3. Cyborg = Cybernetic Organism
Organism (natural)
• Complex, inflexible feedback loop
• Too much change – organism will die
Cybernetic (artificial)
• Flexible feedback loop
• Responsive to stimuli,
able to adapt to survive
What does it mean
to be human?
4. Metropolis (1927)
• Maschinenmensch (German for ‘machine-human’)
• Given human appearance to deceive others
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DukMPx6Fn_c
Source: http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/grape/metromaria2.jpg
5. The Terminator (1984)
• Fear of artificial intelligence
gaining agency and posing
a threat to the human race
• Part machine (internal
artificial, enhanced
endoskeleton)
• Part human (outer
(organic external casing)
6. Blade Runner (1982)
• Replicants are cyborgs with advanced intellect,
emotions and human appearance
• Protagonist questions differences between
androids and humans
Source: http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/560-blade-runner.jpg
7. Battlestar Galactica (2004)
• Cylons – part machine (internal robotic
structure), part human (humanoid
appearance)
• Raises philosophical and moral questions
11. Stelarc – “augmenting
the body’s architecture”
• Seeks to free body from gravity
• Augmentation of body – ear on
arm project, extending body
beyond boundaries of skin and
physical space
“What becomes important now is
not merely the body's identity,
but its connectivity – not its
mobility or location, but its
interface.”
Source: http://v2.stelarc.org/projects/earonarm/index.html
12. A. Murphie & J. Potts -
‘Cyborgs: the body, information and
technology’
• Awareness of patterns of control that constrain
us can lead to change
• Cyborg culturally significant metaphor for
crossing boundaries of human and non-human
– powerful site of resistance to binary systems
that structure our worldview
• Subversively blurs boundaries between
oppositional concepts in which one is marked
as superior
14. Donna Haraway
‘The Cyborg Manifesto’
• Cyborg as the “disassembled, reassembled
postmodern collective and personal self” that
empowers us through the negotiation of culture
and identity
• Extends the idea of ‘bodies’ beyond Western
origin myths – especially in terms of gender
• Existence on the boundaries of human and
machine – introduces fluidity and playfulness in
enactment of identity
15. • Organism
• Perfection
• Reproduction
• Nature / Culture
• Mind
• Biotic component
• Optimisation
• Replication
• Fields of difference
• Artificial Intelligence
Hierarchal Systems of
Domination
Informatics of
Domination
16. Informatics of Domination
• Natural processes and systems are codified and
standardised within a system “in which all resistance to
instrumental control has disappeared and all heterogeneity
can be submitted to disassembly, reassembly, investment
and exchange” (Haraway 1991, 164).
• Cyborg politics resist attempts to unify and control human
experience with a common, operational language.
Eg. coding of the human
genome reduces the
complex make-up of humans
down to their DNA.
17. The posthuman future
• Displacement of human beings from position of
superiority in Western thought
• We are attached to miniature, ubiquitous computing
devices that augment our abilities every day.
• No longer simple to contrast human with non-human
18. Manuel de Landa
• Rejection of linear narratives of history
• Humans do not overdetermine trajectory of events:
critical moments emerge
from self-organisation
of matter and energy
Sadie Plant
• Rejection of meta-narratives
• Cross-referencing historical footnotes to understand
contribution from lesser-known voices – particularly
women in computer science
19. N. Katherine Hayles
• Bodies defined by presence/absence – undermined by
patterns/randomness in information flows in networks
• Bodies collective networks of
information, no longer sites of
social stability
• Cyborgs help us understand dispersal
of bodies within networks – subject
to change and manipulation through
cybernetics
20. • Is it important to connect with the ‘natural’ world without
the influence of technology? Or is this an idealistic view of a
world long gone?
• Can you think of some examples to support Haraway’s
argument that the cyborg is a potential site of resistance to
Western systems of organisation and control?
• Do you agree with the
‘posthuman’ idea that the
cyborg will displace the
superiority of the human
in the trajectory of history?
• “We are all cyborgs”.
Agree or disagree ?
