Week 3 Readings - CYBORG!

 CYBORG

This week I really enjoyed the reading on Mind Control and the Internet by Sue Halpern. 

The article outlined how technology has progressed over time and how it now has the possibility of improving human function. If electronics can be integrated into the human form, it appears that we can be enhanced and improved. The readings outlined how universities have discovered that computers can be controlled using signals directly from the brain...... A scary thought. It seems exciting to be able to direct our thoughts to a computer, but not so exciting if a computer becomes able to direct its processing to our thoughts. It seems difficult to discern where people will draw the line. Having a computer in your mind is not something I would want to herald in without caution... Or at all.

I was genuinely surprised to find a whole host of academic lierature that talk about cybernetics and cyborg health. One of the peer review academic acticles by Klugman (2001) outlined the principles very succinctly, he stated

Cybernetic components serve one of two main purposes-to replace body parts and abilities or to enhance human capacities. In replacement cyborgs, the machine returns the individual to something approaching former functioning. For example, implanted telescopes permit some vision to those nearly blinded from macular degeneration. 17 Enhanced cyborgs, however, do more than recapture lost function; the cybernetic implant allows an individual to do things that were not possible before. For instance, if the implanted telescope enables a person to see the stars or to see in the infrared, then he or she would be an enhanced cyborg. This distinction between replacement and enhancement is more a spectrum than a hard border. The enhanced telescope would both replace lost visual acuity and confer new superhuman abilities (p. 49)

This outline is an interesting look at what cyborgs are defined as and how they can take many forms. The same article had a very simple table to show what different cyborg types there are; transplant bodies, super bodies, disembodied minds and linked body... I was highly surprised to see how in depth Cyborg theory was.

The article  from the lecture content talked about how a man was able to hear after having an implant in his ear sending signals directly to his brain. This type of enhancement seems promising, but if I look at things critically, there seems to be a fine line between freedom and imprisonment here, when does a computer having the ability to discern what you hear  or think for you become control? Are these developments really bringing us toward freedom or manipulation......

This article really stands out when compared to the article by Melanie Swalwell on the Usefulness of Computers in the 80's. Its interesting to not that when computers first became available to the common individual in the 80's the biggest problem was discerning its usefulness..... That idea has evolved phenomenally in the last 40 years to the point now where we have to begin to decide where we put the limitations on the 'usefulness' of our computers.


 Klugman, C. M. (2001). From cyborg fiction to medical reality. Literature and Medicine, 20(1), 39-54. 
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