Question 1Cyborgs are hybrid entities that are neither wholly technological nor completely organic, which means that the Cyborg has the potential not only to disrupt persistent dualisms [in language and thought] … but also to refashion our thinking’. (Balsamo). Drawing on current scholarly work, discuss ways in which the Cyborg is still a transgressive figure.
Nowadays, many of use cannot live a life without technologies. Almost every teenager in Hong Kong has a mobile phone, and goes on internet everyday. Therefore we became a “cyborg” ourselves. The basic meaning of “cyborg” is the combination human and machines. For easier to understand, people wearing spectacles can be defined as a cyborg in someway. Thus are we really turned into cyborg, or is cyborg still in a progressive figure.
Technologies really help to improve the performances of athletes in the sport fields.
According to “Cyborgization of Sport” , Schulman mentioned the issue of body prosthesis technology in his article. This topic is often debated by people in the society. Two common examples of body prosthesis are the Tommy John Surgery and Prosthetic legs. Tommy John Surgery is mainly used by baseball players. This surgery is simply replacing the ligament of the arm with ligaments from other parts of the body. Originally this technique is used to extend the playing period of the pitchers. However, nowadays professional pitcher will do this surgery more often just for improving their strength, so that they can throw harder and faster. The second example about Prosthetic legs, this technique allows runners to adjust the length they want to stride, so that they can run faster. For prosthetic legs, the International Association of Athletics Federations has banned the runners who have used this technique to compete in Olympic Games. That is because they take that as a “technical aid”. Thus a question has brought forth, that is to what extent athletes can do so they are still normal gifted person but not to something as “technical aid”?
Can man ever live in space? Base on the features human-being has now, the answer is no. However, according to Clynes and Kline, being cyborg could help us to travel in space. Every living organism living on earth has its own mechanism so that it can live in a condition, and not in others. Like fishes have special breathing systems so they can live in water but not on land. Some plants have special shapes so that they can live in the dessert not in forest. Human’s body mechanism allows us to live on earth only with the oxygen and water we needed to survive. Therefore, if one organism wanted to live at somewhere else, like fish on land or human in space, the organism must change its mechanism. Clynes and Kline have mentioned many examples that technologies can help man to live in space, both physically and phycho-physically. If all the techniques can work, then human can really explore the space outside the earth by being cyborg. At the end of the essay, the authors agree that being cyborg and travel to space really improves what human is. The technology even can bring new and larger dimension for the human spirit as well.
Alexander Chislenko in his essay “Technology as extension of human functional architecture” point out if we want to think that human is in the process of evolution base on technologies, we must totally understand what is happening now, and what may happen in the future. In our world now, there are many technologies that can help to improve our body. There are mainly two methods of combining human and technologies now, one is by attachments and the other is by implanting. Attachments mean attaching some tools on to human skin, which is the external part of a body. Implanting mean to inject something into a body that may affect the person’s DNA or other internal organs. By these two methods, people would become something called cyborg that is a physically mixed system. By being cyborg, human lives in different aspect can be improved. So what will happen in the future? The writer would concern more of the personal identity problem in the future. As people may have the abilities to change their body in the future by the scientific improvements, the identity of a person may change from time to time. Thus the identity life span of people would become very short, as the goal and function of human may be changed. Therefore, the identity of people will be mixed up and confused in the future.
Dylan McKeever & Andrew Stevenson introduced various kinds of “Brian-Computer Interface Systems” (BCI’s) developed which serve different functions. These technologies in the field of neuroscience are often applied to restore functions to the disabled or to enhance the existing abilities of human, while some are invented to improve efficiency and accuracy when performing tasks. One of the examples discussed in the passage to tackle the physical disability of human being is a system called BrainGate invented by the company Cyberkinetics. It allows the persons interfacing with household objects like turning TV on and off etc. through the device implanted in the skull. The device translates the information and neuro-activities in brain to the computer connected to the users. The writers then suggested another BCI’s which can hopefully be helping in security enhancement for buildings while the system allows people to read and to identify images, or analyze data faster. Eventually single security guard is able to managed many sites are the same time and real time. However the BCI’s can be problematic while they are used in a wrong way. According to the writers, ethical issues may arise while some of the technologies have been applied in deciphering people’s intentions and reading their minds that the technologies could end up be applied to extremely undesirable uses.
The paper is written for a cultural research that the term “cyborg” has been borrowed from science and now been widely used in the field of Feminism since the 1984 Donna Haraway published her article in which she reinvented this term. According to Nina Lykke, “cyborg” no longer only refers to the combination of organisms and machines resulting from the development of biotechnologies as well as information technologies, while it instead is adopted as the deconstruction of dichotomies and hierarchies between not only the organism/machine, but more importantly the nature/culture, sex/gender and things like that. The writer further explains “cyborg” by examples in the Biotechnology and new reproductive technologies. As technologies allow reproduction to be done in a laboratory, even sperms, eggs and embryos could be sold or bought as goods, all the changes imply the links between genetic and social mother, fatherhood as well as between sexuality and reproduction are loosened in an extreme way. Another derived term “feminist cyborg” refers to persons who are not primarily interested in the physical performances of existing bodies. On the contrary, their goal is the production of new bodies through fusions of organism and machine and they put focus on reproduction or rather regeneration of bodies.
After reading all these sources, I found it is no doubt that the term “cyborg” is totally merged into our lives. No matter in the aspect of medical, sports, space travel or even cultural, cyborgs may bring great influence to our lives.
Technologies really help to improve the performances of athletes in the sport fields.
According to “Cyborgization of Sport” , Schulman mentioned the issue of body prosthesis technology in his article. This topic is often debated by people in the society. Two common examples of body prosthesis are the Tommy John Surgery and Prosthetic legs. Tommy John Surgery is mainly used by baseball players. This surgery is simply replacing the ligament of the arm with ligaments from other parts of the body. Originally this technique is used to extend the playing period of the pitchers. However, nowadays professional pitcher will do this surgery more often just for improving their strength, so that they can throw harder and faster. The second example about Prosthetic legs, this technique allows runners to adjust the length they want to stride, so that they can run faster. For prosthetic legs, the International Association of Athletics Federations has banned the runners who have used this technique to compete in Olympic Games. That is because they take that as a “technical aid”. Thus a question has brought forth, that is to what extent athletes can do so they are still normal gifted person but not to something as “technical aid”?
Can man ever live in space? Base on the features human-being has now, the answer is no. However, according to Clynes and Kline, being cyborg could help us to travel in space. Every living organism living on earth has its own mechanism so that it can live in a condition, and not in others. Like fishes have special breathing systems so they can live in water but not on land. Some plants have special shapes so that they can live in the dessert not in forest. Human’s body mechanism allows us to live on earth only with the oxygen and water we needed to survive. Therefore, if one organism wanted to live at somewhere else, like fish on land or human in space, the organism must change its mechanism. Clynes and Kline have mentioned many examples that technologies can help man to live in space, both physically and phycho-physically. If all the techniques can work, then human can really explore the space outside the earth by being cyborg. At the end of the essay, the authors agree that being cyborg and travel to space really improves what human is. The technology even can bring new and larger dimension for the human spirit as well.
Alexander Chislenko in his essay “Technology as extension of human functional architecture” point out if we want to think that human is in the process of evolution base on technologies, we must totally understand what is happening now, and what may happen in the future. In our world now, there are many technologies that can help to improve our body. There are mainly two methods of combining human and technologies now, one is by attachments and the other is by implanting. Attachments mean attaching some tools on to human skin, which is the external part of a body. Implanting mean to inject something into a body that may affect the person’s DNA or other internal organs. By these two methods, people would become something called cyborg that is a physically mixed system. By being cyborg, human lives in different aspect can be improved. So what will happen in the future? The writer would concern more of the personal identity problem in the future. As people may have the abilities to change their body in the future by the scientific improvements, the identity of a person may change from time to time. Thus the identity life span of people would become very short, as the goal and function of human may be changed. Therefore, the identity of people will be mixed up and confused in the future.
Dylan McKeever & Andrew Stevenson introduced various kinds of “Brian-Computer Interface Systems” (BCI’s) developed which serve different functions. These technologies in the field of neuroscience are often applied to restore functions to the disabled or to enhance the existing abilities of human, while some are invented to improve efficiency and accuracy when performing tasks. One of the examples discussed in the passage to tackle the physical disability of human being is a system called BrainGate invented by the company Cyberkinetics. It allows the persons interfacing with household objects like turning TV on and off etc. through the device implanted in the skull. The device translates the information and neuro-activities in brain to the computer connected to the users. The writers then suggested another BCI’s which can hopefully be helping in security enhancement for buildings while the system allows people to read and to identify images, or analyze data faster. Eventually single security guard is able to managed many sites are the same time and real time. However the BCI’s can be problematic while they are used in a wrong way. According to the writers, ethical issues may arise while some of the technologies have been applied in deciphering people’s intentions and reading their minds that the technologies could end up be applied to extremely undesirable uses.
The paper is written for a cultural research that the term “cyborg” has been borrowed from science and now been widely used in the field of Feminism since the 1984 Donna Haraway published her article in which she reinvented this term. According to Nina Lykke, “cyborg” no longer only refers to the combination of organisms and machines resulting from the development of biotechnologies as well as information technologies, while it instead is adopted as the deconstruction of dichotomies and hierarchies between not only the organism/machine, but more importantly the nature/culture, sex/gender and things like that. The writer further explains “cyborg” by examples in the Biotechnology and new reproductive technologies. As technologies allow reproduction to be done in a laboratory, even sperms, eggs and embryos could be sold or bought as goods, all the changes imply the links between genetic and social mother, fatherhood as well as between sexuality and reproduction are loosened in an extreme way. Another derived term “feminist cyborg” refers to persons who are not primarily interested in the physical performances of existing bodies. On the contrary, their goal is the production of new bodies through fusions of organism and machine and they put focus on reproduction or rather regeneration of bodies.
After reading all these sources, I found it is no doubt that the term “cyborg” is totally merged into our lives. No matter in the aspect of medical, sports, space travel or even cultural, cyborgs may bring great influence to our lives.
Work Cited:
Chislenko Alexander, “Technology as Extension of Human Functional Architecture” (1997) http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/articles/techuman.html 5 March 2009
Clynes Manfred E. & Nathan S. Kline, “Cyborg and Space” (2008) http://www.scribd.com/doc/2962194/Cyborgs-and-Space-Clynes-Kline?autodown=pdf 2 March 2009
Lykke Nina, Are Cyborgs Queers? “Biological Determinism and Feminist Theory in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies and Reprogenetics” (Oct. 2000) http://www.women.it/quarta/workshops/epistemological4/ninalykke.htm 2 March 2009
McKeever Dylan & Andrew Stevenson, “Brain-Computer Interface Systems”, Cyborg DB (2007) http://www.cyborgdb.org/mckeever.htm 2 March 2009
Schulman Eli, “Cyborgization of Sport”, Cyborg DB (2007) http://www.cyborgdb.org/schulman.htm 2 March 2009
Nowadays, most scientific fields put large concern on "Cyborg". Zion points out the problem of personal identity by quoting the article named "Technology as extension of human functional architecture". We can see that human depends on a certain extent of technology to proceed evolution. Thus, the existence of a combination of human body and technological parts could be a question - What is Human? What is Cyborg?
ReplyDeleteZion, some of the selected sources are relevant and suitable.
ReplyDeletehowever, the first souce is marginally acceptable and the last one is too general.
Try to distingush the question between the cyborg as well as the human being.