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."
Interesting premise, but flawed arguments (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea is interesting, and it's certainly true that if all technology were removed, including stone and bone implements, humans would have a much tougher time surviving. But there are areas of the world where we could survive without handmade weapons or fire. We're not very well-equipped for such an existence, but we're not completely helpless.
One argument the author makes repeatedly which makes no sense to me is the notion that cooking provides an "external stomach" which pre-digests our food. There are some foods that are unsafe to eat without being cooked, because of disease that they could be carrying, but in general very little of what we eat MUST be cooked, or is even harder to digest without cooking. Raw meat is just as nutritious and as easily digestible as cooked meat, it just doesn't taste as good (with some exceptions). Raw vegetables are often more nutritious than cooked vegetables.
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".
Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments (Score:3, Interesting)
AFAIK, cooked meat actually is a lot easier to digest. Also, the argument that raw vegetables are more nutritious ignored the fact that the nutrients tend to be more bioavailable after cooking. So, while cooking may destroy some nutrients, it also unlocks a lot more so that your body generally winds up being better nourished by the "nutrient-poor" cooked version. See how long you can live on raw potato if you don't believe me. I imagine you'd give up pretty quick. (Even ignoring the taste.) OTOH, a human can live for a decent amount of time on cooked potatoes.