Study Guide

A cyborg is a person whose physical tolerances or capabilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by a machine or other external agency that modifies the body's functioning; an integrated man-machine system.

Cybernetics is more general and can be thought of as the study of the complex relationships involving informational feedback in dynamic, self-organizing systems.

What is Cybernetics capable of?

1. Research at Emory University:

• implanted a transmitted device into the brain of a stroke patient
• linked motor neurons to silicon
• afterwards, patient was able to move a cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about it
• rat neurons growing over a microelectrode array, has basic speech recognition

2. In 1998, Kevin Warwick became the first human to be implanted with a silicon chip with which he could simply turn the lights on by entering a room. The chip that was implanted into his wrist transmits signals to a computer, which actually activates the switch.

3. Other more widely available current technologies are, electronic pacemakers, artificial joints, drug implant systems, implanted corneal lenses, and artificial skin

In Chicago, researchers have fused the brain of a primitive lamprey eel with a robot the size of a hockey puck, creating a living machine that tracks a beam of light in a laboratory ring, like a miniature bull chasing a matador's red cape.

In the future, it may be possible to use cybernetics to treat neural diseases or make people feel better.

The Ethical Issues of Cybernetics

While science fiction fantasies and what-if scenarios are exceedingly common, there are few concrete ethical issues that have thus far arisen in the field. One example of an ethical issue is on the possibility of extending life past its natural term via mechanical implants. Chris Hables Gray gives the example of his grandmother, who had a stroke, but whose mechanical pacemaker allowed her to survive:

"Ironically enough, in a small case of Channel's bionic ethics, it was illegal to turn off the pacemaker. If the stimulation was coming from outside my grandmother's body then her will, which was to not prolong death through mechanical means, would have gone into effect and her body would have been allowed to die as her brain had already. But since she was cyborged intimately, then, no. She lingered. Her body was made to linger almost to the point of financial disaster for my family and then, finally, the pacemaker was overruled by the rest of her dying body and the heart failed as well."
from http://www.routledge-ny.com/ref/cyborgcitizen/cycitpgs/cyembody.html

The Ethical Issues of Lay Information on Cybernetics

As a studying Cognitive Scienctist, I continually encounter the problem of cybernetics and artificial researchers who feel that the fact that the field is currently viewed with quite a bit of awe justifies them in concocting fantasy scenarios and extrapolate the ethics of these fastasies. Often, cyborgs are seen as the cause and/or resolution to the worst case scenarios for the future given the present course of human behavior. According to Heinz von Foerster, a respected member of the field of cybernetics:

"The founders and proponents of Artificial Intelligence were from the beginning very much motivated and extremely competent to go after highly specialized tasks as, for instance, how to build a robot which could rearrange an arrangement of blocks into another desired arrangement.(SHRDLU)

The performance of these machines are very impressive indeed, but I see them more as witnesses to the extraordinary natural intelligence of their designers, rather than cases of "artificial intelligence."

The anthropomorphization of these machine functions I see insofar as dangerous, because one may be tempted to believe that when we say "this machine 'thinks'" we know now how we think, for we know how the machine "thinks."

Article on cybernetics written by apparently respected members of the field often read like 1950s cold war fiction on what *might* happen if nuclear war occurred when, in fact, it didn't.

One well-known researcher named Stelarc, a Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at the Nottingham Trent University, UK asserts that:

"The body is neither a very efficient nor very durable structure. It malfunctions often and fatigues quickly; its performance is determined by its age. It is susceptible to disease and is doomed to a certain and early death. Its survival parameters are very slim - it can survive only weeks without food, days without water and minutes without oxygen.

The body's LACK OF MODULAR DE SIGN and its overactive immunological system make it difficult to replace malfunctioning organs. It might be the height of technological folly to consider the body obsolete in form and function , yet it might be the height of human realisations. For it is only when the body becomes aware of its present position that it can map its post-evolutionary strategies."

Yet he fails to show how this assertion holds up in real-world scenarios such as self-repair, reproduction, finding an energy source, not to mentioned that with our current software engineering capabilities we are unable to create a bug-free piece of software for projects much larger than 10000 lines of code

The currently available technologies, electronic pacemakers, artificial joints, drug implant systems, implanted corneal lenses, and artificial skin are very limited. Thus far, the best they have been able to do is to restore injured individuals to a level of health that is an improvement, though not up to the functionality of an average, fully organic, individual.

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