Critical Annotated Webliography by Chris Mung Pak YU

Introduction
Nowadays, technology developed to a stage that out of our imagination. Especially internet growth, the popularity is keep rising, more and more people have their own computer and can be linked to the internet. They are able to connect to the world and communicate with the others through the internet. With no doubt, technology changes our way of living and influence the world a lot in different aspects.

Cyborg in medical
Cyborg helps human a lot in medical aspect and somehow, blur the boundary of human and robot. In the old days if someone got sick, there was not much choice to cure. However, technology allows us to invent many new skills and medical technology to cure a human body. Like new medicine, for cancer, new artificial body part for people that need a substitute body part to help us in their life. “Many of these technologies were created to restore abilities that were lost to injury, disease, and age. Limb prostheses help to maintain movement and normal function even if a limb is lost, glasses help to correct failing eyesight, and ear horns assist individuals that are hard of hearing. These technologies were the precursors before the cyborg revolution in medicine. Much of the old technologies were an external extension of the human body. Although these devices assisted the individual in one way, the machines could also become a hindrance to the user” [1](Samuel Dokko). Moreover, technology is in a stage that we can creates internal human organs and materials that helps people with internal organ crock up or malfunction. Like liver cancer, kidney disease or heart disease. We have also invented different kinds of micro robot to do surgery that human hand cannot perform. “One of the most commonly used restorative technologies in patients is an artificial organ. For many scientists and medical professionals, creating an artificial organ that is equal to that of the original has become a dreamful obsession. Another driving factor to create artificial organs is the need for technologies that could replace traditional organ transplantations”[2](Samuel Dokko). However, after transplant an artificial body part or internal organ, is that human a human or cyborg? Because our body contain piece of organ and material that is not born naturally and is not organic, so does that consider as a human or cyborg?

Figure of cyborg
How cyborg being define? Is it just a concept in web? Or is really happening around us, as some of us had become cyborg by different reasons. There’re a lot of impact on the definition of human being, social activities and development of human history. Moreover it also brings us new kind of culture like cyberpunk in our new generation, does this kind of culture affect and changes our life continuously? “The figure of the cyborg is at root a spatial metaphor. But how does the idea of the cyborg intersect with spatial theory? In what ways does the cyborg reinforce or contradict other emerging strands of urban thought that also emphasize urban complexity and hybridity? Has the epistemological subtlety and political prescience of the cyborg, as originally formulated in the 1980s, been realized in practice or simply been diffused through the term’s widening usage? And should we ultimately reject the idea of the cyborg as an anachronism derived from cold war science and the first generation of twentieth-century cyberpunk culture?”[3](MATTHEW GANDY)

Cyberpunk and science fiction
Nowadays cyberpunk is a kind of new culture within science fiction and is generate by cyborg. How this culture affect the ordinary science fiction genre in our culture can be explained in this article. “If the investigation of our relationship to science and technology is the definitive feature of science fiction, then the exploration of human couplings with a particular type of technology constitutes a broad categorization of cyberpunk fiction. Cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction which emerged in the 1980s, is particularly concerned with exploring the effects of "cyborg technologies" on late twentieth-century culture. Cyberpunk is differentiated from the more mainstream science fiction literature by three central themes which illuminate the role of technology in society: futurology, techno-paradigms, and the cyborg presence” [4](Lauraine Leblanc)

Cyborg and feminism
This can help us have a clear sense about the impact of cyborg on feminism movement. The existence of cyborg brought a huge impact on the idea of feminism, because cyborg is somehow neutral gendered. There are a lot to concern within such circumstances. “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, 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, and a world-changing fiction. The international women’s movements have constructed “women’s experience,” as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object.”[5] (Steven Seidman)

Cyborg and human self

Since the existence of cyborg, we have been questioning ourselves the boundary between human and cyborg. In this book, they have strong argument on such question; whether we are human or not a human since our ancestor know how to use different tools to live our life. “It picked up speed when our more recent forebears began to wire up telegraph, telephone... It is repeated whenever a child learns to do these things; for the cyborg, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It is not that we have become posthuman in the wireless network era; since Neanderthal early- adopters first picked up sticks and stones, we have never been human.”[6] (William J. Mitchell)
There are still lots of argument in cyborg and human aspects, but I believe one day we will agree that we are all cyborg, because we certainly will be linked up by technology and network connection. We cannot get rid of that happen.


Footnotes:

[1]Samuel Dokko,“Cyborg Bodies in Medicine 2007” 1 March 2009 <http://www.cyborgdb.org/dokko.htm>
[2] Samuel Dokko,“Cyborg Bodies in Medicine 2007” 1 March 2009 <http://www.cyborgdb.org/dokko.htm>
[3] MATTHEW GANDY, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research “Cyborg Urbanization:Complexity and Monstrosity in the Contemporary City” Volume 29.1, March 2005 P 26–49 , 1 March 2009
<http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk:8080/print-version/about-the-department/people/academics/matthew-gandy/files/pdf1.pdf>
[4] Lauraine Leblanc, “Razor girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction” 2003 , 1 March 2009<http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/genre_and_gender_in_cyberpunk_fiction.html>
[5] Steven Seidman, “The Postmodern Turn: New perspectives on social theory” 1994 1 March 2009<http://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=bcfEK-owDrwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA82&dq=cyborg&ots=mfT7guw-wO&sig=MiA3of1-MlOjUTvy0GKIGPWuBEY#PPP9,M1>
[6] William J. Mitchell, “Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City MIT” 2004 p.169, 1 March 2009 <http://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=wcBo7pq3X1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=cyborg&ots=Xoc2PmmPkt&sig=HN50UfldDRR4E5u6_i4xAP_3Qmw#PPP1,M1>

Bliography:

Lauraine Leblanc, “Razor girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction” 2003 1 March 2009
<http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/genre_and_gender_in_cyberpunk_fiction.html>

MATTHEW GANDY, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
“Cyborg Urbanization: Complexity and Monstrosity in the Contemporary City” Volume 29.1, March 2005 P 26–49 , 1 March 2009
<http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk:8080/print-version/about-the-department/people/academics/matthew-gandy/files/pdf1.pdf>


Steven Seidman, “The Postmodern Turn: New perspectives on social theory” Cambridge University Press, 1994 1 March 2009
<http://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=bcfEK-owDrwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA82&dq=cyborg&ots=mfT7guw-wO&sig=MiA3of1-MlOjUTvy0GKIGPWuBEY#PPP9,M1>

Samuel Dokko, “Cyborg Bodies in Medicine 2007” 1 March 2009 “http://www.cyborgdb.org/dokko.htm”

William J. Mitchell, “Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City MIT” Press, 2004 1 March 2009<http://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=wcBo7pq3X1AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=cyborg&ots=Xoc2PmmPkt&sig=HN50UfldDRR4E5u6_i4xAP_3Qmw#PPP1,M1>