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September Is Cyborg Month

Posted by timothy on from the please-participate-in-the-form-of-a-bot dept.

Snowmit writes "In May 1960, Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline presented a paper called 'Drugs, Space, and Cybernetics.' The proceedings of the symposium were published in 1961, but, before that, an excerpt of Clynes & Kline's paper appeared in the September issue of Astronautics magazine (issue 13), entitled Cyborgs and Space [PDF]. Aside from a mention in the New York Times, that's is the first time the word appears in print. This month is the 50th anniversary of that article. To commemorate, a group of writers and artists have gotten together to create 50 Post About Cyborgs. Over the course of the month, there will be essays, fiction, links to great older material, comics, and even a song. We're going to talk about Daleks, IEDs, Renaissance memory palaces, chess computers, prosthetic imagination, Videodrome, mutants, sports, and maybe the Bible. To kick things off, Kevin Kelly wrote this essay arguing that we've been cyborgs all along."

21 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Sept 18 by sohp · · Score: 3, Funny

    September is Cyborg month, and the 18th is Talk Like a Pirate Day. What does that mean?

    http://zenisstupid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/cyborg-pirate-ninja-jesus.jpg

    1. Re:Sept 18 by greymond · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ninjas won't have a chance against Cyborg Pirates!

      --
      Ave Molech Setting
    2. Re:Sept 18 by The+Clockwork+Troll · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you miss Cyborg September this go-around, don't worry, it'll be back.

      --

      There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
  2. say what again? by frovingslosh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Aside from a mention in the New York Times, that's is the first time the word appears in print.

    So the point is to celebrate the second time that the term was used?

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:say what again? by Snowmit · · Score: 4, Informative

      The mention in the NYT is a reporter reporting on the talk that Clynes and Kline gave. So yeah, I figured the one where they actually publicly define the term would be the better anniversary.

      --
      I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
  3. Cybauorg! by NoobixCube · · Score: 2, Funny

    If a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, that makes the likes of Terminators cyborgs. Daleks and Cybermen, and the Borg, are cybernetically augmented organisms, which I quoined "cybauorgs".

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    1. Re:Cybauorg! by MRe_nl · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ah, whether the basic part is built or born.

      I'm pretty sure that "to create a new word" is "to coin a phrase" and not "to qoin a phrase",
      as in "minting a new coin". Unless of course "qoined" was in fact the new word you were creating ; ).

      --
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    2. Re:Cybauorg! by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, no, no.

      A Terminator is NOT a cyborg. A cyborg is an ORGANISM which has been ENHANCED or even REPLACED by cybernetic machinery. The key is that the original entity was a living biologically based organism.

      A Terminator is merely a ROBOT covered by an organic covering. The covering is no more significant than if the robot were just wearing clothes. It's just covering. The machine underneath is not a living organism and never was.

      Just because James Cameron doesn't know his technology, the word cyborg has been debased beyond all recognition. It's probably a waste of time to try to correct it any more, but I like wasting my time.

      --
      Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
    3. Re:Cybauorg! by Snowmit · · Score: 2, Informative

      You might be pleased to know that there's a contribution in the pipeline that will argue along these lines.

      --
      I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
    4. Re:Cybauorg! by Canazza · · Score: 2, Funny

      *points*
      Geeeeeek

      --
      It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
  4. Interesting premise, but flawed arguments by swillden · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The idea is interesting, and it's certainly true that if all technology were removed, including stone and bone implements, humans would have a much tougher time surviving. But there are areas of the world where we could survive without handmade weapons or fire. We're not very well-equipped for such an existence, but we're not completely helpless.

    One argument the author makes repeatedly which makes no sense to me is the notion that cooking provides an "external stomach" which pre-digests our food. There are some foods that are unsafe to eat without being cooked, because of disease that they could be carrying, but in general very little of what we eat MUST be cooked, or is even harder to digest without cooking. Raw meat is just as nutritious and as easily digestible as cooked meat, it just doesn't taste as good (with some exceptions). Raw vegetables are often more nutritious than cooked vegetables.

    There's no argument that if we were to have all technology/tools removed and even lose our ability to create primitive tools the human carrying capacity of the earth would be at most a few million, maybe only a few hundred thousand. So I guess you could say that 99.99% of us are "cyborgs".

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    1. Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments by forkazoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      AFAIK, cooked meat actually is a lot easier to digest. Also, the argument that raw vegetables are more nutritious ignored the fact that the nutrients tend to be more bioavailable after cooking. So, while cooking may destroy some nutrients, it also unlocks a lot more so that your body generally winds up being better nourished by the "nutrient-poor" cooked version. See how long you can live on raw potato if you don't believe me. I imagine you'd give up pretty quick. (Even ignoring the taste.) OTOH, a human can live for a decent amount of time on cooked potatoes.

    2. Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No we don't. At least, not as a species. Just because I can't drink the water in Mexico without getting horribly sick doesn't mean that 'homo sapiens' broadly construed as a species can't. Exhibit A being the indigenous population that survives just fine drinking the water there.

    3. Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments by rpresser · · Score: 3, Informative
      The potato in the human diet, By Jennifer A. Woolfe, Susan V. Poats, International Potato Center, p 104.

      The major part of potato carbohydrate is present as starch. The digestibility of cooked and uncooked starches from various foods including potato has been reviewed by Dreher et al. (1984), who placed potato starch in the group of least digestible food starches. There have been various experiments in which raw potato starch was fed to humans and caused symptoms such as violent stomach cramps (McCay et al., 1975), and such preparations cause caecal hyperotrophy and death in rats (El-Harith et al., 1976). The latter effects were subsequently attributed to the resistance of potato starch to digestion by pancreatic amylase (Walker & El-Harith, 1978), and were lost when the starch was gelatinized.

      Cooking either peeled or unpeeled potatoes increases the digestibility of potato starch. The results of a study in vitro with pancreatic amylase into the effects of cooking potatoes on starch digestibility (Hellendoorn et al., 1970) are shown in Figure 4.5. Raw starch was barely digested; partly cooked starch from potatoes heated in water at 70 C for 20 min and cooled immediately was incompletely digestible, and the digestibility of the starch increased with cooking time.

    4. Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments by swillden · · Score: 2, Informative

      Finally, cooking meat can render it safer by killing bacteria; the digestibility of the tissues is not of much concern to someone dying from trichinosis.

      Certainly. I mentioned in my original post that some foods need to be cooked in order to be safe to eat.

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    5. Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments by daveime · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Better to be "full of shit" than having it running out of you like a waterfall.

      As someone who has had Amoebiasis (from tap water no less), and spent pretty much 3 weeks on antibiotics sat in the bathroom doubled up in pain and everything I either ate or drank passing right through my system and out the other end in 5 minutes, I can tell you it's no joke.

      Still, you go one drinking your deer piss and whatnot ... I'll stick with my purified drinking water.

  5. Some of us are by dazedNconfuzed · · Score: 4, Informative

    For all the sci-fi fantasy and the "we all are" cyborg nonsense, some of us living among you ARE cyborgs. Maybe not as exciting as a Borgified Picard, but without computer implants and mechanical augmentation we wouldn't be alive (and some have advantages as a result).

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  6. This is the only cyborg I care about by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 3, Funny

    When they start looking like this, email me.

    http://blog.hdscreencaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/summer_glau_0002.jpg/

    http://usemycomputer.com/indeximages/2009/May/SummerGlauTerminatorSecondSeasonMay2009114.jpg/

    http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/babes/1920x1200/summer_glau_20090725_0161.jpg/

    http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/babes/1280x800/summer_glau_20091211_2158_1280x800.jpg/

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  7. Zombie Jesus by Henriok · · Score: 2, Funny

    as Jesus was a zombie, wouldn't that be a cyborg-pirate-ninja-zombie-jesus?

    --

    - Henrik

    - when the Shadows descend -
  8. Life is based on cybernetics ... by Ihlosi · · Score: 2, Informative
    ... in its original meaning (the science of regulatory systems). Without reacting to external stimuli and changing it s internal and sometimes external environment towards more favorable conditions, life would not exist.

    Cybernetics is about mechanical/electronic devices just like astronomy is about telescopes.

  9. Re:*Yawn* by imakemusic · · Score: 2, Funny

    And why, exactly, am I supposed to care that a bunch of random bloggers I've never heard of are using a barely readable website to publish their opinions on cyborgs?

    I don't know, why did you come to Slashdot?

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