Cyberculture and Cyborgs

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011, Cyborgs, Cyberculture and Cyborgs

The cyborg is the mascot of cyberculture. The cyborg represents a new structure of technological fusion. Pacemakers, synthetic knee and hip joints, anabolic steroids, and countless other technological advancements have enhanced the quality of daily life and increased life expectancy dramatically. As Donna Haraway asserts in her discussion of feminism, science, and technology, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, "we are all cyborgs" and the cyborg holds the promise of freedom from established categories of difference by removing the physical/social distinctions based upon class, race, sexuality, and most importantly, gender. The liberatory potential offered by the infusion of technology into cybercultural social structure. Donna Haraway asserts "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess."

Donna Haraway's vision of the cyborg as harbinger of a postgender world has not necessarily come to fruition in this era of technological fusion. Cyberculture has not fulfilled the promise of boundary transcendence but rather reclaims technology as a positive image of capitalism.

Cybernetic fusion serves to "express nostalgia for a time of masculine superiority". In many instances cybernetic fusion posits a realm where previously contested paradigms have become reinstitutionalized.

Cyborg

A cyborg is a man-machine system in which the control mechanisms of the human portion are modified externally by drugs or regulatory devices so that the being can live in an environment different from the normal one. The New York Times, 1960.

Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used the term cyborg in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space.

The cyborg is seen today as an organism that has technologically enhanced abilities.

Cyborgs in fiction portray human contempt for over-dependence on technology threatening free will. Cyborgs are often portrayed with physical or mental abilities far exceeding humans.

Real cyborgs, unlike fictional cyborgs are more frequently people who use cybernetic technology to repair or overcome the physical and mental constraints of their bodies, those with bionic, or robotic, implants.

"Cyborg" is a science-fictional shorting of "cybernetic organism". In the near future, we may have more and more artificial body parts - arms, legs, hearts, eyes - and digital computing and communication supplements. The logical conclusion is that one might become a brain in a wholly artificial body.

Prostheses, C-Leg and the more advanced iLimb are considered by some to be the first real steps towards the next generation of real-world cyborg applications.

Cochlear implants and magnetic implants which provide people with a sense that they would not otherwise have had can be thought of as creating cyborgs.

In 2002 Project Cyborg, a British scientist, Kevin Warwick, had an array of 100 electrodes fired in to his nervous system in order to link his nervous system into the internet. He successfully carried out a series of experiments including extending his nervous system over the internet to control a robotic hand, a form of extended sensory input and the first direct electronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans.

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