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The Digital Human BBC podcasts

Notes on Cyborg

A cyborg is someone who’s body or physiological functioning is dependent on electronics.
Process of union between technology and body. Perceiving different.
Changing one’s identity by attaching devices to our bodies or by replacing parts of it by prosthetics. Creating extensions of our body’s given natural qualities. Prosthetic shell. The eyes are the most human part of our bodies, we can see who one really is, eye contact is a sacred kind of communication, a real conversation is when you are looking into somebody’s eyes. His eye is a camera.
High-end technology, embracing differences a bit more. People might be learning to be a bit more proud to how they look. People made tools for self-created expression. They choose to make a statement about their extra powers.

There is a fear about prosthetics.
Super-human exhibition. Dr Daniel Glaser. Display and desire to enhance yourself. We are becoming increasingly comfortable with the notion of what a super human is. This can be a bit taboo. https://wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/superhuman ‘Superhuman’ Exhibit Tracks Human Enhancement Through History,
From Dildos To Cyborgs: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/superhuman-exhibition-enhancement_n_1682641.html
Plastic Surgery Video Performance: Regina Jose Galindo, Recorte por la Linea (Cut Through the Line). Production stills from video-performance.

BIO-ETHICS: there are triggers that could think that could be dangerous (deviation from our status quo), it’s a mistake to think that they hold any intrinsic moral significance, triumphs of modern ethics: rise above to look out for reasons.

Does that threatens that individual’s humanity? Is it good for that person?
The current state of the human is being transformed into the trans-human, which is a link between being a biological species and non exclusively biological species, so trans-humanism or Morphological freedom: specific right of enhancement, the concept is that is your right your body, you choose as long as it doesn’t affect or hurts anyone else. It also protects the rights of someone who doesn’t wants to enhance as well. Cultural perspective for society to not decide what is best for someone else, but for people to have rights to enhance and decide by themselves.

The whole idea and fantastic part of technology is that you can always interface, upgrade it.
Everyday cyborg: People waking up next to their phone, having this device in their pockets that is being checked all the time, immediately checking email or what their friends are doing online, but the difference is that is not connected to somebody’s brain but it is something you interface with, symbiotically exchanging information with this device that is connecting you with somebody else, becoming a kind of actor network of human and non-human devices at the same time. When we are reading a book, we are part book as well, we are part of the simulated reality that some writer has written that you sunk into, and same with the device. There is a kind of fusion, that is sort of wrapped or embedded into us, we just have that embodiment int our natural behavior without really noticing it, that this device has created a new role in your life, and it’s just when this device disappears, or the batteries run out, and you are in an environment that you can’t access that part of your brain anymore that’s been stored in this little tiny device that you understand how much we depend on it and how much it emphasizes your life and what you do.

Are we trying to become something else or make ourselves better? That sense of identity is the question, if it’s functional we will be accepting it, but if it make us superhuman then we become skeptical.

Networks of nanotubes may allow cells to share everything from infections and cancer to dementia-linked proteins / Daniel Engber The neurologist who hacked is brain and almost lost his mind. / Delivering drug therapy. / Amputee makes history controlling two modular prosthetic limb