September Is Cyborg Month 118
Snowmit writes "In May 1960, Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline presented a paper called 'Drugs, Space, and Cybernetics.' The proceedings of the symposium were published in 1961, but, before that, an excerpt of Clynes & Kline's paper appeared in the September issue of Astronautics magazine (issue 13), entitled Cyborgs and Space [PDF]. Aside from a mention in the New York Times, that's is the first time the word appears in print. This month is the 50th anniversary of that article. To commemorate, a group of writers and artists have gotten together to create 50 Post About Cyborgs. Over the course of the month, there will be essays, fiction, links to great older material, comics, and even a song. We're going to talk about Daleks, IEDs, Renaissance memory palaces, chess computers, prosthetic imagination, Videodrome, mutants, sports, and maybe the Bible. To kick things off, Kevin Kelly wrote this essay arguing that we've been cyborgs all along."
Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
No we don't. At least, not as a species. Just because I can't drink the water in Mexico without getting horribly sick doesn't mean that 'homo sapiens' broadly construed as a species can't. Exhibit A being the indigenous population that survives just fine drinking the water there.
Re:Cybauorg! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, no.
A Terminator is NOT a cyborg. A cyborg is an ORGANISM which has been ENHANCED or even REPLACED by cybernetic machinery. The key is that the original entity was a living biologically based organism.
A Terminator is merely a ROBOT covered by an organic covering. The covering is no more significant than if the robot were just wearing clothes. It's just covering. The machine underneath is not a living organism and never was.
Just because James Cameron doesn't know his technology, the word cyborg has been debased beyond all recognition. It's probably a waste of time to try to correct it any more, but I like wasting my time.
Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments (Score:2, Insightful)
There's no argument that if we were to have all technology/tools removed and even lose our ability to create primitive tools the human carrying capacity of the earth would be at most a few million, maybe only a few hundred thousand. So I guess you could say that 99.99% of us are "cyborgs".
If you make the definition of "cyborg" so broad as to include any basic tool use (as Kevin Kelly does) then the term loses it's usefulness, IMHO. It's actually pretty hard to define the word. I'd want to include active prosthetics such as myoelectric limbs and cochlear implants but not artificial limbs that aren't directly controlled by the nervous system or sensors that merely modify, filter or enhance stimulus for an existing sense organ (I don't think wearing night-vision goggles makes you a cyborg). I think the term is most useful to describe people who have been enhanced beyond the human norm, not merely those using technology to replace functions they individually don't have.
Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
Better to be "full of shit" than having it running out of you like a waterfall.
As someone who has had Amoebiasis (from tap water no less), and spent pretty much 3 weeks on antibiotics sat in the bathroom doubled up in pain and everything I either ate or drank passing right through my system and out the other end in 5 minutes, I can tell you it's no joke.
Still, you go one drinking your deer piss and whatnot ... I'll stick with my purified drinking water.