Automation and Utopia by John Danaher

Author:John Danaher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

There is obviously some overlap between these dimensions and the criteria suggested by Clark and Chalmers, but by focusing on the type of information flow, coupling, transparency, personalization, and cognitive transformation, Heersmink’s framework also captures the need for interdependency. Following his approach, it’s easy to see why I don’t feel much like a cyborg when I use Google Maps. Although it is quite accessible and personalized (depending on how I use it), and I put a lot of trust in it, it doesn’t score highly when it comes to the intensity of information flow, the amount of cognitive transformation it entails, and the durability of the coupling. Neil Harbisson’s antenna, on the other hand, scores highly on all dimensions.

The bottom line then is that the conceptual path to cyborg status is quite feasible. We do make widespread use of technological artifacts in our everyday lives and we always will. Nevertheless, whether we attain cyborg status by following this pathway depends on the degree of complementarity between ourselves and the technological artifacts we use to navigate and make sense of the world. The more complementarity, the more cyborg-like we become.

What about the technical path to cyborg status? Remember that this requires the direct fusion of biology and machine. As such, the distinction between the technical and conceptual cyborg is, as already suggested, itself also really a matter of degree. We can easily just say that technical cyborgs are people who lie on the extreme end of the integration spectrum: they have bound the fate of their biological systems to technical systems. Indeed, Neil Harbisson would again seem to be a perfect example of this. His antenna is not just an artifact with which he forms an interdependent feedback relationship; it is something directly fused to his body. They are bound together, at least for the time being. The close integration of two systems does not have to be irreversible for it to count as an instance of technical cyborgization, though this may be important when it comes to evaluating its utopian potential, as we shall see below.

Harbisson, and the others like him, are thus a proof of concept. They show us that it is possible to become a technical cyborg. That said, there are clearly limitations to the degree of technological integration that is possible nowadays. Harbisson is an eloquent spokesperson for the cyborg revolution, but he is hardly the radical leap forward in human evolution Tim Cannon desires. To get a better sense of what some of the current possibilities and limitations might be, we need to consider the different methods and means of becoming a technical cyborg. The aforementioned Kevin Warwick describes three pathways to cyborgization that are currently being developed:20

Cultured Brain in a Robot: This involves taking a lab-cultured network of biological brain cells (usually taken from rodents, but possibly from humans) and connecting them to an electrode array that enables them to send and receive signals to the outside world. Initial experiments on this technique suggest that

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