posthuman, and posthumanism with it, are philosophical positions that

overlap and are constantly engaged with much of postmodern philosophy, process

philosophy, emerging technologies, and evolutionary biology, so the field is

constantly changing. The critical notion of the posthuman is isolated from these

fields as the embodiment of critical engagement itself; that is to say that the

posthuman is not necessarily human in the first place, but is rather an embodied

medium through which critical consciousness is manifested.

Following Haraway, Hayles, whose work grounds much of the critical posthuman

discourse, asserts that liberal humanism - which separates the mind from the body

and thus portrays the body as a "shell" or vehicle for the mind- becomes

increasingly complicated in the late 20th and 21st centuries because information

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technology put the human body in question. Hayles maintains that we must be

conscious of information technological advancements while understanding

information as "disembodied," that is, something which cannot fundamentally

replace the human body but can only be incorporated into it and human life

practices.

The posthuman is a being that relies on context rather than relativity, on situated

objectivity rather than universal objectivity, and on the creation of meaning

through 'play' between constructions of informational patternand reductions to the

randomness of on-off switches, which are the foundation of digital binary systems.

Posthuman in transhumanism

According to transhumanist thinkers, a posthuman is a hypothetical future being

"whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no

longer unambiguously human by our current standards."

The difference between the posthuman and other hypothetical sophisticated non-

humans is that a posthuman was once a human, either in its lifetime or in the

lifetimes of some or all of its direct ancestors. As such, a prerequisite for a

posthuman is a transhuman, the point at which the human being begins surpassing

his or her own limitations, but is still recognizable as a human person or similar. In

this sense, the transition between human and posthuman may be viewed as a

continuum rather than an all-or-nothing event.

Methods

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Posthumans could be a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded

consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound

technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples

of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology

or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic

engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces,

advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or

implanted computers, and cognitive techniques

Posthuman future

As used in this article, "posthuman" does not necessarily refer to a conjectured

future where humans are extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth. As with other

species who speciate from one another, both humans and posthumans could

continue to exist. However, the apocalyptic

scenario appears to be a viewpoint shared among a minority of transhumanists such

as Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec, who could be considered misanthropes, at

least in regards to humanity in its current state. Alternatively, others such as Kevin

Warwick argue for the likelihood that both humans and posthumans will continue

to exist but the latter will predominate in society over the former because of their

abilities

Many science fiction authors, such as Greg Egan, Bruce Sterling, Greg Bear,

Charles Stross and Ken MacLeod, have written works set in posthuman futures.

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WANT TO LIVE TO 200???

Cyborg, a compound word derived from cybernetics and organism, is a term coined

by Manfred Clynes in 1960 to describe the need for mankind to artificially enhance

biological functions in order to survive in the hostile environment of Space.

Originally, a cyborg referred to a human being with bodily functions aided or

controlled by technological devices, such as an oxygen tank, artificial heart valve

or insulin pump. Over the years, the term has acquired a more general meaning,

describing the dependence of human beings on technology. In this sense, cyborg

can be used to characterize anyone who relies on a computer to complete their

daily work.

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Techno-optimists believe this will produce an era of universal and unprecedented

peace and prosperity, where information flows freely and computers carry much of

the burden of life. Pessimists think it will bring about the demise of the human

race.

The question is whether the enormous power of quantum computers will allow

them to learn human levels of logic, reasonand innovation. Could they, for

example, feel love, hate and compassion? In short, will a computers brain have

what in humans we call a mind?

CONCLUSION

As many scientists have eloquently argued, once a technology is out there, you

cannot make it go away. The genie will not go back in the bottle. There was a

technology that the human race ever abandoned wholesale, even the hydrogen

bomb or other weapons of mass destruction with the power to wipe out all life on

earth. You might eventually be able to ban the production of H-bombs, but it wouldtake a long time to kill everybody who knew how to make it. While scientists

discussed the possibilitu of a ban on recombinant DNA research,they knew it was

not feasible.

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Thus, once invented, bioelectronic technologies cannot be wished away. Once

given the opportunity to improve themselves in any form, human beings rarely

surrender the opportunity, whether its pumping iron or exercise to raise physical

fitness, so-called smart drugs to raise intelligence, or vitamin therapies to stem

the onslaught of the aging process. When human beings are offered the chance to

utilize computers and electronic technologies within their bodies to achieve the

same results, it is almost certain they will embrace them regardless of the risk.

Based on this, it would be unrealistic to try and ban such technologies, however

one might worry about their ethical and social consequences. A ban would only

probably force them into a large, criminal black market, as illegal drugs and

weapons already have been.

A new cyborg bioethics may be necessary. While it cannot be possible to foresee

consequences resulting from bioelectronics, most scientists are already aware of

what some of the major dangers are. Researchers in biocomputing may be required

to adopt protocols on acceptable research with human subjects, much as genetic

engineers did back in the 1970s. In drafting bioethical imperatives for bioelectronic

research, it will probably be imperative to consider the concerns of groups such as

religious community, science to ignore their concerns simply out of the insistence

that they are merely acting out of anti-science ignorance will leave an important

group out of the loop of this research. This is uncharted territory of the human

race, and it is the first time in which our own built environment may be directly

incorporated into our own sense of self and human nature. Our own biocomputers

evolved under a specific set of evolutionary circumstances, after all, and they may

not be equipped with the foresight and moral sense to keep with the accelerating

pace of technology.

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Since this is the case, it is probably imperative for society to assert that the

scientists and engineers charged with creating this new technology exert the proper

amount of social responsibility. Safeguards will have to be insisted on to prevent

the possible negative impacts discussed, and many of these things have to be built

in at the instrumental level, since the probably cannot be achieved only through

policy and regulation. But ultimately, bioethicists will have to grapple with the

fundamental issues involved, which touch on aspects of human existence and

human nature which reach to the core of what most people think is involved in

what it means to be human, and this will not be an easy dilemma to resolve.

REFERENCES

www.google.com

en..wikipedia.org

www.kevinwarwick.com

sss.sagepub.com

www.carverhouse.net

www.informaworld.com

Seminar Cyborgs (2)

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