Critical Annotated Webliography by Kelvin So

Guiding question 1.

We are living in an age which technology dominant our lives. In the past centuries, people’s living standard improved by wisely use of technology. Now, people start to further enhance human life by integrating technology to our body, the concept of Cyborg emerged under the notion of technology integration.

Kelvin Warwick’s article[i] gives us a practical example how to integrate technology with body and experimental usage of computer chip implant. By implanting a chip in his arm, he is able to switch on the light automatically without physically touching the switches when he enters his lab. That is only part of his experiment, he use similar techniques later to implant chip in to human to record bio-electrical signal between brain and muscle, and try to analysis emotion and sensation of human. Such research is very useful in the medical field, for example helping the limb-transplant patient gain the sense from the artificial limbs. In his second experiment, Project Cyborg 2.0, he try to install micro chips into silicon made artificial skin, by scanning the brain activity, the chip can transmit the signals which are possible for people to control computer system just by using their brain

When we talk about “Cyborg”, we may instantly have an image of Terminator, which has steel body and computer brain coated with “organic skin”, a “cybernetic organism”. Dan Sharpe’s article[ii] mentioned ethical problem that may encountered when we enter the age of Cyborg. One positive opinion of being Cyborg is enhancing human lives, take contact lens as example, it improve people’s vision by integrating a lens into their eyes. But the negative opinion is people will lose their will, or “be less human” by under control by technology. The example Dan takes is Borg in Star Trek, using technology to make their body perfect, but individuals do not exist in ­Borg, it act as collective consciousness. No matter Cyborg is good or bad, Terminator can only be classify as robot because Cyborg must be part of human, or “transform” from human. Terminator also lack of soul of humanity, of the concept of “Ghost” in Ghost in the shell.

In general people’s mind, Cyborg is the enhancing solution for many purposes. Military soldier cyborgs[iii] is not a new concept for us. There are already many projects about how to enhance the combat ability of soldier by integrating technology into their body. Some of them are aim to improve the communication ability: real time video and body status transmit, some are aim to re-engineering human body to make soldier gain more muscle strength and recover more quickly, and some projects are researching the way that make soldier can stay awake and remain alert for 7 days. These are not new concept for us, many movies has imaged such kind of super soldiers. However these projects are actually exist, funded by government and some of them already entered field-test stage. The article show us that Cyborgs are not only appears in our imagination, there maybe practical prototype cyborgs existing.

As mentioned before, Cyborg technology can be used in Military purpose, such technologies also can be apply in medical purpose. Samuel Dokko’s article[iv] give us some examples that Cyborg technology enhance our lives. In his article, he mentioned the Cyborg technology-artificial body parts can be implant in to human body, to “restore lost function, organs and limbs.” Artificial organs are not something new to us nowadays, we have commercial artificial heart invented in the last decade, which extend the patient’s life let them survive until they found the suitable organ donor. There are also researches which aim to invent a fully functional artificial limb to restore human limbs. The article give a detail example of a artificial hearing device which is implanted to restore the hearing ability to the deaf people, such technology enhance human lives greatly in physical way.

Except the “hardcore” cyborgs mentioned above, some people think that we are already become cyborgs since our modern lives have close relationship with technology. Amber Case’s Blog[v] has suggested that human are becoming cyborgs through uploading hypertext, or constructing their identity on the internet. This weblog entry are mostly talk about the cyborg anthropology, but his article gives us some online social interaction examples that how people using internet to construct their identity and build the power relationship to order people: “On facebook, identity and value is constructed through images, on Twitter, power is constructed through text, retweeting, link exchange, etc.” As we entered the digital age, such kind of social interaction is becoming part of our life. Under the current situation, we are all cyborgs existing both online and real life.

When we come across the identity on internet, we may have whole new experience because of the variety of identity we can choose to be on the internet. Jennifer Breen’s article[vi] give us details that why sex swapping is so common on the internet. While we can not choose being male or female when we were born, and it is difficult for people to take gender reassignment surgery, sex change online is relatively easy. The article suggested that under online environment, male would like to become female to express their woman aspect opinion, which they would not do it in actual life. Females also like to become male to experience “the feeling of a guy” or to see how other women interact with man. There are also interesting examples about gender changing in online game, the male players may tend to become female characters to gain the help from other male players, and the female players would like to become male character to get higher levels by helping the female characters. The essential element of gender changing online is not just take a opposite sex name or choice opposite sex character, the most important thing is to make other people sitting in front of the computer believe that you are a woman/man. The way to do so is the pretend the way how woman or man behaves, how they talk to others, and how they present themselves. This may solidify the stereotype of gender, but we can understand the way how the opposite sex thinks, such gender relationships cause a significant change in the way that we think about gender.

To conclude, as human are more depends on technology, if cyborg are figures that integrating technology into human bodies, people living under digital age can be classified as cyborg no matter they are “hardly” or “softly” technology integrated.

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Reference:

[i] Kelvin Warwick. “Cyborg 1.0”, Wired Magazine, 8.02 (February 2000)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.02/warwick.html (accessed 2 March 2009)

[ii] Dan Sharpe, “Cyborg Philosophy: ethical issues concerning augmentation”, CYBORG D. (2007)

http://cyborgdb.org/sharpe.htm (accessed 2 March 2009)

[iii] “Cyborg Soldiers”, Tactical Gear. (2007)

http://www.tacticalwarfightergear.com/tacticalgear/catalog/Cyborg_Soldiers.php/ (accessed 2 March 2009)

[iv] Samuel Dokko, “Cyborg Body in Medicine”, CYBORG D. (2007)

http://www.cyborgdb.org/dokko.htm (accessed 2 March 2009)

[v] Amber Case, “Robots, Robots, Everywhere – A Field Guide to Cyborg Anthropology”(12 December 2008)

http://oakhazelnut.makerlab.com/2008/11/12/robots-robots-everywhere-a-field-guide-to-cyborg-anthropology/ (accessed 2 March 2009)

[vi] Jennifer Breen, “Cyber Gender”

http://www.cyborgdb.org/breen.htm (accessed 2 March 2009)