According to the Oxford English Dictionary, cyborgs are, “A person whose tolerances or capabilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by machine or other external agency, that modifies the body’s functioning; an integrated man-machine system.” Within culture, cyborgs manifest in a wide series of complex combinations of the human body and machinery. The oldest known text incorporating a cyborg-like figure is Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Renaissance oil-painting, “Fire,” dated 1566. Combining elements of technology that incorporate fire, Arcimboldo’s figure is portrait of a humanoid composed of found objects including cannons, a musket, an oil lamp, etc. The oldest known example of a cyborg text, then, associates technology of warfare with wealth and power (the figure wears a medallion indicating his status as a counselor or statesman). Bjork’s music video for “All is Full of Love” (1999), a contemporary example of cyborgs in culture includes the singer performing as a humanoid exoskeleton engaged in coitus with another female humanoid of similar build. The singer’s real face adds human emotion to her mechanical body, associating love and technology in a future environment of mechanically modified humanity. Unlike Arcimboldo’s “Fire,” Bjork’s “All Is Full of Love” video portrays her as a cyborg character of unknown social status and without power/wealth signifiers. Thus cyborgs, by the time of her video, and into current portrayals, had become accessible to a broad spectrum of social classes and cultural backgrounds (Bjork is Icelandic, female, and of mixed ethnic background).
Researcher Manfred Clynes (with Nathan S. Kline) in his co-authored essay, “Drugs, Space, and Cybernetics: Evolution to Cyborgs” (1960), coined the term “cyborg” and broadly defined it as encompassing human-machine systems, “The Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending the self-regulatory control function of the organism [read: human] in order to adapt it to new environments” (348). Clynes and Kline focus on the possibility of extending human body function with technology ranging from yoga to extensive genetic or structural modification (i.e. skeletal implants, microchips, breathing apparatus for space travel, etc.). In a similar vein, cyborg anthropologist Amber Case at Esri (a technology focused mapping company), discusses the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology, “A Cyborg is not a Terminator or a Robocop but the experience of everyday life that has been altered by technology” (Case, CNN). Researchers like Case examine the bonds people have developed with transportation and communication devices such as phones, cars, gps, and social networking sites.
Drugs, Space and Cybernetics: Evolution to Cyborgs
Philosophical posthumanism revolutionized the study of cyborgs in Donna Haraway’s feminist essay “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (1985), published originally in the Socialist Review and later in her seminal text Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991). In her essay, Haraway postulates that cyborgs, or the combination of the human body and technology, will revolutionize gender and dispel the current gulf between male and female that results in female oppression by the male, “Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out the maze of dualism in which we have explained our bodies and our tool to ourselves.” For Haraway, and for contemporary theorists aligned with Haraway’s thinking, cyborgs present the possibility of a totally revolutionized social and biological structure where the “dualities” of sex (male-female) are irrelevant to human interactions. In posthumanist thought, any modification of human function with technology denotes an evolution of humanity towards cyborg society, the next global progression of culture. As stated earlier, the relations between humans and machines are various and complex. Human beings have thus far intertwined technology in their society.
The ties between man and machine continue to grow and develop as a mutually dependent relationship in which human-created technology fuels advances in society and culture. Vast spectrums of interdependence between humans and technology mean that machines, electronics, and virtual reality fields integrate with daily life at even the most regular or mundane places. Our Arts and Ideas classroom and its students is the perfect example of such regular combination of technology and the human brain learning. During class students and teachers use technology to enhance their learning ability in various forms including the use of desktop computers, laptops, tablets. Chemicals including amphetamines and caffeine are used to enhance cognitive abilities of humans, especially students and soldiers. Eyeglasses, chalkboard, laser pointers, projectors, hearing aids, Facebook, Twitter, Sakai, Google Docs, and Skype all enhance sensory organs so that the student and teacher can be heard and seen from a few feet or from across the Atlantic Ocean. These small modifications to human function, as well as more obvious combinations including mechanical limbs and bionic brains (the subjects of science fiction and military research), are part of the modern conception of a cyborg or human-machine system.
Cyborgs 