From the Vault: When We Think About Cyborgs

Cyborg Albert Hyoune movie Cyborg with Jean Claude van Dam. Yes, clearly that's everybody's favorite. But then also a few other, you know, small independent films like like RoboCop and the Terminator films, you know, um, and and also by mentioning that, I mean some of you are already probably arguing in your mind and making well with RoboCop really a cyborg or was he just a robot that they put a

face on as a testament to a fallen cop. Do you you and our seemed colleague Christian Sega address these questions in the episode, Yeah, a little bit, because ultimately it is kind of an amorphous Torrent term this, this

term cyborgs. So we talked about like where it came from, like some of its origins in our considerations of of travel beyond our planet, of of changing astronauts uh to better uh survive the harsh conditions of outer space, as well as how the the idea of of of the cyborg has been taken up as as kind of a metaphor for say, feminist identity. Oh interesting, I don't think I've ever heard of it that way that. Now I feel like I gotta listen to this. Yeah, well I

figure out what you guys talked about. Well, yeah, let's let's do let's all dive in and explore the world of cyborgs. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Brown and I am Christian Sager. So Robert sideboard the words cyborg. Do you hear that? What does it mean to you?

What is it? What pops up immediately? Well, you know, it kind of depends on how far back in my own timeline I go like, I can't help but instantly go back to being a kid where Cyborg meant terminator, cyborg meant RoboCop. And so you and I are both children of the eighties, and that's what cyborgs were at

their height of popularity, probably right. Yeah, this idea that like, there's a machine, but it's it's got at least a little bit of humanity to it, but nothing, nothing was going to hold it back too much from being like a you know, a terrorizing robot or this this this

brutal metal badass. Yeah, I and I tease this a little bit on social media, but for me, I immediately go to a comic book character named Cyborg and it's a character that it was first created in the seven these and that's you know, seventies eighties, that's when I

was reading these comic books. Uh. He is an African American character who becomes a cyborg because he's in some kind of like athletic accident or a car accident or something, and his dad is like a cyber next genius and rebuilds his body and he becomes a superhero joins the Teen Titans. A lot of people out there may know this character from the Teen Titans cartoon show in the last decade. Yeah, my nephew was telling me all about Cyborg.

I was hanging out with him in the past few months, and it was kind of I was impressed because it sounds like Teen Titans has done a good job of sort of giving a thoughtful treatment of Cyborg, Like what does it mean that this character is a little bit

machine and a little bit human. It's kind of I mean, the cartoon is more of a comedy, but so the caveat they wanted to place on this is, you know, d C is rolling out its big summer blockbuster universe of superhero movies, and Cyborg is going to have his own movie, and he's going to be in the Justice League movies. And I haven't seen it, but I guess that Batman v. Superman movie spoilers like hints at him

in somewhere. Uh So I kept thinking, as we were doing the research for this episode, which if you guys out there haven't guessed by now, is about cyborgs uh, I kept thinking, you know, the people who are writing and doing all the preproduction on that Cyborg tent pole movie right now, I really hope they listen to this episode because we've got a lot of interesting themes going on here with the idea of cyborgs in general, and

and that is what this episode is going to revolve around. Now, certainly we've had episodes in the past that have dealt with sort of like mind machine interfaces, including Joe and I did one in the past few months. I'll make sure we linked to that on the landing page for this episode, and it will be doing episodes in the future. I'm sure about cybernetic enhancements, prosthetic limbs, etcetera. But this episode is, as the title implies, it's about what do

we think about when we think about cybords. What is the the meaning of cyborg as a word and as a trope and as a metaphor for understanding the human experience. Yeah, and what I especially got out of it is that cyborg in general, there's a lot of philosophical arguments to make that we're already cyborgs, and that it is sort of like the natural evolution towards trans humanism, which is

another thing we talked about on this show quite a bit. Uh. And I want to read a quote by Donna Harroway, who we're going to talk about later, but this really struck me as being crucial to us kind of thinking throughout the episode about she says technology is not neutral. We are inside of what we make, and it is inside of us. We're living in a world of connections,

and it matters which ones get made and unmade. So she's not just talking about like, you know, pop sci fi, you plug a USB poured into your ear, cyborg, that kind of connection. She's talking about like cultural connections as well, and sort of how we fine reality based on that. Yeah, so I think that that is just in general, let's try to hold onto that while we're talking about all

this stuff you two out there. Yeah, Now that doesn't mean, you know, cast aside your sci fi ideas as well, because a helpful Yeah, I think she even I can't remember she if she mentioned RoboCop in her money, And she definitely mentions some of the sci fi visions of cyborg because that's part of the metaphor. And we will, you know, if we haven't thoroughly satiated your pop culture cyborg references, will make some more throughout the episode. But

there's too many, I think, maybe to get them all. Yeah, Yeah, they're just they're rampant, especially in the wake of Terminator and RoboCop. Just just dealing with films alone. There's so many fabulously horrible be movies with cyboards and yeah, totally. But before we get into the word cyborg and where that comes from, uh, let's talk a little bit about cybernetics,

which one of the core papers here. It comes from m T mathematician Norbert Winer, who wrote Cybernetics or cont Role and Communication in the Animal and Machine Back And this is a work that dealt with information theory with a focus on feedback and the similarities between a vast group of different phenomena from everything from throwing a ball

to running a company to launching launching a missile. It's all about you're doing things, you're getting feedback and that allows you to uh for rational control of everything from machines to economic systems to communities. Uh and even a way to arguably tackle wicked problems. UM. I use the term we could problems, but essentially that was kind of

the the area was getting into. Yeah, and I think one thing that's important to keep in mind about Winer's research, or I guess just it's not really research as much as just sort of like a general like pitch for the future, right, saying like this is a field, this is an approach that we can use to advance and to understand. He's coming right on the heels of World War two. Uh. And he is very much in particular considering cybernetics systems as being constituted by flows of information.

And there's a really great article by a woman named Catherine Hales uh and she's she's at it, or at least this is hosted at u c l A. She may not be there anymore but just faculty and uh. She's basically looking at like the idea of Winer's like version of cyborg ism and how it mixes with sort of liberal humanism as well. And she is, my understanding, maybe not a student of but a disciple of Donna Harroway,

who we're going to talk about extensively later. Um. But basically, the Winer version goes like this, right, and we're we're gonna use this analogy a lot. I think if a blind man is using a cane, is he a cyborg? And the Winer argument would say yes, because it's about the flow of information, right. The flow of information going through the cane is building reality for the blind man.

Therefore it makes him a cyborg. The other argument he would probably make is a deaf person using a hearing aid cyborg, right, yeah, And that is going to be a recurring theme, like to what, to what extent is this individual cyborg? And I think this strong case to be made that, Yeah, when you are even basic tool use is cybernetic, it's inherently cybernetic. And when we're inherently cybernetic organism, I'm wearing contact lenses right now, that probably

makes me a cyborg. Yeah, yeah, so, and that also involves like dental work. You know, you're wearing a time piece on your arm, wearable computing, um, and you can of course get into this isn't even getting into the smartphone. Yeah, the whole smartphone thing is just like mind blowing lee cybernetic. I should also throw in that he took the name

cybernetics from the Greek word kuber mettes, which means steersman. Uh. And you can think of just sort of the classic image of you know, a helmsman at a boat, um, you know, taking the taking the old raft across the river sticks. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of immediately. Why is that like the first helms when I go to his death. Yeah, I mean he's a great helms and he has an important because he always gets across. Yeah,

the Coxswain of the dead. Uh. But is essentially here the Steersman is depending on a constant flow of information and that governs the interface. So yeah, one of Winer's you know, big arguments is uh, and he doesn't I don't think maybe make this explicitly, but you know, basically it comes across as our cyborgs modifications that are intended to compensate for deficiencies. So I just mentioned my contacts deficient eyesight, So I wear contacts, right? Or are they

interventions that are designed to enhance our normal functioning? Right? So? I mean I don't know of this, but are there a lot of people who wear contact lenses to give themselves better than vision? Um, well, it's not necessarily good if that happens, because my my eyesight changed and it apparently occasionally like eyesight gets like it prove, which throws your contacts out of whack. And so that's what happened to me. So I actually get my prescription taken down

a little bit. Oh okay, Yeah, well that's interesting. Okay, so but yeah, so basically we're looking at this a is like, is it is it both? I think it is. I think it's both. It's both enhancing our our pre existing abilities but also compensating for deficiencies that we have. Yeah, but then there's like a blur somewhere in between, because because how do you define deficiency and how do you define what's like the what is the ideal human experience

that we are either correcting for or going beyond? Uh, Like, there's no there's no just a template for the human. There's no basic human, right, so that line is just always going to be distorted. Yeah, and Harroway who we're going to talk about later. It's very important to this. Uh, she adds in a distinction that is beyond you know, cybernetics is beyond anything that fuses the device with a

biological organism. It replaces cognition and neural feedback. So it challenges the difference between us as humans and us as animals. So maybe that's a way that we can draw the deficiency enhancement line, although again depends on what animal you're comparing yourself. Plenty of examples of animals that use tools, including many primates, um crows, Joe and I are discussed

in recent episodes. So so yeah, even when when you start applying tool use to the scenario, you can make a case that there are plenty of cybernetical um, you know, animals out there. Absolutely. Yeah, Yeah, that's something to keep in mind as well. It's not just a human phenomenon.

So the last bit from Hails that I think is important to consider when you're looking at Weiner is she makes the argument that Weiner is sort of conflicted between his uh somewhat humanistic endeavor that Heat envisions for cybernetics and his use or proposal of use of them as being effective killing machines for the military. So there's a little bit of a contradiction there that she points out. And again I would say, well, can they be both?

And clearly the Department of Defense would hope so, because as we'll talk about, millions and millions of dollars have gone into us developing cyborgs for warfare. Well, it kind of gets down to the fact if you were if you're going to repair or or augment the human form your change, you're also augmenting everything that is human, both the good stuff and the bad stuff. So so, hey, a blind man can read a book again perhaps, but also maybe a blind man can shoot lasers out of

his eyes at the enemy. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, like a lot of the research that we're seeing that's sort of in its infancy with brain computer interfaces. That's where it's at right now, right where it's like, we're developing this so that like maybe a person who's missing a limb can move a robotic limb with their mind, but the application moves on from there. Right there, a

person with their mind could control a missile or something. Now, it's important to note that nowadays very few people call themselves cyberneticists in the you know, the original sense of the word, because cybernetics kind of petered out as a scientific discipline for a few different reasons. So it branched off into more promising fields of cognitive science and robotics, but it also lost on funding. It couldn't deal with the ultimate gap between organic and mechanic mechanisms of control

and communication. And the first cyborg recorded in history was a white lab rat that was experimented on at New York's Rockland State Hospital in the late fifties. So that's a good ten years after Winer's making his proposals. Uh. And basically it had a tiny osmatic pump that was implanted inside its body that injected controlled the controlled doses of chemicals into it to sort of regulate its physical systems.

And of course this is interesting though because it then again draws us back to what is a cyborg because perhaps you could because just mentioning the pharmaceuticals, like the first human to take a drug, be it, you know, something that the found owned in the woods, or certainly are our modern pharmacological world like that is kind of inherently cybernetic. You're changing who you are and and creating this new, perhaps ideal, idealized version with who you are.

So I'm on a penny dreadful kick, as as you guys out there might know, I've been talking about it a lot on the show lately. And Uh, there's this great quote where the Victor Frankenstein on the show is a drug addict and he's I'm assuming it's heroin or

some opiate that he's constantly injecting into himself. He gives this big speech about why it's okay because basically the body is just a bunch of biological and chemiclot chemical processes, and all he's doing is either accelerating or decelerating those processes with the you know, the narcotics he's applying to himself. So you could sort of look at drug use in general as cybernetics, as you're saying, Yeah, indeed, all right now at this point in the narrative, we're going to

fast forward to nineteen sixty. Now important note here this is a year before Earth to put the first human being in space, or more specifically, in Soviet Union, put the first thing in space. But yeah, it's especially important because what we're going to be talking about is a paper proposed by Manfred E. Kleines and Nathan S. Klein. They have very similar lesson informer with a C ladder

with a K, and it's called Cyborgs in Space. And I know that sounds like it would be a joke, but hey, it was in nineteen sixty and they were pitching a legitimate idea for making space travel easier. Yeah, and pitching an overall idea, specific ideas and sort of a philosophy of how to approach taking humans into space. Because the model that ultimately one out and the model we're still using today with put sending humans into space is like, all right, look at the human being, Look

at Homo sapiens. This is an organism that is evolved not only to live on Earth, but to live in a very slim layer of Earth's atmosphere under certain conditions. We can't. There's places on Earth where we go and we die. Yes, So the vironmental constraints are very important for human life. So what we've been doing is we've been taking humans and sending them into space in a capsualized version of their own environment or as much as one as we can manage to try to replicate Earth's environment,

and take that replication with us. Yeah, it's and in a way, it's kind of like I'm gonna move from Ohio to Florida, but I'm going to make sure that i have all I'm bringing Ohio with me, and it's going to be like an encapsulated Ohio in Florida. Yeah, you dig up like a chunk of Ohio and then move it to Florida and plant it there. My thermostat is always going to keep things Ohio. Um, so what clins incline? We're arguing here is that. Well, how about

we we do the the opposite. How about instead of bringing Ohio to Florida, what is as much as is humanly possible or or trans humanly possible, you become a Floridian? What even to what extent can we take a human, send them into space and change the human so that they can actually live in space, or at least they can better manage what is an imperfect representation of Earth's environment. Yeah,

and what we're getting at here too. And those of you out there who are sci fi fans are probably well aware of this, But this is a trope that has been used in science fiction probably before these guys pitched this idea. But but sort of the am I man or am I machine conundrum and where you know, where do I begin? And where does the machine and kind of thing that we've seen in pop culture fiction

for decades now, right. But but these guys, what's fascinating to me about this is they pitched this whole thing about like this is a great way to go to space, and there's not one moment where they think about the ethical quandary of like what's left over of the human being that they're putting all this stuff into well they do, and I think part of it is, you know, you have to to to bear in mind like the time period, you know, because putting humans in space was instill it

still is a just tremendously difficult endeavor. And they were saying, Hey, you want to climb the mountain, Here is a way, Here are some possibilities. This is these are some ways you can climb the mountain. And you know, it's it's very matter of fact. Now granted we've we've steered away from from what they outlined, but but you know, I

still think it's a it's a valid argument. Maybe it's an argument that ultimately defeats the idea of sending humans into space, Uh, you know, long term, but are they human anymore? Right or right cyborg? Or if you're having to make all these changes to the human body, like does it, then why are you doing it to begin with? They're saying that this is a means to an end, that if you want humans to go into space, if you want us to expand beyond this world, then you

have to change what humans are. And this is a means to an end. Not that we want to become cyborgs, but if this is what you want to be, this is what you have to Transcending Earth's boundaries are the most important thing for us, and we should be willing to commit these acts. Um. And the way that they start is with a very basic idea, which is respiration, Right, we we breathe uh. And they say, well, you know, for instance, you wear scuba masks when you go swimming underwater.

Why wouldn't you you know, change your respiration somehow for outer space? Their example or metaphor, I guess, is what if a fish was intelligent enough to engineer itself something that allowed it to live on land and breathe air. And what was fascinating to me about that was, Um, I've probably talked about this on the show before, or

at least talk to you about it. There's this really great Japanese manga horror called Geo that's all about fish climbing up out of the ocean and they're like strapped into these exoskeletons that like keep them alive, and they scuttle around and attack people, and it is one of the most horrifying images I can ever think of. So these guys back in nineteen sixty we're basically pitching that

saying like, yeah, let's do that, but but to human beings. Yeah, uh, And it comes down to efficiency, right, Like these guys were ultimately about efficiently getting into space, especially when you consider, and we've talked about this before, especially on our Space Mirrors episode or or also our episode about space weapons, how tremendously expensive it is to propel any mass and outer space. Right. And they talk about human fuel as being sort of a detriment. And when they say human fuel,

what they mean is precisely ten pounds per day. And that's two pounds of oxygen to breathe, four pounds of fluids to drink, and four pounds of food to eat. So that's the way that they look at it is like the same way that you would look at like, well we need fuel for our space shuttle, right, and how much that way is and how much it will cost to fly that up. They're considering the human fuel. Yeah,

And it's ultimately like the human engineering problem. It's not only the engineering problem of the vessel, but the just the engineering problem of the human Yeah, and space. I mean, I gotta say, like I wrote an episode for our video series brain Stuff one time that was all about what space would do to the human body and all the horrible ways in which you would die if you were just exposed to uh space without a suit or

anything like that, and it's it's pretty vicious. Uh So for them, what they were looking at was not just the purpose of the cyborg as being to mitigate those effects, but also to take care of those problems automatically and unconsciously, right that the cyborg wouldn't be thinking about doing it as they were doing it. And this is this paper is where the word cyborg comes from. They coined it.

So um, as we're talking about their their work here, realized that these guys are the granddaddies of all the ridiculous or um you know, real world ideas that come out of this. But we can see that we're already getting away from Winer's idea of cyborg just being about the flow of information. Right, So I'm gonna read a quick quote from Cyborgs and Space to give you a taste here. Um feel like like muppet style like cyber space. Yeah, well,

maybe no one can put some sort of echo hopefully. Quote, what are some of the devices necessary for creating self regulating man machine systems. This self regulation must function without the benefit of consciousness in order to cooperate with the body's own autonomous homeostatic controls. For the EXO genuously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we

propose the term cyborg. The cyborg deliberately incorporates exogeneous components, extending the self regulatory control function of the organism in order to adapt to new environments. So that's basically their thesis statement. They're starting off and saying like, all right, this is what we're proposed zing. May seem a little outlandish, but here, let us give you some examples. And when you read through the document, they they go through one by one of like, here's some cool things we could

do to the human body. Right, Yeah, it's a very readable document, So I'm created anyone that's interested to seek it out for themselves. Well include a link on the landing page for this episode. But some of the ideas that they roll out involved the following. First off, drug induced wakefulness, which is of actually this is one of the things that we see utilized in modern human space travel. Uh and and this next one calls back to that

White rat. They want to implant osmatic pressure pump capsules in the body that could sense and control mechanisms to automatically administer everything from astronauts speed to hibernation inducing pituitary drugs. So and it's and certainly some of these um, these pharmaceutical products are are utilized by astronauts, but this would be a situation where they wouldn't have to think about

taking it. It would just happen to their body. What astronauts speed is, um I just sounds like the best speed. It's like but it's dried. It's like it's like astronite

ice cream. Yeah, well they're going to get the good stuff. Um. I did a blog post years back off to I have to link to it on the landing page for this episode because there was a list available of the various pharmaceuticals that are available, say on board a space shuttle or then space Shuttle or the I S s okay, alright, the next recommendation replace the lung with inverse fuel cells.

They also talked about altering plumbing our bodies plumbing. I'm assuming, uh so that wastewater goes through a filter and right back into your blood. Sounds kind of like a still suit to me. Yeah, yeah, definitely, like a like a a bioengineered still suit. They also talked about enzyme tinkering to create anaerobic organisms, in other words, astronauts that don't require air or can live in different atmospheres. They would also drain your ear fluid or fill them up to

up with weightlessness. Okay. Also electronic electric slash drug cardigo vascular control drugs that would prevent muscle atrophy. I wonder if that's I don't know enough about that topic, but I wonder if that's something they do. Um, I haven't. I looked at the research recently, but it's still that's vicorse still very much in an area of interest. It seems like it would be, especially those guys who are

up there for like a year at a time. Uh. They've also talked about lower press body pressure engineering lower body pressure in the human body, kind of I like to think, to facilitate naked spacewalks sort of but essentially saying all right, we can't maybe we can't actually put a person out there in the void because the void is just I mean, the void is death and it's but maybe we can make the human body a little less. Uh you know explosion e god. Yeah, yeah, space does not.

Space will kill you. Uh. Engineering of a light sensitive, chemically regulated system which would adjust to its own reflectance so as to maintain the temperature desires. We're basically talking about like a light regulation system of of of the temperature of the body. And that's another thing, because like space can go from like being like incredibly hot to

being so cold it'll freeze you dead. Uh, it just in the blink of a shadow, right, Yeah, you need to be able to absorb solar radiation when necessary, but also to reflect it when it's just going to cook you. Yeah. Wow, I'm trying to imagine what this cyborg would look like. I wonder if I wonder if over the years if anybody has like taken their recipe for the space cyborg and like developed that out somehow and some fan art or something like that. I don't know, I would I

would love to see it. One piece of fiction that that always comes to mind when I when I think about this paper was a Clifford Symic novel that came out called The Werewolf Principle Um And it's essentially a space werewolf story. But the The idea here is that we engineered human that would go into space and would

rapidly adapt to life and other worlds. And uh so the space traveler goes to other worlds, adapts into these different forms that allow him to live in these strange environments, and then when he returns to Earth, he will sometimes shift into these forms. So he's changing into a quote

unquote werewolf. But the werewolf is actually a form that he adapted in another world another two in order to live there, and it's no longer acceptable in Earth's environment and society, right, like, because he probably makes them eat people or something. Yeah, it's been a while since I've read it, but it's a pretty trippy book. It has also has flying houses and brownies, as in like the little fairies, those brownies, because it just turns out that,

oh yeah, brownies exist. Like It's like it's like humans advanced to the point where they realize they realize, oh yeah, there are brownies. They live out there in the woods and occasionally we can glimpse them. Yeah, this does sound fascinating, right Alright, So needles to say, as we already pointed out, uh NASA did not take all these recommendations to heart and um, so there's a certain amount of space between uh,

cyborgs in space and where we are now. The Atlantic magazine's Alexis c. Magical caught up with the co author Manford Eclins back in two thousand and ten, and by the way, as of this recording, Clients is still kicking at age ninety. This climbs with a c uh. One of the things that Magical points out is that many uses of cyborgs seem to view the human machine hybrid as as an end point. So like we're gonna get to the point where we become the cyborg but uh

and and and maybe as a compromise as well. But Clients saw it as as that means to the to an end quote, a way of enlarging the human experience. Yeah, I highly recommend if you're interested in what we're talking about in this episode, go hunt down matt Icles Atlantic piece. It's really interesting. Basically what he gets out from talking with Clients is that Kleins saw cyb words as a

means to enlarging the human experience. It wasn't just about space for him, and he was focused in particular on expanding our brains relationship with the world, And to me, like I wrote in my notes, isn't that trans humanism? Like this guy sounds like he's the father of trans humanism to me. Uh And, and I know out there a lot of people have been asking us to do an episode. I think we're gonna if we do, we're gonna have to do a two parter on trans humanism.

It's just such a deep topic and clearly interests us uh. And So his focus after the whole you know space proposal, was on humans communicating without words, because, as he put it, language is messy and ambiguous. And what struck me about this is if if you know anything about like in the sixties, around this time that he was making these proposed this is when post structuralism really erupted in communications studies and linguistics, and it's essentially, you know, it's, oh God.

I can't simplify post structuralism into one sentence, but I would say his statement of because language is messy and ambiguous is a nice lead in for post structuralism. So he was thinking about cyborg ways to get us there, and that leads us to Donna Harroway eventually. But he also did. He invented this machine that he talks to Magical about called the Computer of Average Transience. And apparently what this thing did was cancel noise impulses in the

brain and translated them into averages of their impulses. Um. And the argument is basically like, when we're talking about these electrical impulses that he mean, he means language, like how language is encoded in the brain. Uh, but words don't have averages, right. You can't say, like, the word cyborg is five points x, so let's round it up to six, right, or or or the average of you know, in between whatever two different numbers gives you a number

in between, It gives you a word in between two words. Right. Um, So he's not only does it seem like he is talking about transhumanism at a very early age, and he's talking about post structuralism, but then he's talking about math as language, which is really interesting. Yeah, and and certainly essential to any kind of bridge between organic So yeah,

definitely machine. Yeah, which leads us it both connects back to Weiner's whole flow of information thing about being a cyborg, but then leads us further down the road of sort of the philosophy of what it would mean to be a cyborg. Indeed, so we've already touched on, you know, a little bit on what we call a cyborg. You know, the blind man with a cane, a monkey with the stick, glasses,

contact lenses. Um, I would and I, as I've said, virtually all tool use counts, like not only because we're picking up and using something, but it all a lot of it comes down to our body schema, our brain's conception of our body's position in space. Uh. You know, just that alone entails some pretty complex mental processing, you know, just to say this is where I am, this is

this is the space around me. And I have kind of like this virtual version of in my head of in a virtual idea of what my body consists of what are its limits? Uh, you know, what are my limits of control? Uh? So our brains are constantly processing sense feedback to establish where our limbs are at any

given moment. And here's the crazy part. When we wield a hammer, when we wield a sword, when we you know, use one of those reachy clow things to get a can off of a shelf, extensions, Yeah, our body schema updates to include that as part of our bodies. So on a very neuroscientific level, we're we're already cyborgs, and likewise our memory adapts to use the Internet via transactive memory.

We effort Lislee outsourced the remembrance of data. This is something that I thought about a lot as we were researching this episode that, uh, I don't know about you or the listeners, but I have definitely found in the last ten to fifteen years that like, not only do I have more information available at my fingertips than I ever would have before, but at the same time, like, because my brain only has so much RAM, I have to offload some of that into the cloud, right And

I'm like, well, I can't particularly remember that right now. I'll put it in Google Docs, or I'll I'll let Wikipedia hold onto that for me for now, and I won't memorize. I don't know, like, uh, you know where Rod Stewart's from or something some like casual bit of trivial knowledge. Yeah, it's the same phenomenon that it allows or enables like one number of a you know, romantic compulse. The couple say to forget like an important date. They

forget it because I'm like a subconscious level. They know the other individual will remember it, So why should It's just pure economics, right, Why should all members of this group of of interconnected humans a part of this network. Why should all nodes on the network carry that data? It doesn't make sense they should collectively carry it. Yeah. Absolutely, And subsequently we end up with IICL or Google Calendar

or whatever your your platform of choice. Yes. Right, if you want to know what it's like to have a cybernetic implant in your brain, you already have it. It's called spell check. I was on my way to work this morning. I'm on the train, riding in my phone buzzes and I pick it up. My cope, is this a text message? Nope, it was my phone reminding me that we were recording this episode this morning because it's on my calendar. And of course this isn't even getting

into the whole realm of say, biomedical implants, etcetera. Yeah, I mean Klein's incline had a very particular obsession. And again we go back to this we talked about it with with Winer, right, that there's an obsession for science in the mill terry, with this combination of machine and man and what it comes down to is how can we escape our annoying bodies? Basically? Right? And uh and man,

this was a great time for ideas. Uh. Not only does their paper coincide with the you know what I was talking about with post structuralism, but it also coincides with something so completely on the other side of it, which is the Silver Age of comic books. Uh. And

in particular. You know, I'm not going to go into a whole rant about the Silver Age and explain comics, but the Silver Age was very much about superheroes that were science oriented, that we're sort of above and beyond what the human body could do, right, and so like the first Silver Age superhero character is often cited as being the Flash, and of course the the the dream of the Flash, right is that he can move faster, He can do everything faster than we can, because oh,

these bodies are so slow, they're limited, right. Uh. And it's bringing in history and man together in a way that it sounds like the military was very interested in. This was when we get into uh, clins incline. Their paper had a lot of influence in millions of US Air Force dollars were spent developing exoskeletons, robot arms, biofeedback devices, and more. I mean, we are obsessed with this dream. That's why it showed up in our pop culture over

and over again. Uh, the six million Dollar Man, the Bionic Woman. Right. I think if we were both a little older, like those would be the example. Yeah. Yeah for me, Like, uh, you know you mentioned RoboCop. I think of like, um, surely Star Trek and Doctor who had their own iterations of cyborgs. But again, like it was, it ultimately comes down to that whole like uh, like they're they're agonizing over the am I Man or am I Machine? Where do I you know, where do I exist?

In comics? Uh? This character that was just recently portrayed by Paul Bettany in the Avengers movie, The Vision is an android and he there's this classic comic book cover with the Vision and it says even an android can cry. Ah. Yeah, I mean it all comes down to you to to what extent is a is a cyborg either an advancement of the human condition, a lessening of the human condition, or somewhere nicely neutral in the middle. Yeah. I want

to mention one more thing from that Atlantic piece. Um, the authors spoke with Clins and Clients presented just another wonderful example of what it might mean to be a cyborg and what it means to perhaps you know, already be a cyborg. And that he presented the example of a cyborg implant that's part of our naturally occurring anatomy. I've never heard of this before. Really, I was like, oh, wow, that's creepy. I'll give you a second to see if you can guess what it is, listeners, it's the lens

of the eye. I'm going to read the quote. The lens is not in any way part of the body, except that it happens to be there. In fact, it has no normal blood supply. It does have liquid surrounding it, but there is no blood supply because if you had blood going through the lens, you wouldn't see too well. Nature has taken care of it. The biological control and

invention of the lens is a beautiful and fantastic thing. Yeah, and he the way he talks about it, he and I don't know if this is the author of the Atlantic piece or Clients himself, but basically says that our control over the lens of our eye is the nearest thing that we have to telekinesis Wow. Yeah, because we're talking. You know, it's a conscious movement of the body, but it's the only one not tied to the brain by

neural feedback. You see the results of thinking it's something, you're thinking at it, and it happens, but there's no muscular feedback from from those muscles that activate the curvature of the lens. It's exactly what they were talking about with their whole space proposal, right that we have no knowledge of it operating automatically on its own, and just because we think a thing, it happens. There's no feedback, and it's just it just does it thinks and that

big gun pops out of it exactly right. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we will launch into some ethical quandaries about cyborgs and into even indeed into the idea of cyborg feminism. All right, we're back and we're gonna talk a little bit about cyborg ethics. Um, there is a British cyberneticist by the name of Kevin Warwick, and a number of

you that follow sort of trans human topics. You may be familiar with him thanks to his series of Captain Cyborg experiments, and these generally involved like placing chips in his body and sort of exploring, you know, early examples of what it is to be a human cyborg based on circuitry. But he's also done some thinking about the

ethics of it. Particularly he's he's asked if humans will one day be required to upgrade to a cybernetic state to become cyborgs, or if they'll be be able to live their lives in a primitive state, which he likens to that of a chimpanzee living in the shadow of a human. I imagine that that is probably like the the heart flutter that a lot of people had when Google Glass hit the scene a couple of years ago. Remember, like, oh God, I'm gonna have to wear that to interact

with society. No, No, I'll go live on a farm somewhere and I will not participate in Google Glass. And luckily it didn't pan out for anybody. It's kind of like when you encounter somebody who doesn't have a smartphone, and which is to a large extent, I applaud those individuals who who do that, but you also you sort of act yourself, like how do you how do you

live your life like that? How? You know? How? Like we grow so accustomed to being just constantly plugged in, and when we're not plugged in, it it takes something out of you. Like when I went on vacation at the beginning of the year and my smartphone didn't work for a week, it was a little panicky. I was. I felt a little panicky at first. I had to sort of adjust to this new freedom of not being

shackled to this device and all its augmentation. I remember being in my early twenties and I didn't have a cell phone, and I was like, I hate that everybody's on these cell phones all the time and they just walk around and talking and texting and not paying attention to the world around them. And I said something to a friend one time, like I'll never get a cell

phone until they can implant them in your skull. And then, like, you know, cut to fifteen years later, and I've got a smartphone just like everybody else, and it is kind of implanted. Yeah, exactly, it pretty much is. Yeah, But a lot of individuals have have have studied, have written

about the idea of cyborg ethics. One cool paper that we ran across is one titled Cyborgs and Moral Identity by Grant Gillette, published in two thousand six in the Journal of Medical Ethics, and it explored several different ethical cyborg andres. It's a fun paper, very readal. The author lays out some quote unquote fanciful cases. They often kind of tread into black mirror kind of territory. I'm glad that you noticed that as well. Yeah. As I was reading through it, I was like, man, this guy is

just pitching black Mirror episode after episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And they all kind of come down to the same question. If we cybernetically enhance a human, if we cybernetically enhance the brain, then to what extent is the resulting mind the resulting person still human? Some of the some of the exam I'm gonna roll through some of the examples here. Um, I'm not your favorite. One is the last one, Yeah, the last one is the one we'll talk about in

More Death, because that's the problem of right. So he discussed discusses neuro reconstruction of a three year old severe brain injury. It ends up changing who the three year old is, but the three old three year old gets to to live, okay. And I think most people can get okay with that one because it's like you saved a life, right, and it's not perfect, but you saved alright. The next cybernetic eyes for the blind, the Jordy Leaforge scenario.

Everybody's cool with Jordy. Another one, extensive brain injury and then replacement with micro networks. So this is like the natural evolution of brain computer interfaces. Yeah, and saying like, oh, there's damage to the brain, but we can fix it with with this new technology, all right. And again we're treating at the wound. We're treating an injury. Everybody's generally

okay with that. An unborn child with an incompletely formed brain, and then doctors grow that brain out with cybernetic techniques to ensure the child is born with a working brain. This one's a lot that sounds like the beginning of a horror story to me. Well, yeah, I guess it could be. But or but you could also say that

it forestalls the the real life horror story child. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, So I think this one, this one, yeah, this is a little more problematic because you're you're changing the the the human in utero, creating a cyborg in utero. And then and then you have to ask to what extent is the resulting child still the child? But yeah, right, but then there's the the Peggy story, and you want to take this one, sure, yeah, this is so, this is the one that the most felt like a black

Mirror episode to me. And and genuinely, as I'm reading this academic article the twist to this story, i went, oh, like it's said, it's sent shivers that might spend like the twist to one of those old like horror comics. All right, so, uh, basically, the idea here is that Bob and Peggy are a couple and they have problems. Uh, Peggy's depressed, right, and uh so they rent Cybo help, which isn't like an android that's customized to come in and be compassionate and take care of Peggy and kind

of like help her get beyond her depression. Her presence cheers everybody up, and Peggy undergoes neuropsychi psychiatric treatments and becomes her old self. Right. And one of the keys here is that the the android has these like symbols on the back of her skull that show like which which features she's been loaded with? And I think it's like there's some for like artistic abilities, and the most important one is is is one that allows the android

to to show compassion. Yeah, so Bob and Peggy they say, hey, everything's fine. Now, Peggy's fine, she had this procedure was good. Yeah, so they'll say, well, we don't need the android anymore. They send her back to the plant. Uh. And at the end of it, Bob is like stroking Peggy's hair or something like that, and he notices that she's got the raised embossed indentations of lettering the same way that the android did on the back of her head. So it's implied, wait, what did that android do to my

wife when I wasn't home? Right? Oh yeah, there's like a thing in there where he takes an extended business trip and that's when and when he gets back is when he notices that. So it's a little a little bit like Efford Wives. Right, there's a there's a very very much like a sexist theme here as well, But ultimately this one is more problematic, right because what happened to Peggy, what happened to the old Peggy? Was that the real Peggy? And is the new Peggy the new Peggy? Yeah?

Where's Peggy? Also says something and I don't know if this is just Grant g letter or us how we approach this topic, but like how we think of depression too, as like that's a thing you cure. Yeah, we have a robot come in and just fix it. Yeah. He makes two main observations with all of these. At one, we are less concerned with the cybernetic components of the if the of the person, if they seem peripheral or somewhat incidental to their psychological identity or character. Okay, so

we're cool with augmentations. That's no big deal because certainly you apply that to real life. We augment ourselves all the time. The type of coffees an augmentation, pair of glasses an augmentation, but generally you don't. People may joke about their not the selves until they have that cup of coffee, but nobody actually believes that. You know, what's cybernetic for me taking a shower? Yeah, Like I was thinking about that this weekend, Like what did people do

before showers? Because if I don't have a shower. I feel exhausted and tired and gross. But then like you're getting that shower and it's just boom, I'm ready for the day. I don't know what it is. I'm the same way. His second observation is that quote we are more concerned where a non human mode of relationship or reaction or response to others emergence. So that's pretty basic, right when when you're when when the result seems non human or the relationship is not seems non human, then

we're saying, Okay, what's what's wrong? This is not a cybernetic scenario I can get behind. So Gillette like proposing all of these fictional scenarios is basically getting at his big question, which is how should we morally treat a cyborg? Right, we still treat each other well. We like to think we do as moral agents when we're interacting with each other through diaries or computers or even antidepressants. Right now, again, I say I like to think we two and then

like go take a look at some YouTube comments. Sometimes I don't know that they're necessarily moral agencies that play there. But his argument is if we're ethical and moral to one another through those things, shouldn't we do the same

thing if our brain is somehow connected to technology. Yeah, it's it's uh, the Peggy example, especially if the morning you chew on it because you have the android who is fake and it's just you know, a servant that is then turned back over, but of the same things that that that make her seem genuine, like the same sort of uh, you know, emotional programming. If that same programming is used to quote unquote fix Peggy, then is

Peggy fake now too? And then by but then if the reverse is true, then was the android a real person as well? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be non human? You know what? This is a perfect segue into the Donna Harroway uh conundrum, the cyborg manifesto. We're talking about Peggy and her depression and her female identity and whether or not it changes or is the same if she gets somehow computerized. That

leads right into Harroway. Yes, we are now somewhere around nineteen five and we're talking about a cyborg manifesto by Donna J. Harraway. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness Department and feminist Studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They have a History of Consciousness department, or they did, who knows if they're funding is still available. But that's pretty cool. So let's just get this out of the way. We both read, or

in my case, attempted to read the Cyborg Manifesto. It's dense reading. I will warn you out there, people. Uh. Hairway has written this in a very kind of postmodern philosophical styling that it doesn't necessarily read like your traditional academic paper in that it, you know, it doesn't set up a methodology for you and then walking through an experiment and tell you what the conclusions were. A lot of it is her riffing on the ideas of what

being a cyborg means. Yeah, and you kind of have to unravel what she means and what her argument here is as well. But ultimately it's Uh, it's a very compelling argument and one that probably beautifully transforms and illuminates the idea of cyborder that we've been discussing this whole episode. Yeah, I find it particularly useful. Uh. And in nine seven, UH Robert found an article in Wired Is written by Harri Kun's rue that basically deconstructs hairway cyborg manifesto and

explains it much better. Uh, let's see if we can take a stab at it here. But you know what, let's start with that quote, just to give our listeners an idea of what kind of reading material it is. Quote by the late twentieth century, our time a mythic time. We're all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism. In short, we're cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology. It gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image

of both imagination and material reality. The relations between organism and machine has been a border war. Yeah, okay, I think it's fair to say. And this is written in the notes here. What the hell does that mean? Uh? This is what I got out of reading it directly. But then let's turn to that Wired article to see if we can unpack it a little bit more so.

First of all, she sees cyborgs everywhere, and keep in mind share at this in which, you know, as we talked about earlier, that's when we were growing up seeing them in pop culture every right, But she sees them in war. She sees them in sets, she sees them in medicine. Uh. In her thesis is essentially that cyborgs are a fiction that maps out our social and bodily reality that that can suggest what she calls fruitful couplings.

And I think what she means by fruitful couplings are sort of like a redefinition of identity in such a way that is beneficial to the individual. We'll see, we'll see if I'm right about that or not. But yeah, we're all chimeras, right, and in particular that's important to her. And this is where it's not a cyber feminism or cyborg feminism is not her term, but it comes out of this paper. Cyborgs are post gender beings, right, or

at least they're capable of being so. Uh. And going back all the way to us talking about Winer and Catherine Hayes paper about him, Harroway sees cyborgs as being inherently a confluence of both militarism and capitalism. And she breaks down. She says, there's three boundaries that come into play when we're talking about cyborgs. There's the human versus animal boundary, There's the organism versus machine boundary, and then

there's the physical and non physical boundary. And I guess like that one to me gets us back to that like flow of information thing, right, Yeah, that's the non physical Yeah, the flow of information, the network of information. Um, that's very essential to all of this. But again a lot of you are probably wondering what the hell does

that mean? Uh? And so let's turn to that come through article he profiled and chatted with Haraway for that piece and the one of the more useful examples that he brings up, and this is one where he's talking to her about this is the example of doping in sports. Okay, So Haraway sees this as just revelent because training, quote, training and technology make every Olympian a node in an

in an international technoculture network. So winning an Olympic foot race isn't just about running fast or running faster because you took this particular medication. It's about quote, the interaction of medicine, diet, training practices, clothing and equipment, manufacturer and manufacture,

visualization and time keeping. In other words, like that that that Olympic runner is the product of this, this vast interconnected system, These ideas of what a runner is and all of these technologies that make it possible and it's all artificial to her, right, like all of that is an example of being a cyborg. She even goes so far as to point out that before the Civil War, I didn't know this. Before the Civil War, there weren't

right and left shoes. You just had shoes. Uh, And that the the invention of a right shoe and a left shoe, you know, was essentially yes, it was for comfortability,

but also to you know, maximize walking and run. Yeah, to say nothing of reebok pomps exactly, all those all those sweet hoops that you're and so Harroway actually addresses the feminism thing here, and it basically comes down to that she doesn't buy into that version of feminism that is she calls quote goddess feminism, where man, I really want Kristen and Caroline away on this our our colleagues who do stuff mom. Now, I thought about that. I

did a quick search. I don't think they've covered this topic before, but I think it would be perfect, it would be awesome. Uh So, Anyway, she doesn't she didn't buy into that the the the kind of idea that you you shake off the modern world and somehow connect

to Mother Earth. Right. Instead, she sees that the realities of modern life include a relationship between people and technology, and this is such an intimate relationship between those things that it's impossible to tell where we begin in the end. So again we're getting back to that science fiction cyborg and thinking of like episode of Star Trek the Next Generation with data, right, But he's like, am I human?

Am I in android? As opposed to the board model, which is very much like look, you can see the human part is the white skin stuff and then the rest is just all you know, trip to lows madness. So for her, one of the fundamentals about cyborgs and how we're connected to modern society is one of our most important commodities. It's a commodity that you're listening to right now, and that Robert and I make a living

off of information. Uh, cyborgs are information machines, right, So I think like in a way we could say, like if you out there right now are listening to podcasts like I do. You've got your phone, there's some kind of platform on it, it's running, uh the MP three file, and you're listening to us talk about cyborgs while you're doing whatever, your laundry, your commute, uh, you know, whatever your exer sizing. Uh. That is making you into an

information machine. And we're part of that information machine. Yeah, indeed. Um. So, like one of the ideas here too, is that there's there's no longer a dichotomy of natural and artificial in our world. Everything is chimera, everything is cyborg. And here's the thing. There's no natural order. There's only the order of reinvention. We are all the new Peggy. Um, and we can be any version of Peggy that we want to be. Yeah. And this, uh, this is where it

gets really relevant, I think, to modern day society. Right. So, Haroway further goes into it by talking about erotic fascination with cyborgs. She refers to quote the violation of boundaries by a cyborg as a pleasurable tight coupling between parts that are not supposed to touch. And I read that, and I thought of and I hope you haven't seen this, and I don't wish it upon any of our audience. But the episode of Torchwood, the TV show that is called cyber Woman, have you seen this? I may have

watched this one. It's just like first second, yeah, first season, it's terrible. Yeah, yeah, I did watch this one and it's and it's you know, basically the premises in the Dr Hugh universe or these cyborgs called cybermen, and they just look like big kind of like robots, but they've got like human brains in them or some some organic parts in them. And uh, somewhere along the line they this woman was made into a cyber woman, and so

she's like conflicted with between man and machine. But the design that they did for this episode is just so insulting to this poor actress's basically wearing like a cyborg bikini. Uh. And and and it really to me, I was like, oh, there's that erotic fascination with the pleasurable tight coupling of the cyborg right like like clearly somebody who had access to the BBC's uh finances, was like, this is what our viewers want. They want to see this half naked

cyborg lady. And to me, that leads us to the real heart of it, the heart of Harroway's argument, the trans humanism everything we've been talking about here today, and this comes via Hales and she says, the cyborg becomes the stage on which are performed contestation about body boundaries that have often marked class, ethnic, and cultural differences. So we're looking at a complex hybridization that's going to get rid of our old fashioned concepts of what is natural

versus what is artificial? Right Like, so again, like this is what I imagined Harroway was thinking of. Breast implants was probably what she was thinking of when she was thinking about the like the erotic fascination of cyborgs. Uh. But it throws away binary concepts like gender. Right. And as we're recording this, it made me think of what's going on in with Carolina right now with this law that's got a lot of people upset on both sides

about transgender people and public restrooms. Uh. And you know, wherever you fall on that, that is a transition from a binary duality that is totally freaking people out right. Uh. And that's just the beginning. Like when you think about the cyborg transition that our whole world is going through right now, get ready for infinite identities, like any possible combination. We're just squeamish right now about something that doesn't fit

into one of our two categories. Right for restrooms, cyborg ism makes an infinite possibility of identities available or genders available, right, Yeah, indeed. I mean it also reminds me of the recent episode that we did on hyper religion. Uh. And some I think we've had conversations about this as well, about religious beliefs that are, you know, kind of the salad bar approach to religion. It's like a lot of us are engaging in a kind of cybernetic religion instead of saying like,

this is an absolute truth. And instead of saying this is an absolute truth, we're saying, you know, I'm going to build my truth out of this element and this element and this element and create the kind of cyber cyborg um worldview that makes the most sense to me. Yeah, totally. Uh. And and Harroway actually has a quote that actually makes sense to me, uh, with regards to this, especially to absolutes. She says, good or bad nature, or nurture right or wrong,

it's messier than that. And that's that's a great way to put it, Like, it's messier than that. So if you're gnashing your teeth one way or the other over what's going on in North Carolina right now, it's messier than that. And then there's the networked aspect of all of this. So we're not isolated individuals within our own skulls were essentially part of the matrix. We're we're all part of that massive battery. And that's that's not a

bad thing. That's one of the things that she drives home is that we are we are, we are, we are all networked together, and that's something that should uh that we should pay more attention to and not district card. Yeah. So that subsequently, out of all of Harroway's ideas, is

where we get cyber feminism from. And this is not her term, that's right, and this means that there is no natural role quote unquote natural for a female in society, that we're past that, and that we're already kind of of post human in that respect, and I think kanz Ru sums it up nicely in that Wired paper from n quote. Feminists around the world have seized on this possibility.

Cyber feminism is based on the idea that, in conjunction with technology, it's possible to construct your identity, your sexuality, even your gender, just as you please. And that is kind of I think the appeal of trans humanism. This is the point where I think we're moving from cyborg to trans human, right, or at least the conceptions. Maybe they're the same thing when you get down to it, right, I'd be curious what harroway has take is on that.

But yeah, that's what we're talking about, is really kind of evolving your identity beyond what is considered your natural state. Right. And of course this also ties into the whole area of race and racial identity um, which is certainly certainly falls under that messy category that Harroway um laid out in her paper. Because you know, there are aspects of racial and trans racial identity that we're very open to

exploring and in our our modern culture. There are other areas that are a lot more taboo, like, for instance, identifying as African American if you are in fact of Caucasian descent, Like this brings to mind, uh, the story of a c p UM leader Rachel dolisal but came out in recent years. Yeah, the specific example here being that but she was born Caucasian to a Caucasian family, but that she was portraying herself, yeah, and said that she identified as African American. Uh. Yeah, and this was

an idea that basically nobody was comfortable with. Yeah, everybody, the media and and so harroway. You know, she says, well, but everything can be reconstructed between technology and biology, right, so then everything's up for grabs identity wise, So all basic assumptions about quote unquote how things are come into question. So she you know, whether we're talking about identity, ethnicity, gender,

all of it is fluid. And here's the part, right, like, like we see examples like that pop up or the North Carolina restroom thing pop up, and and it's like they seem like they're blips. We cannot escape this. This is where humanity is heading. And it's just these are kind lake I guess, growing pains along the way. Yeah, I mean it makes me think of pretty much any kind of trans human topic makes me think of in in Banks Culture series. In in that setting, the humans

of the culture they live these extra long lives. There they're able to consciously and perhaps subconsciously administer various levels of pharmaceuticals into their own body to to to meet whatever their needs are. But they also throughout their long lives, they'll change their own gender. Uh, they will change their they may decide they need wings, They might want to sort of change species. They might want to live in

a virtual environment instead of a physical one. And uh, I can I can't remember remember a specific example, but I can well imagine an individual in the culture changing their race and it being no big deal either. But we're not quite there yet. Uh, for a number of reasons. Maybe that'll Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm stretching a little too far here, but maybe that will be We we visit this idea often on the show. A couple of hun your years from now, people will look back

at us and be like, they were just so uptight. Yeah, they were so stuck on their identities, their singular identities. Uh, and now we're all cyborgs. Well put, well put. Now. We don't have time to go into into all these in this episode, but I do want to to to mention that hard waits work has been tremendously influential on individuals and a number of different disciplines. She's an influenced

views on science, economics, computer development, thermodynamics, information theory. So yeah, you can you can go online and you can look up cyborg economics and it is a thing that people have written about um rather exhaustively. Yeah, and so you know, here's how I want I want to close it out how we started off. So somebody out there is writing screenplay right now for DC's Cyborg movie. Uh, and I

think that there's a lot of potential there. I don't knowing, knowing what I know about superhero movies and in particular Warner Brothers super her movies, I'm not you know, I don't have a lot of high hopes that they're going to particularly address Donna Harroway's themes, for instance, in the

Cyborg movie. But hey, if you're listening and you're working on the Cyborg movie, maybe think about the fluidity I've identity that Cyborg could have or the flow of information that seems to me like something that they'll probably tap into their like real excited about the idea of humanity connecting with machines and using information is like power in a way. Yeah, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.

But the character is African American? Right, is that explored at all in the comics, Like the idea that like the transformation of Really, I don't, I don't remember it ever being explored as like, uh, it's not specifically like ethnically, No, there is a point where he transcends being human and he sort of becomes like the T one thousand, he

turns into this like gold liquid metal. Uh. And that I think that I think is maybe somebody's saying like, oh well, the natural extension for the cyborg thing would be that it would be beyond the identity of of of being African American, or of being even human. Right, But he was so recognizable in the other form that they brought him back around to the to the form that will be in the movie. You gotta put something

on the comic book cover. Oh yeah, yeah exactly. Um. I wonder if he's going to go into outer space, if there's gonna be a little nod declines incline there with the outer space stuff, and then you know, surely I would imagine they would talk about the ethics, uh, surrounding it, how he will be treated. What I'm concerned about, though, is that it's going to end up being like all that nineteen eighties cyborg fiction we carry up with, which

is just you know, agonizing over humanity. Is human anymore? Is he not? And a gun comes out of his legs, right exactly. All right, Well, we will see, we will see. Yeah, yeah, I hope they incorporate some of those ideas that would be that would be very cool. Well, uh, you know, I think we've done a pretty good job of tackling the theory the philosophy of cyborgs. We maybe didn't get into the technology that you might be interested in, but you know, out there, let us know, let us know

what you know about cyborgs that we missed. Uh, you know, what do you think about harroway and uh, cyberfeminism or the ethics surrounding this, uh, the black mirror style Peggy android as wife scenario? Yeah, indeed. And one thing I would love to hear is, first of all, I would love to hear people take what you what we've talked about in this episode and apply that to like a night bad nineteen eighties cyborg and give us a like

nice intelligent read on that simple character. Or likewise, if you can think of an example of a really intelligent treatment of of cyborgs in fiction does tie into this material, I would definitely want to hear about that. Man, there's a there was a missed opportunity when they remade RoboCop, they had a lot of opportunity to dive into some of this stuff, but they just kind of remade it. Oh yeah, I haven't seen that one yet. It's not bad, but it's just, you know, it's pretty much just a remake.

And then they have more c g I, so there's a lot more crazy gun play because I remember the original exported a little bit like the whole bit. Maybe it was in the sequel where they were like, oh, well, this isn't him, this is just this is a tribute to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, that wasn't there. So hey, you want to get in touch with us, pull that cybernetic enhancement out of your pocket. Head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll

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