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