Because the cyborg, for the most part, only exists in fiction, much of the cyborg's mythology comes from media representations. The relationship between humans and technology range from fully robotic operation with human appearance (e.g., The Stepford Wives) to humans with technological modifications (e.g., Planet Terror) with traditional definitions of "cyborgs" operating near the halfway point (e.g., the Six Million Dollar Man). They key appears to be integration, where a character has equal or mostly equal human and technological parts that operate as parts of a unified whole. Someone using a gun (i.e., picking it up and using it) is quite different from having one functioning as a leg and being able to fire it from internal signals instead of pulling the trigger.
After some pondering (and heated discussion with my significant other) about the nature of cyborgs, we also reached a conclusion that cyborgs are not merely people with technological parts (e.g., a person with a pacemaker), but this technological addition must perform a fundamentally inhuman task. Iron Man, though he has a metallic plate protecting his heart, the addition of this technology does not provide him inhuman strength, power, or wit (that's just Robert Downey Jr.). Will Smith, however, in I-Robot, does have robotic additions that give him extra strength and powers, like the superhero that Iron Man is. Instead of a suit that can be taken on and off, true cyborgs have integrated technology with their human bodies to advance the form beyond what was previously possible.
The thinking about cyborgs began with my viewing of The Amazing Spiderman, where the antagonist has lost a limb and pines for its re-growth and repair. Whereas he believes the solution lies in cross-species DNA, the attempt to achieve this ends spectacularly well, a la The Fly. When I think of his pining over perfection, and yet the inability to consider a prosthetic arm, it echoes my feelings above that the functionality of the cyborg is the key. A prosthetic arm would perform basic functionality of an arm, but to replicate it perfectly and to extend its strength, a robotic replacement would be needed. What Dr. Collins realizes is that in his search for perfection, he must replace the entirety of the human body, for it is weak and vulnerable. In his transition to a lizard-human hybrid, he becomes similar to a cyborg in that his human form has been replaced with stronger and more powerful parts to complement the human form.
A live example of the cyborg may be found in Neil Harbisson, a color blind person who used a prosthetic eye piece to hear colors. Though he sees colors in shades of grey, the eye piece translates each types of color, including its shade and vibrancy, into sounds that he can understand. He is attempting to have the eye piece surgically attached to his spine, fully integrating the eye piece to his human form. There's no need for me to define him as a cyborg, he's done that already.
The Cyborg Foundation that he founded is the first organization working to defend cyborg rights and indeed encourages people to embrace technological additions. One of their listed aims is "to extend human senses and abilities by creating and applying cybernetic extensions to the body" and they describe their missions statement as "helping people to become cyborgs." This is quite a radical step in theory but these changes are already beginning. Consider the Futurama episode "Eye-Phone" that made fun of the attachment that people have to their technology by implanting one's phone behind the eye socket. Now, Google Glass is in its "explorer" mode and may soon become a normalized part of our technological experience.
 |
| Photo source |
