When We Think About Cyborgs

What began as a 1960s term for a retrofitted human space explorer has become a focal point for considerations of human and machine interaction, technological culture, biomechanics and feminist identity. Join Robert and Christian as they set aside the brain/computer interfaces for a discussion of what it is to be a "cyborg" in 2016.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
dot com. Hey you wasn't the stuff to blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Christian Sager.
So Robert sideboard the words cyborg. You hear that, What

(00:24):
does it mean to you? What is it? What pops
up immediately? Well, you know, I'm it kind of depends
on how far back in my own time when 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 cyborgs were at their height of popularity, probably right, Yeah,

(00:46):
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 that's going to hold it back too
much from being like a you know, a terrorizing robot
or this this this brutal metal, all badass. Yeah, I
U and I tease this a little bit on social media,
but for me, I immediately go to a comic book

(01:09):
character named Cyborg, and it's a character that it was
first created in the seventies, 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

(01:31):
cyber next genius and rebuilds his body and he becomes
a superhero and 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 and 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

(01:52):
giving a thoughtful treatment of Cyborg, Like what does it
mean that this character is a little bit machine and
a little bit human kind of middle it's kind of
I mean, the cartoon is more of a comedy. But
so the caveat I 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

(02:14):
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 it, I kept thinking, you know, the people who

(02:34):
are writing and doing all the pre production on that
cyborg tent pole movie right now, I really hope they
listened 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

(02:55):
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 loombs, etcetera. But this episode is, as the title implies,
it's about what do we think about when we think
about cyboards. What is the meaning of cyborg as a

(03:17):
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

(03:40):
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 mat
rs which ones get made and unmade. So she's not

(04:03):
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 define 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 think now that unt mean,

(04:26):
you know, cast aside your sci fi ideas as well,
because 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 them more throughout the episode. But there's too many,

(04:47):
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 the word cyborg and where that
comes from, uh, let's talk a little bit about cybernetics,

(05:07):
which one of the core papers here. It comes from
m T mathematician Norbert Liner, who wrote Cybernetics or Control
and Communication in the Animal and Machine Back And this
is a work to 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

(05:29):
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 WI coul problems. UM use the term
we could problems, but essentially that was kind of the

(05:51):
area was getting into. Yeah. And I think one thing
that's important to keep in mind about Weiner'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,
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,

(06:13):
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 Katherine 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

(06:35):
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

(06:56):
use this analogy a lot. I think if a blind
man is used in 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

(07:16):
would probably make is a deaf person using a hearing
aid is a 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 use cybernetic, it's inherently cybernetic. And when
we're inherently cybernetic organism. I'm wearing contact lenses right now,

(07:38):
that probably makes me a cyborg. Yeah yeah, So, and
that also involves like dental low work. You know, you're
wearing a time piece on your farm, 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

(07:59):
in it. He took the name Cybernettics 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, uh, you know, taking the
taking the old raft across the river sticks. Right. Yeah,
that's what I was thinking of immediately. Why is that
like the first helmsman I go to his death? Yeah,

(08:21):
I mean it's a great helmsman. He has an important
because he always gets across. Yeah, the Coxswain of the dead. Uh.
But it's 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

(08:41):
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'm you know, I don't know
of this, but are there a lot of people who

(09:02):
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 I fight gets
like it improves, which throws your contacts out of whack.
And so that's what happened to me. So I'd actually
get my prescription taken down a little bit. Okay, Yeah,

(09:25):
well that's interesting. Okay, So but yeah, so basically we're
looking at this as 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, and there's like a blur somewhere.
But because deficiency and how do you define what's like
the what is the ideal human experience that we are

(09:48):
either correcting for or going beyond? Uh that 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 Haroway, 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,

(10:08):
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,

(10:31):
and including many primates crows, Jo 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

(10:52):
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 he envisions for cybernetics
and his use or proposal of use of them as
being effective killing machines for the military. So there's a

(11:12):
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 you know, or augment human

(11:36):
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

(11:59):
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 note that nowadays very few people call themselves
cyberneticists in the you know, the original sense of the word,

(12:19):
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

(12:42):
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 control old doses of
chemicals into it to sort of regulate its physical systems.

(13:03):
And of course this is interesting though because it then
again draws this back to what is a cyboard because
perhaps you could because just mentioning the pharmaceuticals, like the
first human to take a drug, be it you know,
something that I've found in 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,

(13:25):
perhaps ideal, idealized version of 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 harrowin or some opiate
that he's constantly injecting into himself. He gives this big

(13:46):
speech about why it's okay because basically the body is
just a bunch of biological and chemicot chemical processes and
all he's doing is either accelerating or decelerating those processes
with the you know, the narcotics. He's a lying to himself.
So you can sort of look at drug use in
general as cybernetics. As you're saying, Yeah, indeed, all right,

(14:06):
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 put the first human being
in space, or more specifically, you know, 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.

(14:31):
They have very similar lesson insformer with the C ladder
with a K and it's called cyb worgs 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.

(14:54):
Because the model that ultimately one out and the model
we're still using today, we've put sending humans to stay.
It 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. So the environmental constraints are very important for

(15:18):
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 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,

(15:40):
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 flier. 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 clines incline where
are doing here? Is that? Well? How about we we

(16:02):
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 events?
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

(16:25):
manage what is an imperfect representation of Earth's environment 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

(16:46):
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 fast adating
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

(17:06):
ethical quandary of like what's left over of the human
being that they're putting all this stuff. 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,

(17:28):
you want to climb the mountain, here's 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. Um, maybe it's
an argument that ultimately defeats the idea of sending humans

(17:48):
into space. Uh, you know, long term, but are they
human anymore? Right or right side word? 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

(18:09):
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,

(18:29):
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.

(18:50):
And what was fascinating to me about that was I
probably talked about this on the show before 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

(19:11):
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 and saying like, yeah,
let's do that. But but to human beings, uh. And
it comes down to efficiency, right, Like these guys were
ultimately about efficiently getting into space, especially when you consider,

(19:34):
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 in
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

(19:55):
that's two pounds of oxygen to breathe, four pounds of
fluids to dre 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

(20:17):
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

(20:41):
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 si board comes from. They coined it.

(21:01):
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 it. But we can see that we're already
getting away from Winer's idea of cyborg just being about
the flow of information. So I'm gonna read a quick
quote from Cyborgs and Space to just give you a

(21:24):
taste here, Uh feel like muppet style like Cyborgs and Space, 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

(21:45):
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 cyboord work. The cyborg deliberately incorporates
exogeneous components, extending the self regulatory control function of the

(22:07):
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 proposing. 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

(22:27):
a very readable document, so i'mcouraged one that's interested to
seek it out for themselves. Include a link on the
landing page of this episode. But some of the ideas
that they roll out involved the following. First off, drug
induced wakefulness, which is 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

(22:48):
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 in dou
seeing pituitary drugs. So and it's and certainly some of these,
um these pharmaceutical products are are utilized by astronauts, but

(23:10):
this would be a situation where they wouldn't have to
think about taking it. It It would just happen to their body.
What astronauts speed is, um I just sounds like the
best speed, but it's dried. It's like it's like astronite
ice cream. Yeah, well they're gonna get the good stuff.
Um I get a blog post years back off, I
have to link to it on the landing page for
this episode because there was a list available of the

(23:33):
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 replaced 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

(23:55):
suit to me. Yeah, yeah, definitely, like a like a bioengineer.
It's 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 cope
with weightlessness. Also electronic electric slash drug cardigo, vascular control

(24:23):
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 the course,
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

(24:44):
pressure in the human body kind of I like to
think to facilitate naked spacewalks kind of 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. Uh,
and it's maybe we can make the human body a
little less you know, explosion e god. Yeah, yeah, space

(25:06):
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 uh light regulation system of
of of the temperature of the body. And that's another thing,

(25:28):
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 it. Yeah. Wow, I'm trying to imagine what this
cyborg would look like. I wonder if I wonder if

(25:50):
over the years, if anybody has like taken their recipe
for the space cyborg and like developed that out somehow
and to 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 Semic novel that came out called The Werewolf Principle

(26:12):
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 on
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

(26:34):
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 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

(26:54):
pretty trippy book. It has also has flying houses and
brown as in like the little fairies, those brownies, because
it just turns out that, oh yeah, brownies exist. Like
it's like 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. All right, all right, so needles

(27:19):
to say, as we already pointed out, NASA did not
take all these recommendations to heart. And um, so there's
a certain amount of space between cyborgs and space and
where we are in the Atlantic magazines Alexis c Magical
caught up with the co author Manford Eclines back in
two thousand ten, and by the way, as of this recording,

(27:42):
Clients is still kicking at age ninety. This climbs with
a c uh. One of the things that Madigal points
out is that many uses of cyborgs seem to view
that the human machine hybrid as as an end point,
so like we're gonna get to the point where we
become the cyborg uh and and and maybe as a
compromise as well. But Clients saw it as as that

(28:05):
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 Madrigals Atlantic piece. It's really interesting basically what
he gets out from talking with clients that Kleins saw
cybe words as a means to enlarging the human experience.

(28:25):
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

(28:47):
on trans humanism. It's just such a deep topic just
out and it's like this 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

(29:08):
this is if if you know anything about like in
the sixties, around this time that he was making these proposals.
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

(29:31):
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
Madrigal about called the Computer of Average Transience. And apparently
what this thing did was cancel noise impulses in the

(29:54):
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 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 point six,

(30:15):
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 trans humanism at a very early age, and he's

(30:37):
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, yeah,
which leads us it both connects back to Weiner's whole
flow of information thing about being a cyborg, but then

(30:57):
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 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 as I said, virtually
all tool use counts, like not only because we're picking

(31:18):
up and using something, but it all a lot of
it comes down to our body scheme, our brains 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 it in my head
of and a virtual idea of what my body consists of,

(31:38):
what are its limits? Uh? You know, what are my
limits of control? 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 clothing e's to get a can
off of a shelf extensions, Yeah, our body scheme updates

(32:01):
to include that as part of our bodies. So on
a very like neuroscientific level, we're we're already cyborgs. And likewise,
our memory adapts to use the internet via transactive memory,
we effortlessly outsource the remembrance of data. This is something
that I thought about a lot as we were researching

(32:21):
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

(32:43):
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
something some like casual bit of trivial knowledge. Yeah, it's

(33:05):
the same phenomenon that would have that allows or enables
like one member 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

(33:25):
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 ICL 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

(33:47):
called spell check. I was on my way to work
this morning. I'm on the train riding and my phone
buzzes and I pick it up, like, oh, this is
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 Cline's Incline had a very particular obsession. And

(34:09):
again we go back to this. We talked about it
with with Minor right, that there's an obsession for science
in the military 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

(34:32):
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

(34:52):
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 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

(35:14):
bringing industry and man together in a way that it
sounds like the military was very interested in this was
when we get into uh clients 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

(35:37):
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 examples. 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 and again, like it was, it ultimately

(36:00):
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. Uh. Yeah,

(36:26):
I mean it all comes down to, you know, 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. Uh.
The authors spoke with Clins and Climbs presented just another
wonderful example of what it might mean to be a

(36:47):
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'd never heard of this before. This is really I
was like, oh, wow, that's creepy. I'll give you a
second to see if you can guess what it does. Listeners,
it's the lens of the eye. I'm going to read

(37:09):
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's 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

(37:32):
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,

(37:52):
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 either 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

(38:12):
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, 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

(38:34):
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,

(38:56):
you may be familiar with him thanks to his series
of Captain cyborg experiments, and he's 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 you know, curcuitry. 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

(39:18):
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. I remember like, oh god, I'm gonna

(39:40):
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

(40:01):
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

(40:24):
of not being shackled to this device and all 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 talk in 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

(40:45):
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 implanting exactly. It pretty much is. Yeah,
but a lot of individuals have have have studied, have
written about idea of cyborg ethics. One cool paper that
we ran across is one titled Cyborgs and Moral Identity

(41:06):
by Grant Gillette, published in two thousand six in the
Journal of Medical Ethics, and it explored several different ethical
cyborg quandaries. Uh, it's a fun paper, very redal. 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

(41:28):
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,

(41:50):
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, right. So he discussed
discusses neuro reconstruction of a three year old. Sever your
brain injury. It ends up changing who the three year
old is, but the three old, the three year old
gets tooked 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

(42:13):
saved alright. The next one cybernetic eyes for the blind,
the Jordy leafage 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,

(42:35):
And again we're treating 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,

(42:56):
I guess it could be. But or but you could
also say that it forced dolls the the real life
horror story, right, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, So I think this
one this, Yeah, this is a little more problematic because
you're you're changing the the human in utero, creating a
cyborg in utero, and then and then you have to

(43:17):
ask to what extent is the resulting child still the child? 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,

(43:39):
it's it's sent shivers. That might spend like the twist
to one of those old, like nine fifties 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

(44:01):
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

(44:22):
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. Yeah,

(44:44):
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

(45:05):
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 Stepford Wives. There's a very very like a
sexist theme here as well, But ultimately this one is
more problematic, right, because what happened to Peggy? Yeah, what

(45:25):
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 Gelette 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

(45:49):
main observations with all of these. At one, we are
less concerned with the cybernetic components of the the of
the person if they seemed peripheral or somewhat incidental to
their psychological identity a 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 cup
of coffee is an augmentation, pair of glasses an augmentation,

(46:12):
But generally you don't. People may joke about their not
themselves until they have that cup of coffee, but nobody
actually believes that. You know, what's cyber netic 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

(46:34):
and it's just boom, I'm ready for the day. I
don't know what it is. 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

(46:57):
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

(47:20):
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 at 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

(47:41):
if our brain is somehow connected to technology? Yeah, it's
it's uh, the Peggy example, especially at 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 if the same things that
that that make her seem genuine, like the same sort
of uh, you know, emotional programming. If that same programming

(48:04):
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.

(48:25):
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 eighty five and we're talking about a cyborg Manifesto

(48:47):
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 conscious this 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

(49:10):
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

(49:32):
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 that probably beautifully transforms and

(49:55):
illuminates the idea of cyborder. We've been discussing this whole episode. Yeah,
I find it particularly useful. Uh. And in seven uh,
Robert found an article in Wired Is written by Harry
kuns Rue that basically deconstructs Hairways cyborg manifesto and explains

(50:17):
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

(50:40):
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.

(51:02):
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 out this in which you know, as we
talked about earlier, that's when we were growing up seeing
them in pop culture everywhere. But she sees them in war,
she sees them in sex, she sees them in medicine. Uh.

(51:22):
And 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

(51:43):
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

(52:06):
way to us talking about Winer and Catherine Hayes paper
about him, Harraway 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

(52:28):
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. That's very essential to all of this.
But again a lot of you are probably wondering what

(52:49):
the hell does that mean? And so let's turn to
that come through article h He profiled and chatted it
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 and sports. Okay, So Haraway sees this
as just revelent because training, quote, training and technology make

(53:14):
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 timekeeping. In

(53:38):
other words, like that that that Olympic runner is the
product of just 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 cybworg.
She even goes so far as to point out that
before the Civil War, I didn't know this. Before the

(53:59):
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 running. Yeah, to say nothing of reboke pomps exactly,
all those all those sweet hoops that you're and so

(54:23):
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 awesome.

(54:45):
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

(55:08):
where we begin and they end. So again we're getting
back to that science fiction cyborg and thinking of like
episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation with data right,
he was like, am I human? Am I in android?
As opposed to the borg 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

(55:28):
you know, trip to lows madness. So yeah, 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

(55:51):
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 you're exercising. Uh. That

(56:12):
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 camera, everything is cyborg. And here's the thing.
There's no natural order. There's only the order of reinvention.
We're all the new Peggy, um, and we can be

(56:34):
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

(56:58):
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 have watched this one.
It's just like, first second, yeah, first season's terrible. Yeah, yeah,

(57:20):
I did watch and it's and it's you know, basically
the premises in the Doctor 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

(57:44):
and machine. But the design that they did for this
episode is 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 measurable type coupling of the cyborg right, Like, Like,
clearly somebody who had access to the BBC's UH finances

(58:07):
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

(58:30):
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

(58:53):
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 we're recording this, it
made me think of what's going on in North Carolina
right now with this law that's got a lot of

(59:13):
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

(59:35):
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 possible ability

(01:00:00):
of identities available or genders available, right Yeah, indeed. I
mean it also reminds me of the recent episode that
we did on hyper religions. Uh. And some of 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,

(01:00:22):
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

(01:00:43):
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 nashing of teeth one way or the other over
what's going on in North Carolina right now, it's messier

(01:01:05):
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 we are
all networked together and that's something that should, uh that

(01:01:26):
we should pay more attention to and not the 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

(01:01:48):
of post human in that respect, and I think kanz
Ru sums it up nicely in that Wired paper from 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

(01:02:11):
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 Harroways 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

(01:02:34):
course this also ties into the whole area of race
and racial identity um which is certainly certainly falls under
that messy category that Haroway laid out in her paper,
Because you know, there are aspects of racial and transracial
identity that we're very open to exploring and in our
our modern culture, there are other areas that are a

(01:02:56):
lot more taboo. Like, for instance, identifying as African America
and if you are in fact of Caucasian descent, Like
this brings to mind, uh the story of appum leader
Rachel DOLLASLT that 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 yea,

(01:03:20):
and said that she identified as African American. Uh. Yeah,
and this was an idea that note basically nobody was
comfortable with. Yeah, everybody in 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

(01:03:45):
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
rest stroom thing pop up, and and it's like they
seem like they're blips. We cannot escape this. This is

(01:04:06):
where humanity is heading. And it's just these are kind
of like 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

(01:04:28):
they're able to consciously and perhaps subconsciously administer various levels
of pharmaceuticals into their own body 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

(01:04:49):
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 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
hundred years from now, people will look back at us

(01:05:11):
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 mention that
har Waits work has been tremendously influential on individuals and

(01:05:32):
a number of different 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

(01:05:57):
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 superhero 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.

(01:06:17):
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,

(01:06:39):
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

(01:07:02):
like the T one thousand, he turns into this like
gold liquid metal. Uh. And that I think that I
think was 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

(01:07:22):
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 inclined there with the outer space stuff,
and then you know, surely I would imagine they would

(01:07:42):
talk about the ethics uh, surrounding it, how he will
be treated. And what I'm concerned about though, is that
it's going to end up being like all that nineteen
eighties cyborg fiction we grow up with, which is just
you know, agonizing over humanity. Is human anymore? Is he? Uh?
And a gun comes out of his legs? Right exactly?

(01:08:03):
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

(01:08:24):
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

(01:08:44):
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 cyborgs in fiction does tie into this material,

(01:09:04):
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

(01:09:27):
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.
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(01:09:48):
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(01:10:13):
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