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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.
We rely on screens and mobile devices to extend our powers beyond the biological.
Which is exactly why we're not cyborgs.
You keep using that word (cyborg). I do not think it means what you think it means... :P
http://youtu.be/G2y8Sx4B2Sk
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.
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.
It's that you can't turn it off.
You don't have free will?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"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.
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.
I don't have any control over what happens inside my brain and, in fact, I'm not even aware of it.
So not only I don't have free will, but I'm not even conscious of myself.