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Are You a Competent Cyborg?
An anonymous reader writes "Beyond your smartphone screen lies an infinitely more interesting world, if only you could get past the myopic app view you're currently bound to. Glen Martin ponders the existential unease lying at the root of the Internet of Things: 'We're already cyborgs: biological matrices augmented by wirelessly connected silicon arrays of various configurations. The problem is that we're pretty clunky as cyborgs go. We rely on screens and mobile devices to extend our powers beyond the biological. That leads to everything from atrophying social skills as face-to-face interactions decline to fatal encounters with garbage trucks as we wander, texting and oblivious, into traffic. So, if we're going to be cyborgs, argues Breseman, let's be competent, sophisticated cyborgs. For one thing, it's now in our ability to upgrade beyond the screen. For another, being better cyborgs may make us — paradoxically — more human.'"
I'm not a cyborg.
The unease lying at the root of the Internet of Things is not that you're becoming more machine-like. It's that you can't turn it off.
Does talking on the phone while driving make us better drivers than when texting? There's only so much focus to go around. Just because there's no screen doesn't mean our focus will be in the right place. Social skills could suffer more due to it not being obvious when we're not paying attention to people.
We rely on screens and mobile devices to extend our powers beyond the biological.
Which is exactly why we're not cyborgs.
Please stand by. You will be upgraded. Welcome to the Cyberiad.
... with the help of a few garbage trucks, that is.
Selection pressure is most certainly against those who wander oblivious.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You keep using that word (cyborg). I do not think it means what you think it means... :P
http://youtu.be/G2y8Sx4B2Sk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
That's like arguing that I am an ox because I use a tractor to plow my field rather than do it all by hand.
People tend to think future will look as scifi writers and movies imagine. We want to make those ideas happen, but can't do it in such spectacular way, so we have to resorts to "becoming a cyborg by having a smart phone" way. The end-result is the same, even if you are disappointed. For example, telepathy, did not have to wait evolution to solve it for us, you can talk to anyone using that smart phone.
You will be Assimilated.
Regards
Slashdotgirl
The more I know, the less I know
A cyborg is an organism enhanced by technology. What the difference between information being automatically handled and the results getting to your brain via the optic nerve as opposed to any other nerves?
They fact that I am doing things view the signal coming through the optic nerves opposed to other nerves doesn't really matter.
"For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term 'Cyborg'. - Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline"
also:
The purpose of the Cyborg, as well as his own homeostatic systems, is to provide an organizational system in which such robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel.
http://cyberneticzoo.com/wp-co...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you endlessly pursue screens and mobile devices, facebook, twitter, and similar accouterments, then you are a sheep, not a competent cyborg.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I would argue against being a cyborg, but my insulin pump and my constant blood sugar monitor tend to tell me that I am a cyborg.
And they also tell me not to eat cookies, but I mostly ignore that part of it.
Many people have made the point that we are already cyborgs; the main prototypical example that comes to mind is Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto. She argues interestingly that "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs." All the casual Marxism makes for fun reading too. She is making a metaphorical comparison, as is Mr. Martin in TFA, but it's a useful and interesting metaphor. No, I do not have electronics built into my body, but I also could not survive without technology. Thus, when I answer the question "Who am I," it is reasonable to extend the boundaries of my "self" beyond my physical body to encompass the technology that I rely upon to sustain my existence. It's also reasonable to include the data that I maintain and publish as part of my self-concept, and the technology that makes that possible.
So blind people are part-dog because they use a guide dog to augment their senses?
Slashdot is dead.
Soylent is where the smart people hang out now.
I'm not a cyborg, but I think I'm pretty competent; after all, I didn't design beta.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That leads to everything from atrophying social skills as face-to-face interactions decline to fatal encounters with garbage trucks as we wander, texting and oblivious, into traffic
Or you could, you know, not be a dumbass.
"I am a cyborg. You are pretty. Will you go out with me?"
"Uhhhh...no."
"Yeah get lost nerd."
"By the three laws of robotics, I must obey commands from humans. Goodbye."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I am a meat popsicle.
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You questions underlines your preconceived, and incorrect, notion of what cyborg means.
It also show your ignorance of genetics, because we share a lot of genes with dogs.
Guide dogs do not augment any senses. I don't think you understand how they work.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
no i think they are still cyborgs
and so is everything else on the planet with a nervous system that isnt also contained in a sensory deprivation tank.
"For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term 'Cyborg'.
Just for kicks, I put that sentence through The Hemingway App. Their server has been down for some time now.
I wouldn't want to be a cyborg, because in our society, being a cyborg means that you are truly and irresitibly a captive audience. You really DON'T want the internet hooked directly into your brain because there is no way to turn it off. What a hell it would be to be a cyborg. You'd be constantly bombarded with ads you don't want; information you don't want; and no way to unplug it.
Proverbs 21:19
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/st...
They allow the blind person to used their senses of touch and hearing to interact with a trained dog to take advantage of its sense of sight.
Just like using your eyes and fingers to interact with a cellphone to take advantage of it.
How is it any different?
working out of my home as a consultant gets pretty lonely, so I like to ride the bus and train so I can meet new friends. But I recently started to be dismayed at how many people stare glued to their phones during their public transit rides. Typically it is half the passengers. Wouldn't we be better off if we spoke to our neighors? Just now I walked pass a kiosk in an electronics shop that had a screen with the text "Use Skype while watching your favorite movie". I regard using Skype while watching my favorite movie as the problem, not the solution. If one is to watch a movie, especially one's favorite, one lives a more fulfilling life if one gives it one's full attention. Similarly, if one uses Skype, both ends of the dialog get more out of it if both parties are not at the same time distracted by a movie. Read a book lately? I was a voracious reader when I was a kid, but these days it's everything I can do to read the damn newspaper. Books are out of the question.
Please mail me URLs of software employers.
Why don't you go do that? I understand though. I am an Anonymous Coward myself. I just don't care for people telling me what to do.
Damn it, you're not a cyborg because you're standing on that step ladder.
Now come down off of it so I can beat you with my cane (which also doesn't make me a cyborg)!
Please tell me the browser cache is screwing with me. Please tell me that my wife wants to have sex more often ( ok that isn't going to happen, I have a 12 and 15 year old) Do we really have Slashdot.org back?
You're not a cyborg because you have a cell phone you self-important hysterical lunatic...
flamebait perhaps, but 100% correct. This guy is horribly abusing the term "cyborg". Using technology does not make you a cyborg, integrating technology into your physical body is what is required for that definition to apply.
It's like claiming that riding a horse makes you a Centaur.
You questions underlines your preconceived, and incorrect, notion of what cyborg means.
No, YOUR posts underline YOUR preconceived, and totally incorrect, notion of what Cyborg means, as well as your complete lack of understanding of how language works. Just because some guy 100 years ago wanted it to mean one thing does NOT mean that the definition is the same today.
It's not. Cyborg means a man-machine integration, not simply a man using a machine as you are trying to claim.
Guide dogs do not augment any senses. I don't think you understand how they work.
No, you obviously are the one lacking understanding, and repeatedly posting your same incorrect drivel does not make you any less wrong.
The author sounds like the kind of 100% earnest but completely misinformed self-important geek who goes on, without any sense of the ridiculous, about what will happen when we 3D print new bodies at will.
An important element to this conversation is what we do and do not consider to make us human. There are plenty of people walking around with pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, and metal in their skeletal structures. We don't question their humanity, and yet by definition they are 'cyborg.' If I have a contact lens, or hell a surgically implanted visual augmentation system, will my humanity come into question? Will it change who I am? If I walk around with a device implanted in my stomach that tells me how many calories I've consumed and the nutritional breakdown of those calories, will I no longer me human? The definitions of 'cyborg, trans-humanism, post-humanism' aren't the only things at stake when we talk about this. The definition of 'human' is also at stake. Changes in technology have always been incremental enough for human beings to perceive them, adapt to them, and become comfortable with them. It might be, before we notice it, that we will have adjusted to content of 'cyborg' before e adjust to the term 'cyborg.'
Negative, I am a meat Popsicle.
They wear cochlear implants.
We wear sunglasses/prescription lenses / contacts. We wear clothes and use a variety of tools. Our brains have biologically changed to require computers to function properly as we have assimilated with computers to a degree. Have you tried doing 32x12 in your head lately? Bet you can't do it but your child self can. We can call our clothes and shoes exoskeletons, we can call glasses "augmented vision", and we can label anything we want but what it all comes down to is how our brain interfaces with these pieces of technology. If we become reliant on something, or if we seem to become "one' with technology I think that is enough to use the term "cyborg". But understanding this we are all cyborgs and have been for thousands of years but robots have existed for a long time too, it's just we don't normally consider certain things to be something unless it's like how hollywood describes them. But I guess if you really want to be a cyborg of the future you can pick up Google glass or something equivalent and even wear an exoskeleton since those aren't as expensive as they used to be.
I also posted this on O'reilly's site.
Edit: After thinking about it a bit, having the device as another "person" that everybody interacts with might be a way around somebody pulling out of a social interaction to check something on Google.
There are some things where a "better interface" would allow technology to slide into the background. A simple example is a good GPS unit with great voice recognition rather than having to type in a start and end destination. Maybe with a see through display on your car's HUD rather than on a small screen set somewhere out of the "normal" view of the driver so that all you have to do to see your next turn is change your focus point, rather than look away. Taken even further your car drives itself and you no longer have to worry about the road - you can interact, safely, with the passengers in the car, or over a cell phone.
That said, we're single taskers. If I'm composing a note to billy, be it with pen and paper, on a cell phone's screen, a keyboard, or a device capable of reading my thoughts so I don't have to talk, type, or write, I'll still be concentrating on that note. I may *try* to talk with people around me, but then both my conversation and my written note would obviously suffer.
There are a couple ideas that excite me, but neither really solves the problem of ignoring those around us in favor of our toys. One is the idea of an augmented mind via a neural interface. This is a long way off, but having the "hud" behind one's eyes, rather than something strapped on top of them is kind of exciting. Add in a computer as part of one's brain, and some wireless technology built into that, and I could see a realm where you get the best of the binary and analog worlds when it comes to thinking. The wireless bit would allow one to offload tasks that are too big for your built in computer, but just having the built in computer offers some cool vistas. There are just some calculations that computers are better at than humans, and being able to think in both modes would be quite exciting, I'd think. I don't know if we'd ever really get to the point where the silicon, for advanced interactions like programming or mathematics ever actually "feels" like a part of the brain, or if it'd just be a much faster interface than keyboard and monitor. I could see having sensors, like a compass, that the brain simply uses, similar to the interaction with our eyes or ears.
Another idea I like to kick around is a companion device along the lines of the movie "Her", with an optional robotic avatar ala Persocoms in "Chobits". I'm not talking the end game in either show where the computer surpasses us, but an actual companion device. It could be as small as a Furby, or as large as a human. (Technically it could be any sized, but I don't think we'd want anything bigger than that unless it's a vehicle we're riding in or a domicile.) Secretary, personal trainer, a more "natural" interaction with you and the people around you than typing in a screen, etc. You'd run into strange situations where an adult might become emotionally attached to the device. Asking something with even a hint of a personality about something that's available online could be a lot more natural than breaking off a conversation to look it up on one's phone, and a computer *would* be able to multi-task like that without breaking the illusion that the conversation is the center of its world. Japan's already looking into robots for elderly care, and if the robot had a bit of personality, it'd surely help there.
I guess if you combined the two ideas you could "ask" the computer side of you to Google for the currently tallest building in the world, or how close we are to getting long chains of carbon nano-tubes for a space elevator with a minimal amount of interruption and have it return the results to you. . . but even then, the regular gray matter would need to take some time out to send and receive the data from the computer half.
I think an external thing that's ever
If we extend the definition to technology that is not tightly integrated with the body, then we've been cyborgs since we started using stone tools. Modern humans couldn't survive without hardware - I don't think that a clear line can be drawn between sticks and wheels, wheels and engines, or engines and microcomputers.
Back in the '80s was the first human-level artificial intelligence project. One of the problems the burgeoning intelligence had was Holistic extrapolation: That the state of one part of person usually extended to the rest of the body. eg. If my left foot is in the Antarctic, then my right foot probably is too. If my left foot is 45 years old, then my right foot is too. A further problem was not extending the solution to tools: If my hand holds an electric razor, it still operates separate from my hand.
The author is arguing that 'thinking' devices which we connect to via touch, sound, sight can be a part of us. But for the most part, these devices do not augment reality in a real-time way. That is, they do not improve the ability of a individual to survive and manipulate the world around that individual. We could give an individual a course of steroids, memory training, speed reading, a slide rule, and Curtis tabulator, an encyclopedia, carrier pigeons. Such a low-tech toolbox will achieve at a much slower rate the same results as the latest iShiny. We certainly wouldn't argue that a person equipped with these unthinking devices integrate them into the body.
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I had a cadaver bone graft and titanium inserted into my neck. That makes me a zomborg. So either way if the machines or the zombies rise up, I'm already covered.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's because the "internet of things" is a terrible idea that, for a very marginal benefit, opens up tons of things to security issues where before there were none. Also, I'm not a cyborg.
A cyborg, short for "cybernetic organism", is a being with both organic and mechanical parts.
Take that!