User:Francg/expub/media-writing/essay-draft1

The Art of Cybernetic Union
by Massimo Barbato

1) Writer: describe, in your own words, what the text (s) you are reading are about.

The article explores colour-blindness of the artist Neil Harbisson, by analysing the advantages of connecting technology to a human, as a way to improve and broaden its natural given characteristics, when a particular disorder appears to be affecting the functions of the body. Although the unique possibilities to improving human physical or cognitive limitations by plugging a body to an electronic or mechanical device are yet very hypothetical and might extend beyond our imagination, technology is nevertheless continuously transforming the classic and fictional conception of cybernetics to a more realistic evidence. The communications between both automated and living systems are continuously evolving, upgrading and rising up advanced engineered tools, which might not only be able to increase our knowledge but also expand our senses, consequently inducing a wider, deeper and exclusive experience.

Neil Harbisson developed the ‘eyeborg’, a device that attaches to his head that uses a software and a sensor to transfer the natural wavelength of a colour’s tone into audible frequencies to the brain, allowing to conduct sound through the skull (whether for normal, weaken or damage hearing) enabling him to perceive colours in a complete different way as humans do. As a result of this transformation, he has not only adapted to an alternative new domain of codified information but simultaneously become significantly precise with detecting colours, proving that knowledge can reach superior states by implanting enginery. Moreover, he has increased awareness by upgrading the ‘eyeborg’ to a more sophisticated audio input that detects ultrasound, infrasound, ultraviolet waves and wifi signals with a 360-degree perception. To a certain extent, changing one’s senses for new better mechanical ones, can mislead to ethical interpretations manifesting on specific behavioural principles that might presume of the given nature as granted or unchangeable. However, whether or not technology might be detaching us from each other, the fact of being able to experience beyond our senses things we normally lack by interacting to cybernetics, it would indeed be a more efficient way to predict and have control over specific situations around us. Ironically and contrarily to what human qualities really applies for, Harbisson believes that technology could actually connect us all closer to better comprehend nature, while removing our fears from imaginary dangers, in fact he feels more connected to it than before.

2) Why this text is of interest to you?

It is interesting to make a union between technology and human perception and how this can assist people with rare conditions or disabilities carry on with their lives creatively to be actively not only part of society, but of a distinctive, exceptional and special view of art where imagination and inspiration are enticed by extrasensory computerized gadgets. In a world where art and the use of creative ideas used to be commonly related to artisans, it is nowadays broadening to a wider field where science, its engineers and neuroscientists have been particularly responsible for the fascinating and (in many cases as with Harbisson’s “eyeborg”) unpredictable powerfully compelling effects of connecting electronical devices to our bodies or brains. That can lead us all to new ingenious and insightful thinking, through which we might probably be able to turn ourselves into remote controls being able to operate multiple software at a distance, which in a pedagogic and psychic way it could enhance learning, reading, working or transmitting/communicating thoughts almost telepathically to people while dematerializing information or other tangible strains. In the age of information technology, artificial intelligence is moulding data into disembodied and accessible sources that carries and emerges a specific cultural dimension of man and machine; the “posthuman”. A new range of future cybernetic systems has to be further explored in order to compromise and implicate technology for our living needs but also to question reality and its boundaries in society, freeing individuals to independently merge their qualities to any tool that facilitates a lively feedback/transmission experience, whether or not coming from machinery or seemingly against nature’s constitution fundamental principles.

3) What is its relation to yourself directed research?

I am personally interested about our evolution on how we perceive information, and as a result new knowledge, thinking or reasoning based on cognitive experiences that gradually nurtures our understanding of the social life-frame we live in and its diverse environment. Harbisson’s colour-blindness is a particular example of many others prosthetic-like devices that needs to be functional through yet complicated procedures, in which a series of electrodes requires to be implanted onto certain areas of the brain’s surface (right inside the skull) in order to effectively transmit or stimulate electronic signals to and how do we extend our knowledge beyond our human capacity. 

4) How can you turn the questions these texts raise into work?

Research strands: things I can follow up in the future. Transcoding - recoding - encoding. Notes: Norbert Wiener is the father of cybernetics, the science of feedback systems his early book Cybernetics coined the term; later he wroteThe Human Use of Human Beings which talks about his research, including The Boston Arm (wiener's research), The Hearing Glove (Wiener's research) - Wiener (with Shannon) established that information can be measured; and also information has a relation to entropy / K. Hayles: How We Became Posthuman* / Flatland*: / Gordan Pask* read about him in Andrew Pickering, Cybernetic Brain* / -In fiction / perception filters (Dr. Who) / 1967: Cybernetic Serendipity - art and technology (included Gordon Pask)