Eight Theses on Cyborgism

Eight Theses on Cyborgism

via Beyond The Beyond by Bruce Sterling on 2/4/11

*These erudite GenXers aren’t gonna be half so urbane when a real no-kidding cyborg shows up.

http://blog-admin.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/wp-admin/post-new.php

(…)

“… 8 theses on cyborgism. Martin Luther by way of Steve Mann, though, if that’s the case, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to nail it to. The TED website? Donna Haraway’s office at UC Santa Cruz?

“Either way, here’s what we came up with:

“1. Pointing to something like cell-phone use and saying “we’re all cyborgs” is not substantially different from pointing to cooking or writing and saying “we’re all cyborgs.”

“2. Cooking and writing are nothing to sneeze at! They’re important technologies that we’ve incorporated nearly seamlessly into our psychological lives and (in the case of cooking) our biological evolution.

“3. Despite our long-running species enmeshment in technology, we’re witnessing the emergence of something closer to the popular techno-organic image of the cyborg, if not necessarily the original idea of either the cyborg or the broader field of cybernetics.

“4. That new thing (whatever form it takes) is bigger than computers or phones or consumer communication technologies. It points to the incorporation of technological components that violate or transform the bodily/agential integrity of human beings.

“5. This is happening in a way that’s partially invisible, as part of the medical/industrial/networked aspects of our societies (tooth fillings, drugs, Google Instant, etc.), and in a way that’s much more visible, more closely related to our ideas of disability, transgenderism, etc.

“6. This presents a weird synthesis of the classic idea of the cyborg, the development of medical technology, the evolution of consumer technology, and identity politics.

“7. Cyborgs have a troubling dual origin, which includes both mega-reliance on techno infrastructure and homesteading DIY self-emancipation. This tension will not go away.

“8. Equally, this tension is nothing new. This is a tension that began in earnest during the Macy conferences in the 1940s, when cyberneticists, technologists and anthropologists began to meet to discuss this very subject….”

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