Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is
Speaker 1: vault time. We shall enter. The door hangs open, the
Speaker 1: void calls, Uh, what have we got today, Robert? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: this this week we have cyborgs. This is an episode
Speaker 1: that I did with Christian back in April nineteen to
Speaker 1: be specific. And yeah, it's a fun discussion of just this,
Speaker 1: this kind of a morphous idea of cyborgs, right, because
Speaker 1: we all we all have our favorite, right the movie
Speaker 1: Cyborg Albert Hyoune movie Cyborg with Jean Claude van Dam. Yes,
Speaker 1: clearly that's everybody's favorite. But then also a few other,
Speaker 1: you know, small independent films like like RoboCop and the
Speaker 1: Terminator films, you know, um, and and also by mentioning that,
Speaker 1: I mean some of you are already probably arguing in
Speaker 1: your mind and making well with RoboCop really a cyborg
Speaker 1: or was he just a robot that they put a
Speaker 1: face on as a testament to a fallen cop. Do
Speaker 1: you you and our seemed colleague Christian Sega address these
Speaker 1: questions in the episode, Yeah, a little bit, because ultimately
Speaker 1: it is kind of an amorphous Torrent term this, this
Speaker 1: term cyborgs. So we talked about like where it came from,
Speaker 1: like some of its origins in our considerations of of
Speaker 1: travel beyond our planet, of of changing astronauts uh to
Speaker 1: better uh survive the harsh conditions of outer space, as
Speaker 1: well as how the the idea of of of the
Speaker 1: cyborg has been taken up as as kind of a
Speaker 1: metaphor for say, feminist identity. Oh interesting, I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever heard of it that way that. Now I
Speaker 1: feel like I gotta listen to this. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: figure out what you guys talked about. Well, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's do let's all dive in and explore the world
Speaker 1: of cyborgs. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Brown and
Speaker 1: I am Christian Sager. So Robert sideboard the words cyborg.
Speaker 1: Do you hear that? What does it mean to you?
Speaker 1: What is it? What pops up immediately? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of depends on how far back in my
Speaker 1: own timeline I go like, I can't help but instantly
Speaker 1: go back to being a kid where Cyborg meant terminator,
Speaker 1: cyborg meant RoboCop. And so you and I are both
Speaker 1: children of the eighties, and that's what cyborgs were at
Speaker 1: their height of popularity, probably right. Yeah, this idea that like,
Speaker 1: there's a machine, but it's it's got at least a
Speaker 1: little bit of humanity to it, but nothing, nothing was
Speaker 1: going to hold it back too much from being like
Speaker 1: a you know, a terrorizing robot or this this this
Speaker 1: brutal metal badass. Yeah, I and I tease this a
Speaker 1: little bit on social media, but for me, I immediately
Speaker 1: go to a comic book character named Cyborg and it's
Speaker 1: a character that it was first created in the seven
Speaker 1: these and that's you know, seventies eighties, that's when I
Speaker 1: was reading these comic books. Uh. He is an African
Speaker 1: American character who becomes a cyborg because he's in some
Speaker 1: kind of like athletic accident or a car accident or something,
Speaker 1: and his dad is like a cyber next genius and
Speaker 1: rebuilds his body and he becomes a superhero joins the
Speaker 1: Teen Titans. A lot of people out there may know
Speaker 1: this character from the Teen Titans cartoon show in the
Speaker 1: last decade. Yeah, my nephew was telling me all about Cyborg.
Speaker 1: I was hanging out with him in the past few months,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of I was impressed because it
Speaker 1: sounds like Teen Titans has done a good job of
Speaker 1: sort of giving a thoughtful treatment of Cyborg, Like what
Speaker 1: does it mean that this character is a little bit
Speaker 1: machine and a little bit human. It's kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: the cartoon is more of a comedy, but so the
Speaker 1: caveat they wanted to place on this is, you know,
Speaker 1: d C is rolling out its big summer blockbuster universe
Speaker 1: of superhero movies, and Cyborg is going to have his
Speaker 1: own movie, and he's going to be in the Justice
Speaker 1: League movies. And I haven't seen it, but I guess
Speaker 1: that Batman v. Superman movie spoilers like hints at him
Speaker 1: in somewhere. Uh So I kept thinking, as we were
Speaker 1: doing the research for this episode, which if you guys
Speaker 1: out there haven't guessed by now, is about cyborgs uh,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, you know, the people who are writing
Speaker 1: and doing all the preproduction on that Cyborg tent pole
Speaker 1: movie right now, I really hope they listen to this
Speaker 1: episode because we've got a lot of interesting themes going
Speaker 1: on here with the idea of cyborgs in general, and
Speaker 1: and that is what this episode is going to revolve around. Now,
Speaker 1: certainly we've had episodes in the past that have dealt
Speaker 1: with sort of like mind machine interfaces, including Joe and
Speaker 1: I did one in the past few months. I'll make
Speaker 1: sure we linked to that on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode, and it will be doing episodes in the future.
Speaker 1: I'm sure about cybernetic enhancements, prosthetic limbs, etcetera. But this
Speaker 1: episode is, as the title implies, it's about what do
Speaker 1: we think about when we think about cybords. What is
Speaker 1: the the meaning of cyborg as a word and as
Speaker 1: a trope and as a metaphor for understanding the human experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what I especially got out of it is that
Speaker 1: cyborg in general, there's a lot of philosophical arguments to
Speaker 1: make that we're already cyborgs, and that it is sort
Speaker 1: of like the natural evolution towards trans humanism, which is
Speaker 1: another thing we talked about on this show quite a bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I want to read a quote by Donna Harroway,
Speaker 1: who we're going to talk about later, but this really
Speaker 1: struck me as being crucial to us kind of thinking
Speaker 1: throughout the episode about she says technology is not neutral.
Speaker 1: We are inside of what we make, and it is
Speaker 1: inside of us. We're living in a world of connections,
Speaker 1: and it matters which ones get made and unmade. So
Speaker 1: she's not just talking about like, you know, pop sci fi,
Speaker 1: you plug a USB poured into your ear, cyborg, that
Speaker 1: kind of connection. She's talking about like cultural connections as well,
Speaker 1: and sort of how we fine reality based on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think that that is just in general, let's
Speaker 1: try to hold onto that while we're talking about all
Speaker 1: this stuff you two out there. Yeah, Now that doesn't mean,
Speaker 1: you know, cast aside your sci fi ideas as well,
Speaker 1: because a helpful Yeah, I think she even I can't
Speaker 1: remember she if she mentioned RoboCop in her money, And
Speaker 1: she definitely mentions some of the sci fi visions of
Speaker 1: cyborg because that's part of the metaphor. And we will,
Speaker 1: you know, if we haven't thoroughly satiated your pop culture
Speaker 1: cyborg references, will make some more throughout the episode. But
Speaker 1: there's too many, I think, maybe to get them all. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just they're rampant, especially in the wake of Terminator
Speaker 1: and RoboCop. Just just dealing with films alone. There's so
Speaker 1: many fabulously horrible be movies with cyboards and yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: But before we get into the word cyborg and where
Speaker 1: that comes from, uh, let's talk a little bit about cybernetics,
Speaker 1: which one of the core papers here. It comes from
Speaker 1: m T mathematician Norbert Winer, who wrote Cybernetics or cont
Speaker 1: Role and Communication in the Animal and Machine Back And
Speaker 1: this is a work that dealt with information theory with
Speaker 1: a focus on feedback and the similarities between a vast
Speaker 1: group of different phenomena from everything from throwing a ball
Speaker 1: to running a company to launching launching a missile. It's
Speaker 1: all about you're doing things, you're getting feedback and that
Speaker 1: allows you to uh for rational control of everything from
Speaker 1: machines to economic systems to communities. Uh and even a
Speaker 1: way to arguably tackle wicked problems. UM. I use the
Speaker 1: term we could problems, but essentially that was kind of
Speaker 1: the the area was getting into. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: one thing that's important to keep in mind about Winer's research,
Speaker 1: or I guess just it's not really research as much
Speaker 1: as just sort of like a general like pitch for
Speaker 1: the future, right, saying like this is a field, this
Speaker 1: is an approach that we can use to advance and
Speaker 1: to understand. He's coming right on the heels of World
Speaker 1: War two. Uh. And he is very much in particular
Speaker 1: considering cybernetics systems as being constituted by flows of information.
Speaker 1: And there's a really great article by a woman named
Speaker 1: Catherine Hales uh and she's she's at it, or at
Speaker 1: least this is hosted at u c l A. She
Speaker 1: may not be there anymore but just faculty and uh.
Speaker 1: She's basically looking at like the idea of Winer's like
Speaker 1: version of cyborg ism and how it mixes with sort
Speaker 1: of liberal humanism as well. And she is, my understanding,
Speaker 1: maybe not a student of but a disciple of Donna Harroway,
Speaker 1: who we're going to talk about extensively later. Um. But basically,
Speaker 1: the Winer version goes like this, right, and we're we're
Speaker 1: gonna use this analogy a lot. I think if a
Speaker 1: blind man is using a cane, is he a cyborg?
Speaker 1: And the Winer argument would say yes, because it's about
Speaker 1: the flow of information, right. The flow of information going
Speaker 1: through the cane is building reality for the blind man.
Speaker 1: Therefore it makes him a cyborg. The other argument he
Speaker 1: would probably make is a deaf person using a hearing
Speaker 1: aid cyborg, right, yeah, And that is going to be
Speaker 1: a recurring theme, like to what, to what extent is
Speaker 1: this individual cyborg? And I think this strong case to
Speaker 1: be made that, Yeah, when you are even basic tool
Speaker 1: use is cybernetic, it's inherently cybernetic. And when we're inherently
Speaker 1: cybernetic organism, I'm wearing contact lenses right now, that probably
Speaker 1: makes me a cyborg. Yeah, yeah, so, and that also
Speaker 1: involves like dental work. You know, you're wearing a time
Speaker 1: piece on your arm, wearable computing, um, and you can
Speaker 1: of course get into this isn't even getting into the smartphone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole smartphone thing is just like mind blowing lee cybernetic.
Speaker 1: I should also throw in that he took the name
Speaker 1: cybernetics from the Greek word kuber mettes, which means steersman. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you can think of just sort of the classic
Speaker 1: image of you know, a helmsman at a boat, um,
Speaker 1: you know, taking the taking the old raft across the
Speaker 1: river sticks. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of immediately.
Speaker 1: Why is that like the first helms when I go
Speaker 1: to his death. Yeah, I mean he's a great helms
Speaker 1: and he has an important because he always gets across. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Coxswain of the dead. Uh. But is essentially here
Speaker 1: the Steersman is depending on a constant flow of information
Speaker 1: and that governs the interface. So yeah, one of Winer's
Speaker 1: you know, big arguments is uh, and he doesn't I
Speaker 1: don't think maybe make this explicitly, but you know, basically
Speaker 1: it comes across as our cyborgs modifications that are intended
Speaker 1: to compensate for deficiencies. So I just mentioned my contacts
Speaker 1: deficient eyesight, So I wear contacts, right? Or are they
Speaker 1: interventions that are designed to enhance our normal functioning? Right? So?
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know of this, but are there
Speaker 1: a lot of people who wear contact lenses to give
Speaker 1: themselves better than vision? Um, well, it's not necessarily good
Speaker 1: if that happens, because my my eyesight changed and it
Speaker 1: apparently occasionally like eyesight gets like it prove, which throws
Speaker 1: your contacts out of whack. And so that's what happened
Speaker 1: to me. So I actually get my prescription taken down
Speaker 1: a little bit. Oh okay, Yeah, well that's interesting. Okay,
Speaker 1: so but yeah, so basically we're looking at this a
Speaker 1: is like, is it is it both? I think it is.
Speaker 1: I think it's both. It's both enhancing our our pre
Speaker 1: existing abilities but also compensating for deficiencies that we have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then there's like a blur somewhere in between, because
Speaker 1: because how do you define deficiency and how do you
Speaker 1: define what's like the what is the ideal human experience
Speaker 1: that we are either correcting for or going beyond? Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no just a template for the human.
Speaker 1: There's no basic human, right, so that line is just
Speaker 1: always going to be distorted. Yeah, and Harroway who we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about later. It's very important to this. Uh,
Speaker 1: she adds in a distinction that is beyond you know,
Speaker 1: cybernetics is beyond anything that fuses the device with a
Speaker 1: biological organism. It replaces cognition and neural feedback. So it
Speaker 1: challenges the difference between us as humans and us as animals.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's a way that we can draw the
Speaker 1: deficiency enhancement line, although again depends on what animal you're
Speaker 1: comparing yourself. Plenty of examples of animals that use tools,
Speaker 1: including many primates, um crows, Joe and I are discussed
Speaker 1: in recent episodes. So so yeah, even when when you
Speaker 1: start applying tool use to the scenario, you can make
Speaker 1: a case that there are plenty of cybernetical um, you know,
Speaker 1: animals out there. Absolutely. Yeah, Yeah, that's something to keep
Speaker 1: in mind as well. It's not just a human phenomenon.
Speaker 1: So the last bit from Hails that I think is
Speaker 1: important to consider when you're looking at Weiner is she
Speaker 1: makes the argument that Weiner is sort of conflicted between
Speaker 1: his uh somewhat humanistic endeavor that Heat envisions for cybernetics
Speaker 1: and his use or proposal of use of them as
Speaker 1: being effective killing machines for the military. So there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a contradiction there that she points out.
Speaker 1: And again I would say, well, can they be both?
Speaker 1: And clearly the Department of Defense would hope so, because
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about, millions and millions of dollars have
Speaker 1: gone into us developing cyborgs for warfare. Well, it kind
Speaker 1: of gets down to the fact if you were if
Speaker 1: you're going to repair or or augment the human form
Speaker 1: your change, you're also augmenting everything that is human, both
Speaker 1: the good stuff and the bad stuff. So so, hey,
Speaker 1: a blind man can read a book again perhaps, but
Speaker 1: also maybe a blind man can shoot lasers out of
Speaker 1: his eyes at the enemy. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the research that we're seeing that's
Speaker 1: sort of in its infancy with brain computer interfaces. That's
Speaker 1: where it's at right now, right where it's like, we're
Speaker 1: developing this so that like maybe a person who's missing
Speaker 1: a limb can move a robotic limb with their mind,
Speaker 1: but the application moves on from there. Right there, a
Speaker 1: person with their mind could control a missile or something. Now,
Speaker 1: it's important to note that nowadays very few people call
Speaker 1: themselves cyberneticists in the you know, the original sense of
Speaker 1: the word, because cybernetics kind of petered out as a
Speaker 1: scientific discipline for a few different reasons. So it branched
Speaker 1: off into more promising fields of cognitive science and robotics,
Speaker 1: but it also lost on funding. It couldn't deal with
Speaker 1: the ultimate gap between organic and mechanic mechanisms of control
Speaker 1: and communication. And the first cyborg recorded in history was
Speaker 1: a white lab rat that was experimented on at New
Speaker 1: York's Rockland State Hospital in the late fifties. So that's
Speaker 1: a good ten years after Winer's making his proposals. Uh.
Speaker 1: And basically it had a tiny osmatic pump that was
Speaker 1: implanted inside its body that injected controlled the controlled doses
Speaker 1: of chemicals into it to sort of regulate its physical systems.
Speaker 1: And of course this is interesting though because it then
Speaker 1: again draws us back to what is a cyborg because
Speaker 1: perhaps you could because just mentioning the pharmaceuticals, like the
Speaker 1: first human to take a drug, be it, you know,
Speaker 1: something that the found owned in the woods, or certainly
Speaker 1: are our modern pharmacological world like that is kind of
Speaker 1: inherently cybernetic. You're changing who you are and and creating
Speaker 1: this new, perhaps ideal, idealized version with who you are.
Speaker 1: So I'm on a penny dreadful kick, as as you
Speaker 1: guys out there might know, I've been talking about it
Speaker 1: a lot on the show lately. And Uh, there's this
Speaker 1: great quote where the Victor Frankenstein on the show is
Speaker 1: a drug addict and he's I'm assuming it's heroin or
Speaker 1: some opiate that he's constantly injecting into himself. He gives
Speaker 1: this big speech about why it's okay because basically the
Speaker 1: body is just a bunch of biological and chemiclot chemical processes,
Speaker 1: and all he's doing is either accelerating or decelerating those
Speaker 1: processes with the you know, the narcotics he's applying to himself.
Speaker 1: So you could sort of look at drug use in
Speaker 1: general as cybernetics, as you're saying, Yeah, indeed, all right
Speaker 1: now at this point in the narrative, we're going to
Speaker 1: fast forward to nineteen sixty. Now important note here this
Speaker 1: is a year before Earth to put the first human
Speaker 1: being in space, or more specifically, in Soviet Union, put
Speaker 1: the first thing in space. But yeah, it's especially important
Speaker 1: because what we're going to be talking about is a
Speaker 1: paper proposed by Manfred E. Kleines and Nathan S. Klein.
Speaker 1: They have very similar lesson informer with a C ladder
Speaker 1: with a K, and it's called Cyborgs in Space. And
Speaker 1: I know that sounds like it would be a joke,
Speaker 1: but hey, it was in nineteen sixty and they were
Speaker 1: pitching a legitimate idea for making space travel easier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and pitching an overall idea, specific ideas and sort of
Speaker 1: a philosophy of how to approach taking humans into space.
Speaker 1: Because the model that ultimately one out and the model
Speaker 1: we're still using today with put sending humans into space
Speaker 1: is like, all right, look at the human being, Look
Speaker 1: at Homo sapiens. This is an organism that is evolved
Speaker 1: not only to live on Earth, but to live in
Speaker 1: a very slim layer of Earth's atmosphere under certain conditions.
Speaker 1: We can't. There's places on Earth where we go and
Speaker 1: we die. Yes, So the vironmental constraints are very important
Speaker 1: for human life. So what we've been doing is we've
Speaker 1: been taking humans and sending them into space in a
Speaker 1: capsualized version of their own environment or as much as
Speaker 1: one as we can manage to try to replicate Earth's environment,
Speaker 1: and take that replication with us. Yeah, it's and in
Speaker 1: a way, it's kind of like I'm gonna move from
Speaker 1: Ohio to Florida, but I'm going to make sure that
Speaker 1: i have all I'm bringing Ohio with me, and it's
Speaker 1: going to be like an encapsulated Ohio in Florida. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you dig up like a chunk of Ohio and then
Speaker 1: move it to Florida and plant it there. My thermostat
Speaker 1: is always going to keep things Ohio. Um, so what
Speaker 1: clins incline? We're arguing here is that. Well, how about
Speaker 1: we we do the the opposite. How about instead of
Speaker 1: bringing Ohio to Florida, what is as much as is
Speaker 1: humanly possible or or trans humanly possible, you become a Floridian?
Speaker 1: What even to what extent can we take a human,
Speaker 1: send them into space and change the human so that
Speaker 1: they can actually live in space, or at least they
Speaker 1: can better manage what is an imperfect representation of Earth's environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what we're getting at here too. And those of
Speaker 1: you out there who are sci fi fans are probably
Speaker 1: well aware of this, But this is a trope that
Speaker 1: has been used in science fiction probably before these guys
Speaker 1: pitched this idea. But but sort of the am I
Speaker 1: man or am I machine conundrum and where you know,
Speaker 1: where do I begin? And where does the machine and
Speaker 1: kind of thing that we've seen in pop culture fiction
Speaker 1: for decades now, right. But but these guys, what's fascinating
Speaker 1: to me about this is they pitched this whole thing
Speaker 1: about like this is a great way to go to space,
Speaker 1: and there's not one moment where they think about the
Speaker 1: ethical quandary of like what's left over of the human
Speaker 1: being that they're putting all this stuff into well they do,
Speaker 1: and I think part of it is, you know, you
Speaker 1: have to to to bear in mind like the time period,
Speaker 1: you know, because putting humans in space was instill it
Speaker 1: still is a just tremendously difficult endeavor. And they were saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: you want to climb the mountain, Here is a way,
Speaker 1: Here are some possibilities. This is these are some ways
Speaker 1: you can climb the mountain. And you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: very matter of fact. Now granted we've we've steered away
Speaker 1: from from what they outlined, but but you know, I
Speaker 1: still think it's a it's a valid argument. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: an argument that ultimately defeats the idea of sending humans
Speaker 1: into space, Uh, you know, long term, but are they
Speaker 1: human anymore? Right or right cyborg? Or if you're having
Speaker 1: to make all these changes to the human body, like
Speaker 1: does it, then why are you doing it to begin with?
Speaker 1: They're saying that this is a means to an end,
Speaker 1: that if you want humans to go into space, if
Speaker 1: you want us to expand beyond this world, then you
Speaker 1: have to change what humans are. And this is a
Speaker 1: means to an end. Not that we want to become cyborgs,
Speaker 1: but if this is what you want to be, this
Speaker 1: is what you have to Transcending Earth's boundaries are the
Speaker 1: most important thing for us, and we should be willing
Speaker 1: to commit these acts. Um. And the way that they
Speaker 1: start is with a very basic idea, which is respiration, Right,
Speaker 1: we we breathe uh. And they say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: for instance, you wear scuba masks when you go swimming underwater.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you you know, change your respiration somehow for
Speaker 1: outer space? Their example or metaphor, I guess, is what
Speaker 1: if a fish was intelligent enough to engineer itself something
Speaker 1: that allowed it to live on land and breathe air.
Speaker 1: And what was fascinating to me about that was, Um,
Speaker 1: I've probably talked about this on the show before, or
Speaker 1: at least talk to you about it. There's this really
Speaker 1: great Japanese manga horror called Geo that's all about fish
Speaker 1: climbing up out of the ocean and they're like strapped
Speaker 1: into these exoskeletons that like keep them alive, and they
Speaker 1: scuttle around and attack people, and it is one of
Speaker 1: the most horrifying images I can ever think of. So
Speaker 1: these guys back in nineteen sixty we're basically pitching that
Speaker 1: saying like, yeah, let's do that, but but to human beings. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: And it comes down to efficiency, right, Like these guys
Speaker 1: were ultimately about efficiently getting into space, especially when you consider,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this before, especially on our Space
Speaker 1: Mirrors episode or or also our episode about space weapons,
Speaker 1: how tremendously expensive it is to propel any mass and
Speaker 1: outer space. Right. And they talk about human fuel as
Speaker 1: being sort of a detriment. And when they say human fuel,
Speaker 1: what they mean is precisely ten pounds per day. And
Speaker 1: that's two pounds of oxygen to breathe, four pounds of
Speaker 1: fluids to drink, and four pounds of food to eat.
Speaker 1: So that's the way that they look at it is
Speaker 1: like the same way that you would look at like,
Speaker 1: well we need fuel for our space shuttle, right, and
Speaker 1: how much that way is and how much it will
Speaker 1: cost to fly that up. They're considering the human fuel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's ultimately like the human engineering problem. It's not
Speaker 1: only the engineering problem of the vessel, but the just
Speaker 1: the engineering problem of the human Yeah, and space. I mean,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like I wrote an episode for our
Speaker 1: video series brain Stuff one time that was all about
Speaker 1: what space would do to the human body and all
Speaker 1: the horrible ways in which you would die if you
Speaker 1: were just exposed to uh space without a suit or
Speaker 1: anything like that, and it's it's pretty vicious. Uh So
Speaker 1: for them, what they were looking at was not just
Speaker 1: the purpose of the cyborg as being to mitigate those effects,
Speaker 1: but also to take care of those problems automatically and unconsciously,
Speaker 1: right that the cyborg wouldn't be thinking about doing it
Speaker 1: as they were doing it. And this is this paper
Speaker 1: is where the word cyborg comes from. They coined it.
Speaker 1: So um, as we're talking about their their work here,
Speaker 1: realized that these guys are the granddaddies of all the
Speaker 1: ridiculous or um you know, real world ideas that come
Speaker 1: out of this. But we can see that we're already
Speaker 1: getting away from Winer's idea of cyborg just being about
Speaker 1: the flow of information. Right, So I'm gonna read a
Speaker 1: quick quote from Cyborgs and Space to give you a
Speaker 1: taste here. Um feel like like muppet style like cyber space. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: maybe no one can put some sort of echo hopefully. Quote,
Speaker 1: what are some of the devices necessary for creating self
Speaker 1: regulating man machine systems. This self regulation must function without
Speaker 1: the benefit of consciousness in order to cooperate with the
Speaker 1: body's own autonomous homeostatic controls. For the EXO genuously extended
Speaker 1: organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we
Speaker 1: propose the term cyborg. The cyborg deliberately incorporates exogeneous components,
Speaker 1: extending the self regulatory control function of the organism in
Speaker 1: order to adapt to new environments. So that's basically their
Speaker 1: thesis statement. They're starting off and saying like, all right,
Speaker 1: this is what we're proposed zing. May seem a little outlandish,
Speaker 1: but here, let us give you some examples. And when
Speaker 1: you read through the document, they they go through one
Speaker 1: by one of like, here's some cool things we could
Speaker 1: do to the human body. Right, Yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: readable document, So I'm created anyone that's interested to seek
Speaker 1: it out for themselves. Well include a link on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode. But some of the ideas
Speaker 1: that they roll out involved the following. First off, drug
Speaker 1: induced wakefulness, which is of actually this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that we see utilized in modern human space travel.
Speaker 1: Uh and and this next one calls back to that
Speaker 1: White rat. They want to implant osmatic pressure pump capsules
Speaker 1: in the body that could sense and control mechanisms to
Speaker 1: automatically administer everything from astronauts speed to hibernation inducing pituitary drugs.
Speaker 1: So and it's and certainly some of these um, these
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical products are are utilized by astronauts, but this would
Speaker 1: be a situation where they wouldn't have to think about
Speaker 1: taking it. It would just happen to their body. What
Speaker 1: astronauts speed is, um I just sounds like the best speed.
Speaker 1: It's like but it's dried. It's like it's like astronite
Speaker 1: ice cream. Yeah, well they're going to get the good stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: I did a blog post years back off to I
Speaker 1: have to link to it on the landing page for
Speaker 1: this episode because there was a list available of the
Speaker 1: various pharmaceuticals that are available, say on board a space
Speaker 1: shuttle or then space Shuttle or the I S s okay, alright,
Speaker 1: the next recommendation replace the lung with inverse fuel cells.
Speaker 1: They also talked about altering plumbing our bodies plumbing. I'm assuming,
Speaker 1: uh so that wastewater goes through a filter and right
Speaker 1: back into your blood. Sounds kind of like a still
Speaker 1: suit to me. Yeah, yeah, definitely, like a like a
Speaker 1: a bioengineered still suit. They also talked about enzyme tinkering
Speaker 1: to create anaerobic organisms, in other words, astronauts that don't
Speaker 1: require air or can live in different atmospheres. They would
Speaker 1: also drain your ear fluid or fill them up to
Speaker 1: up with weightlessness. Okay. Also electronic electric slash drug cardigo
Speaker 1: vascular control drugs that would prevent muscle atrophy. I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's I don't know enough about that topic, but
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's something they do. Um, I haven't.
Speaker 1: I looked at the research recently, but it's still that's
Speaker 1: vicorse still very much in an area of interest. It
Speaker 1: seems like it would be, especially those guys who are
Speaker 1: up there for like a year at a time. Uh.
Speaker 1: They've also talked about lower press body pressure engineering lower
Speaker 1: body pressure in the human body, kind of I like
Speaker 1: to think, to facilitate naked spacewalks sort of but essentially
Speaker 1: saying all right, we can't maybe we can't actually put
Speaker 1: a person out there in the void because the void
Speaker 1: is just I mean, the void is death and it's
Speaker 1: but maybe we can make the human body a little less.
Speaker 1: Uh you know explosion e god. Yeah, yeah, space does not.
Speaker 1: Space will kill you. Uh. Engineering of a light sensitive,
Speaker 1: chemically regulated system which would adjust to its own reflectance
Speaker 1: so as to maintain the temperature desires. We're basically talking
Speaker 1: about like a light regulation system of of of the
Speaker 1: temperature of the body. And that's another thing, because like
Speaker 1: space can go from like being like incredibly hot to
Speaker 1: being so cold it'll freeze you dead. Uh, it just
Speaker 1: in the blink of a shadow, right, Yeah, you need
Speaker 1: to be able to absorb solar radiation when necessary, but
Speaker 1: also to reflect it when it's just going to cook you. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine what this cyborg would look like.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I wonder if over the years if
Speaker 1: anybody has like taken their recipe for the space cyborg
Speaker 1: and like developed that out somehow and some fan art
Speaker 1: or something like that. I don't know, I would I
Speaker 1: would love to see it. One piece of fiction that
Speaker 1: that always comes to mind when I when I think
Speaker 1: about this paper was a Clifford Symic novel that came
Speaker 1: out called The Werewolf Principle Um And it's essentially a
Speaker 1: space werewolf story. But the The idea here is that
Speaker 1: we engineered human that would go into space and would
Speaker 1: rapidly adapt to life and other worlds. And uh so
Speaker 1: the space traveler goes to other worlds, adapts into these
Speaker 1: different forms that allow him to live in these strange environments,
Speaker 1: and then when he returns to Earth, he will sometimes
Speaker 1: shift into these forms. So he's changing into a quote
Speaker 1: unquote werewolf. But the werewolf is actually a form that
Speaker 1: he adapted in another world another two in order to
Speaker 1: live there, and it's no longer acceptable in Earth's environment
Speaker 1: and society, right, like, because he probably makes them eat
Speaker 1: people or something. Yeah, it's been a while since I've
Speaker 1: read it, but it's a pretty trippy book. It has
Speaker 1: also has flying houses and brownies, as in like the
Speaker 1: little fairies, those brownies, because it just turns out that,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, brownies exist. Like It's like it's like humans
Speaker 1: advanced to the point where they realize they realize, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there are brownies. They live out there in the woods
Speaker 1: and occasionally we can glimpse them. Yeah, this does sound fascinating,
Speaker 1: right Alright, So needles to say, as we already pointed out,
Speaker 1: uh NASA did not take all these recommendations to heart
Speaker 1: and um, so there's a certain amount of space between uh,
Speaker 1: cyborgs in space and where we are now. The Atlantic
Speaker 1: magazine's Alexis c. Magical caught up with the co author
Speaker 1: Manford Eclins back in two thousand and ten, and by
Speaker 1: the way, as of this recording, Clients is still kicking
Speaker 1: at age ninety. This climbs with a c uh. One
Speaker 1: of the things that Magical points out is that many
Speaker 1: uses of cyborgs seem to view the human machine hybrid
Speaker 1: as as an end point. So like we're gonna get
Speaker 1: to the point where we become the cyborg but uh
Speaker 1: and and and maybe as a compromise as well. But
Speaker 1: Clients saw it as as that means to the to
Speaker 1: an end quote, a way of enlarging the human experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend if you're interested in what we're talking
Speaker 1: about in this episode, go hunt down matt Icles Atlantic piece.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Basically what he gets out from talking
Speaker 1: with Clients is that Kleins saw cyb words as a
Speaker 1: means to enlarging the human experience. It wasn't just about
Speaker 1: space for him, and he was focused in particular on
Speaker 1: expanding our brains relationship with the world, And to me,
Speaker 1: like I wrote in my notes, isn't that trans humanism?
Speaker 1: Like this guy sounds like he's the father of trans
Speaker 1: humanism to me. Uh And, and I know out there
Speaker 1: a lot of people have been asking us to do
Speaker 1: an episode. I think we're gonna if we do, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do a two parter on trans humanism.
Speaker 1: It's just such a deep topic and clearly interests us uh.
Speaker 1: And So his focus after the whole you know space proposal,
Speaker 1: was on humans communicating without words, because, as he put it,
Speaker 1: language is messy and ambiguous. And what struck me about
Speaker 1: this is if if you know anything about like in
Speaker 1: the sixties, around this time that he was making these
Speaker 1: proposed this is when post structuralism really erupted in communications
Speaker 1: studies and linguistics, and it's essentially, you know, it's, oh God.
Speaker 1: I can't simplify post structuralism into one sentence, but I
Speaker 1: would say his statement of because language is messy and
Speaker 1: ambiguous is a nice lead in for post structuralism. So
Speaker 1: he was thinking about cyborg ways to get us there,
Speaker 1: and that leads us to Donna Harroway eventually. But he
Speaker 1: also did. He invented this machine that he talks to
Speaker 1: Magical about called the Computer of Average Transience. And apparently
Speaker 1: what this thing did was cancel noise impulses in the
Speaker 1: brain and translated them into averages of their impulses. Um.
Speaker 1: And the argument is basically like, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: these electrical impulses that he mean, he means language, like
Speaker 1: how language is encoded in the brain. Uh, but words
Speaker 1: don't have averages, right. You can't say, like, the word
Speaker 1: cyborg is five points x, so let's round it up
Speaker 1: to six, right, or or or the average of you know,
Speaker 1: in between whatever two different numbers gives you a number
Speaker 1: in between, It gives you a word in between two words. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: So he's not only does it seem like he is
Speaker 1: talking about transhumanism at a very early age, and he's
Speaker 1: talking about post structuralism, but then he's talking about math
Speaker 1: as language, which is really interesting. Yeah, and and certainly
Speaker 1: essential to any kind of bridge between organic So yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely machine. Yeah, which leads us it both connects back
Speaker 1: to Weiner's whole flow of information thing about being a cyborg,
Speaker 1: but then leads us further down the road of sort
Speaker 1: of the philosophy of what it would mean to be
Speaker 1: a cyborg. Indeed, so we've already touched on, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit on what we call a cyborg. You know,
Speaker 1: the blind man with a cane, a monkey with the stick, glasses,
Speaker 1: contact lenses. Um, I would and I, as I've said,
Speaker 1: virtually all tool use counts, like not only because we're
Speaker 1: picking up and using something, but it all a lot
Speaker 1: of it comes down to our body schema, our brain's
Speaker 1: conception of our body's position in space. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: just that alone entails some pretty complex mental processing, you know,
Speaker 1: just to say this is where I am, this is
Speaker 1: this is the space around me. And I have kind
Speaker 1: of like this virtual version of in my head of
Speaker 1: in a virtual idea of what my body consists of
Speaker 1: what are its limits? Uh, you know, what are my
Speaker 1: limits of control? Uh? So our brains are constantly processing
Speaker 1: sense feedback to establish where our limbs are at any
Speaker 1: given moment. And here's the crazy part. When we wield
Speaker 1: a hammer, when we wield a sword, when we you know,
Speaker 1: use one of those reachy clow things to get a
Speaker 1: can off of a shelf, extensions, Yeah, our body schema
Speaker 1: updates to include that as part of our bodies. So
Speaker 1: on a very neuroscientific level, we're we're already cyborgs, and
Speaker 1: likewise our memory adapts to use the Internet via transactive memory.
Speaker 1: We effort Lislee outsourced the remembrance of data. This is
Speaker 1: something that I thought about a lot as we were
Speaker 1: researching this episode that, uh, I don't know about you
Speaker 1: or the listeners, but I have definitely found in the
Speaker 1: last ten to fifteen years that like, not only do
Speaker 1: I have more information available at my fingertips than I
Speaker 1: ever would have before, but at the same time, like,
Speaker 1: because my brain only has so much RAM, I have
Speaker 1: to offload some of that into the cloud, right And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I can't particularly remember that right now.
Speaker 1: I'll put it in Google Docs, or I'll I'll let
Speaker 1: Wikipedia hold onto that for me for now, and I
Speaker 1: won't memorize. I don't know, like, uh, you know where
Speaker 1: Rod Stewart's from or something some like casual bit of
Speaker 1: trivial knowledge. Yeah, it's the same phenomenon that it allows
Speaker 1: or enables like one number of a you know, romantic compulse.
Speaker 1: The couple say to forget like an important date. They
Speaker 1: forget it because I'm like a subconscious level. They know
Speaker 1: the other individual will remember it, So why should It's
Speaker 1: just pure economics, right, Why should all members of this
Speaker 1: group of of interconnected humans a part of this network.
Speaker 1: Why should all nodes on the network carry that data?
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense they should collectively carry it. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And subsequently we end up with IICL or Google Calendar
Speaker 1: or whatever your your platform of choice. Yes. Right, if
Speaker 1: you want to know what it's like to have a
Speaker 1: cybernetic implant in your brain, you already have it. It's
Speaker 1: called spell check. I was on my way to work
Speaker 1: this morning. I'm on the train, riding in my phone
Speaker 1: buzzes and I pick it up. My cope, is this
Speaker 1: a text message? Nope, it was my phone reminding me
Speaker 1: that we were recording this episode this morning because it's
Speaker 1: on my calendar. And of course this isn't even getting
Speaker 1: into the whole realm of say, biomedical implants, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Klein's incline had a very particular obsession. And
Speaker 1: again we go back to this we talked about it
Speaker 1: with with Winer, right, that there's an obsession for science
Speaker 1: in the mill terry, with this combination of machine and
Speaker 1: man and what it comes down to is how can
Speaker 1: we escape our annoying bodies? Basically? Right? And uh and man,
Speaker 1: this was a great time for ideas. Uh. Not only
Speaker 1: does their paper coincide with the you know what I
Speaker 1: was talking about with post structuralism, but it also coincides
Speaker 1: with something so completely on the other side of it,
Speaker 1: which is the Silver Age of comic books. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in particular. You know, I'm not going to go into
Speaker 1: a whole rant about the Silver Age and explain comics,
Speaker 1: but the Silver Age was very much about superheroes that
Speaker 1: were science oriented, that we're sort of above and beyond
Speaker 1: what the human body could do, right, and so like
Speaker 1: the first Silver Age superhero character is often cited as
Speaker 1: being the Flash, and of course the the the dream
Speaker 1: of the Flash, right is that he can move faster,
Speaker 1: He can do everything faster than we can, because oh,
Speaker 1: these bodies are so slow, they're limited, right. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's bringing in history and man together in a way
Speaker 1: that it sounds like the military was very interested in.
Speaker 1: This was when we get into uh, clins incline. Their
Speaker 1: paper had a lot of influence in millions of US
Speaker 1: Air Force dollars were spent developing exoskeletons, robot arms, biofeedback devices,
Speaker 1: and more. I mean, we are obsessed with this dream.
Speaker 1: That's why it showed up in our pop culture over
Speaker 1: and over again. Uh, the six million Dollar Man, the
Speaker 1: Bionic Woman. Right. I think if we were both a
Speaker 1: little older, like those would be the example. Yeah. Yeah
Speaker 1: for me, Like, uh, you know you mentioned RoboCop. I
Speaker 1: think of like, um, surely Star Trek and Doctor who
Speaker 1: had their own iterations of cyborgs. But again, like it was,
Speaker 1: it ultimately comes down to that whole like uh, like
Speaker 1: they're they're agonizing over the am I Man or am
Speaker 1: I Machine? Where do I you know, where do I exist?
Speaker 1: In comics? Uh? This character that was just recently portrayed
Speaker 1: by Paul Bettany in the Avengers movie, The Vision is
Speaker 1: an android and he there's this classic comic book cover
Speaker 1: with the Vision and it says even an android can cry. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it all comes down to you to to
Speaker 1: what extent is a is a cyborg either an advancement
Speaker 1: of the human condition, a lessening of the human condition,
Speaker 1: or somewhere nicely neutral in the middle. Yeah. I want
Speaker 1: to mention one more thing from that Atlantic piece. Um,
Speaker 1: the authors spoke with Clins and Clients presented just another
Speaker 1: wonderful example of what it might mean to be a
Speaker 1: cyborg and what it means to perhaps you know, already
Speaker 1: be a cyborg. And that he presented the example of
Speaker 1: a cyborg implant that's part of our naturally occurring anatomy.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this before. Really, I was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: that's creepy. I'll give you a second to see if
Speaker 1: you can guess what it is, listeners, it's the lens
Speaker 1: of the eye. I'm going to read the quote. The
Speaker 1: lens is not in any way part of the body,
Speaker 1: except that it happens to be there. In fact, it
Speaker 1: has no normal blood supply. It does have liquid surrounding it,
Speaker 1: but there is no blood supply because if you had
Speaker 1: blood going through the lens, you wouldn't see too well.
Speaker 1: Nature has taken care of it. The biological control and
Speaker 1: invention of the lens is a beautiful and fantastic thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he the way he talks about it, he and
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is the author of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic piece or Clients himself, but basically says that our
Speaker 1: control over the lens of our eye is the nearest
Speaker 1: thing that we have to telekinesis Wow. Yeah, because we're talking.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a conscious movement of the body, but
Speaker 1: it's the only one not tied to the brain by
Speaker 1: neural feedback. You see the results of thinking it's something,
Speaker 1: you're thinking at it, and it happens, but there's no
Speaker 1: muscular feedback from from those muscles that activate the curvature
Speaker 1: of the lens. It's exactly what they were talking about
Speaker 1: with their whole space proposal, right that we have no
Speaker 1: knowledge of it operating automatically on its own, and just
Speaker 1: because we think a thing, it happens. There's no feedback,
Speaker 1: and it's just it just does it thinks and that
Speaker 1: big gun pops out of it exactly right. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
Speaker 1: back we will launch into some ethical quandaries about cyborgs
Speaker 1: and into even indeed into the idea of cyborg feminism.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about cyborg ethics. Um, there is a British cyberneticist
Speaker 1: by the name of Kevin Warwick, and a number of
Speaker 1: you that follow sort of trans human topics. You may
Speaker 1: be familiar with him thanks to his series of Captain
Speaker 1: Cyborg experiments, and these generally involved like placing chips in
Speaker 1: his body and sort of exploring, you know, early examples
Speaker 1: of what it is to be a human cyborg based
Speaker 1: on circuitry. But he's also done some thinking about the
Speaker 1: ethics of it. Particularly he's he's asked if humans will
Speaker 1: one day be required to upgrade to a cybernetic state
Speaker 1: to become cyborgs, or if they'll be be able to
Speaker 1: live their lives in a primitive state, which he likens
Speaker 1: to that of a chimpanzee living in the shadow of
Speaker 1: a human. I imagine that that is probably like the
Speaker 1: the heart flutter that a lot of people had when
Speaker 1: Google Glass hit the scene a couple of years ago. Remember, like,
Speaker 1: oh God, I'm gonna have to wear that to interact
Speaker 1: with society. No, No, I'll go live on a farm
Speaker 1: somewhere and I will not participate in Google Glass. And
Speaker 1: luckily it didn't pan out for anybody. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like when you encounter somebody who doesn't have a smartphone,
Speaker 1: and which is to a large extent, I applaud those
Speaker 1: individuals who who do that, but you also you sort
Speaker 1: of act yourself, like how do you how do you
Speaker 1: live your life like that? How? You know? How? Like
Speaker 1: we grow so accustomed to being just constantly plugged in,
Speaker 1: and when we're not plugged in, it it takes something
Speaker 1: out of you. Like when I went on vacation at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the year and my smartphone didn't work
Speaker 1: for a week, it was a little panicky. I was.
Speaker 1: I felt a little panicky at first. I had to
Speaker 1: sort of adjust to this new freedom of not being
Speaker 1: shackled to this device and all its augmentation. I remember
Speaker 1: being in my early twenties and I didn't have a
Speaker 1: cell phone, and I was like, I hate that everybody's
Speaker 1: on these cell phones all the time and they just
Speaker 1: walk around and talking and texting and not paying attention
Speaker 1: to the world around them. And I said something to
Speaker 1: a friend one time, like I'll never get a cell
Speaker 1: phone until they can implant them in your skull. And then, like,
Speaker 1: you know, cut to fifteen years later, and I've got
Speaker 1: a smartphone just like everybody else, and it is kind
Speaker 1: of implanted. Yeah, exactly, it pretty much is. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: a lot of individuals have have have studied, have written
Speaker 1: about the idea of cyborg ethics. One cool paper that
Speaker 1: we ran across is one titled Cyborgs and Moral Identity
Speaker 1: by Grant Gillette, published in two thousand six in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Medical Ethics, and it explored several different ethical
Speaker 1: cyborg andres. It's a fun paper, very readal. The author
Speaker 1: lays out some quote unquote fanciful cases. They often kind
Speaker 1: of tread into black mirror kind of territory. I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you noticed that as well. Yeah. As I was
Speaker 1: reading through it, I was like, man, this guy is
Speaker 1: just pitching black Mirror episode after episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they all kind of come down to the same question.
Speaker 1: If we cybernetically enhance a human, if we cybernetically enhance
Speaker 1: the brain, then to what extent is the resulting mind
Speaker 1: the resulting person still human? Some of the some of
Speaker 1: the exam I'm gonna roll through some of the examples here. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not your favorite. One is the last one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the last one is the one we'll talk about in
Speaker 1: More Death, because that's the problem of right. So he
Speaker 1: discussed discusses neuro reconstruction of a three year old severe
Speaker 1: brain injury. It ends up changing who the three year
Speaker 1: old is, but the three old three year old gets
Speaker 1: to to live, okay. And I think most people can
Speaker 1: get okay with that one because it's like you saved
Speaker 1: a life, right, and it's not perfect, but you saved alright.
Speaker 1: The next cybernetic eyes for the blind, the Jordy Leaforge scenario.
Speaker 1: Everybody's cool with Jordy. Another one, extensive brain injury and
Speaker 1: then replacement with micro networks. So this is like the
Speaker 1: natural evolution of brain computer interfaces. Yeah, and saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's damage to the brain, but we can fix it
Speaker 1: with with this new technology, all right. And again we're
Speaker 1: treating at the wound. We're treating an injury. Everybody's generally
Speaker 1: okay with that. An unborn child with an incompletely formed brain,
Speaker 1: and then doctors grow that brain out with cybernetic techniques
Speaker 1: to ensure the child is born with a working brain.
Speaker 1: This one's a lot that sounds like the beginning of
Speaker 1: a horror story to me. Well, yeah, I guess it
Speaker 1: could be. But or but you could also say that
Speaker 1: it forestalls the the real life horror story child. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think this one, this one, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a little more problematic because you're you're changing the the
Speaker 1: the human in utero, creating a cyborg in utero. And
Speaker 1: then and then you have to ask to what extent
Speaker 1: is the resulting child still the child? But yeah, right,
Speaker 1: but then there's the the Peggy story, and you want
Speaker 1: to take this one, sure, yeah, this is so, this
Speaker 1: is the one that the most felt like a black
Speaker 1: Mirror episode to me. And and genuinely, as I'm reading
Speaker 1: this academic article the twist to this story, i went, oh,
Speaker 1: like it's said, it's sent shivers that might spend like
Speaker 1: the twist to one of those old like horror comics.
Speaker 1: All right, so, uh, basically, the idea here is that
Speaker 1: Bob and Peggy are a couple and they have problems. Uh,
Speaker 1: Peggy's depressed, right, and uh so they rent Cybo help,
Speaker 1: which isn't like an android that's customized to come in
Speaker 1: and be compassionate and take care of Peggy and kind
Speaker 1: of like help her get beyond her depression. Her presence
Speaker 1: cheers everybody up, and Peggy undergoes neuropsychi psychiatric treatments and
Speaker 1: becomes her old self. Right. And one of the keys
Speaker 1: here is that the the android has these like symbols
Speaker 1: on the back of her skull that show like which
Speaker 1: which features she's been loaded with? And I think it's
Speaker 1: like there's some for like artistic abilities, and the most
Speaker 1: important one is is is one that allows the android
Speaker 1: to to show compassion. Yeah, so Bob and Peggy they say, hey,
Speaker 1: everything's fine. Now, Peggy's fine, she had this procedure was good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they'll say, well, we don't need the android anymore.
Speaker 1: They send her back to the plant. Uh. And at
Speaker 1: the end of it, Bob is like stroking Peggy's hair
Speaker 1: or something like that, and he notices that she's got
Speaker 1: the raised embossed indentations of lettering the same way that
Speaker 1: the android did on the back of her head. So
Speaker 1: it's implied, wait, what did that android do to my
Speaker 1: wife when I wasn't home? Right? Oh yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: a thing in there where he takes an extended business
Speaker 1: trip and that's when and when he gets back is
Speaker 1: when he notices that. So it's a little a little
Speaker 1: bit like Efford Wives. Right, there's a there's a very
Speaker 1: very much like a sexist theme here as well, But
Speaker 1: ultimately this one is more problematic, right because what happened
Speaker 1: to Peggy, what happened to the old Peggy? Was that
Speaker 1: the real Peggy? And is the new Peggy the new Peggy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where's Peggy? Also says something and I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is just Grant g letter or us how we
Speaker 1: approach this topic, but like how we think of depression too,
Speaker 1: as like that's a thing you cure. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: a robot come in and just fix it. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: makes two main observations with all of these. At one,
Speaker 1: we are less concerned with the cybernetic components of the
Speaker 1: if the of the person, if they seem peripheral or
Speaker 1: somewhat incidental to their psychological identity or character. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're cool with augmentations. That's no big deal because certainly
Speaker 1: you apply that to real life. We augment ourselves all
Speaker 1: the time. The type of coffees an augmentation, pair of
Speaker 1: glasses an augmentation, but generally you don't. People may joke
Speaker 1: about their not the selves until they have that cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, but nobody actually believes that. You know, what's
Speaker 1: cybernetic for me taking a shower? Yeah, Like I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that this weekend, Like what did people do
Speaker 1: before showers? Because if I don't have a shower. I
Speaker 1: feel exhausted and tired and gross. But then like you're
Speaker 1: getting that shower and it's just boom, I'm ready for
Speaker 1: the day. I don't know what it is. I'm the
Speaker 1: same way. His second observation is that quote we are
Speaker 1: more concerned where a non human mode of relationship or
Speaker 1: reaction or response to others emergence. So that's pretty basic,
Speaker 1: right when when you're when when the result seems non
Speaker 1: human or the relationship is not seems non human, then
Speaker 1: we're saying, Okay, what's what's wrong? This is not a
Speaker 1: cybernetic scenario I can get behind. So Gillette like proposing
Speaker 1: all of these fictional scenarios is basically getting at his
Speaker 1: big question, which is how should we morally treat a cyborg? Right,
Speaker 1: we still treat each other well. We like to think
Speaker 1: we do as moral agents when we're interacting with each
Speaker 1: other through diaries or computers or even antidepressants. Right now, again,
Speaker 1: I say I like to think we two and then
Speaker 1: like go take a look at some YouTube comments. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't know that they're necessarily moral agencies that play there.
Speaker 1: But his argument is if we're ethical and moral to
Speaker 1: one another through those things, shouldn't we do the same
Speaker 1: thing if our brain is somehow connected to technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, the Peggy example, especially if the morning
Speaker 1: you chew on it because you have the android who
Speaker 1: is fake and it's just you know, a servant that
Speaker 1: is then turned back over, but of the same things
Speaker 1: that that that make her seem genuine, like the same
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, emotional programming. If that same
Speaker 1: programming is used to quote unquote fix Peggy, then is
Speaker 1: Peggy fake now too? And then by but then if
Speaker 1: the reverse is true, then was the android a real
Speaker 1: person as well? What does it mean to be human?
Speaker 1: What does it mean to be non human? You know what?
Speaker 1: This is a perfect segue into the Donna Harroway uh conundrum,
Speaker 1: the cyborg manifesto. We're talking about Peggy and her depression
Speaker 1: and her female identity and whether or not it changes
Speaker 1: or is the same if she gets somehow computerized. That
Speaker 1: leads right into Harroway. Yes, we are now somewhere around
Speaker 1: nineteen five and we're talking about a cyborg manifesto by
Speaker 1: Donna J. Harraway. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of the
Speaker 1: History of Consciousness Department and feminist Studies department at the
Speaker 1: University of California, Santa Cruz. They have a History of
Speaker 1: Consciousness department, or they did, who knows if they're funding
Speaker 1: is still available. But that's pretty cool. So let's just
Speaker 1: get this out of the way. We both read, or
Speaker 1: in my case, attempted to read the Cyborg Manifesto. It's
Speaker 1: dense reading. I will warn you out there, people. Uh.
Speaker 1: Hairway has written this in a very kind of postmodern
Speaker 1: philosophical styling that it doesn't necessarily read like your traditional
Speaker 1: academic paper in that it, you know, it doesn't set
Speaker 1: up a methodology for you and then walking through an
Speaker 1: experiment and tell you what the conclusions were. A lot
Speaker 1: of it is her riffing on the ideas of what
Speaker 1: being a cyborg means. Yeah, and you kind of have
Speaker 1: to unravel what she means and what her argument here
Speaker 1: is as well. But ultimately it's Uh, it's a very
Speaker 1: compelling argument and one that probably beautifully transforms and illuminates
Speaker 1: the idea of cyborder that we've been discussing this whole episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I find it particularly useful. Uh. And in nine seven,
Speaker 1: UH Robert found an article in Wired Is written by
Speaker 1: Harri Kun's rue that basically deconstructs hairway cyborg manifesto and
Speaker 1: explains it much better. Uh, let's see if we can
Speaker 1: take a stab at it here. But you know what,
Speaker 1: let's start with that quote, just to give our listeners
Speaker 1: an idea of what kind of reading material it is.
Speaker 1: Quote by the late twentieth century, our time a mythic time.
Speaker 1: We're all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.
Speaker 1: In short, we're cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology. It
Speaker 1: gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image
Speaker 1: of both imagination and material reality. The relations between organism
Speaker 1: and machine has been a border war. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say. And this is written in
Speaker 1: the notes here. What the hell does that mean? Uh?
Speaker 1: This is what I got out of reading it directly.
Speaker 1: But then let's turn to that Wired article to see
Speaker 1: if we can unpack it a little bit more so.
Speaker 1: First of all, she sees cyborgs everywhere, and keep in
Speaker 1: mind share at this in which, you know, as we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, that's when we were growing up seeing
Speaker 1: them in pop culture every right, But she sees them
Speaker 1: in war. She sees them in sets, she sees them
Speaker 1: in medicine. Uh. In her thesis is essentially that cyborgs
Speaker 1: are a fiction that maps out our social and bodily
Speaker 1: reality that that can suggest what she calls fruitful couplings.
Speaker 1: And I think what she means by fruitful couplings are
Speaker 1: sort of like a redefinition of identity in such a
Speaker 1: way that is beneficial to the individual. We'll see, we'll
Speaker 1: see if I'm right about that or not. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all chimeras, right, and in particular that's important to her.
Speaker 1: And this is where it's not a cyber feminism or
Speaker 1: cyborg feminism is not her term, but it comes out
Speaker 1: of this paper. Cyborgs are post gender beings, right, or
Speaker 1: at least they're capable of being so. Uh. And going
Speaker 1: back all the way to us talking about Winer and
Speaker 1: Catherine Hayes paper about him, Harroway sees cyborgs as being
Speaker 1: inherently a confluence of both militarism and capitalism. And she
Speaker 1: breaks down. She says, there's three boundaries that come into
Speaker 1: play when we're talking about cyborgs. There's the human versus
Speaker 1: animal boundary, There's the organism versus machine boundary, and then
Speaker 1: there's the physical and non physical boundary. And I guess
Speaker 1: like that one to me gets us back to that
Speaker 1: like flow of information thing, right, Yeah, that's the non
Speaker 1: physical Yeah, the flow of information, the network of information. Um,
Speaker 1: that's very essential to all of this. But again a
Speaker 1: lot of you are probably wondering what the hell does
Speaker 1: that mean? Uh? And so let's turn to that come
Speaker 1: through article he profiled and chatted with Haraway for that
Speaker 1: piece and the one of the more useful examples that
Speaker 1: he brings up, and this is one where he's talking
Speaker 1: to her about this is the example of doping in sports. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Haraway sees this as just revelent because training, quote,
Speaker 1: training and technology make every Olympian a node in an
Speaker 1: in an international technoculture network. So winning an Olympic foot
Speaker 1: race isn't just about running fast or running faster because
Speaker 1: you took this particular medication. It's about quote, the interaction
Speaker 1: of medicine, diet, training practices, clothing and equipment, manufacturer and manufacture,
Speaker 1: visualization and time keeping. In other words, like that that
Speaker 1: that Olympic runner is the product of this, this vast
Speaker 1: interconnected system, These ideas of what a runner is and
Speaker 1: all of these technologies that make it possible and it's
Speaker 1: all artificial to her, right, like all of that is
Speaker 1: an example of being a cyborg. She even goes so
Speaker 1: far as to point out that before the Civil War,
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. Before the Civil War, there weren't
Speaker 1: right and left shoes. You just had shoes. Uh, And
Speaker 1: that the the invention of a right shoe and a
Speaker 1: left shoe, you know, was essentially yes, it was for comfortability,
Speaker 1: but also to you know, maximize walking and run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to say nothing of reebok pomps exactly, all those all
Speaker 1: those sweet hoops that you're and so Harroway actually addresses
Speaker 1: the feminism thing here, and it basically comes down to
Speaker 1: that she doesn't buy into that version of feminism that
Speaker 1: is she calls quote goddess feminism, where man, I really
Speaker 1: want Kristen and Caroline away on this our our colleagues
Speaker 1: who do stuff mom. Now, I thought about that. I
Speaker 1: did a quick search. I don't think they've covered this
Speaker 1: topic before, but I think it would be perfect, it
Speaker 1: would be awesome. Uh So, Anyway, she doesn't she didn't
Speaker 1: buy into that the the the kind of idea that
Speaker 1: you you shake off the modern world and somehow connect
Speaker 1: to Mother Earth. Right. Instead, she sees that the realities
Speaker 1: of modern life include a relationship between people and technology,
Speaker 1: and this is such an intimate relationship between those things
Speaker 1: that it's impossible to tell where we begin in the end.
Speaker 1: So again we're getting back to that science fiction cyborg
Speaker 1: and thinking of like episode of Star Trek the Next
Speaker 1: Generation with data, right, But he's like, am I human?
Speaker 1: Am I in android? As opposed to the board model,
Speaker 1: which is very much like look, you can see the
Speaker 1: human part is the white skin stuff and then the
Speaker 1: rest is just all you know, trip to lows madness.
Speaker 1: So for her, one of the fundamentals about cyborgs and
Speaker 1: how we're connected to modern society is one of our
Speaker 1: most important commodities. It's a commodity that you're listening to
Speaker 1: right now, and that Robert and I make a living
Speaker 1: off of information. Uh, cyborgs are information machines, right, So
Speaker 1: I think like in a way we could say, like
Speaker 1: if you out there right now are listening to podcasts
Speaker 1: like I do. You've got your phone, there's some kind
Speaker 1: of platform on it, it's running, uh the MP three file,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to us talk about cyborgs while you're
Speaker 1: doing whatever, your laundry, your commute, uh, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: your exer sizing. Uh. That is making you into an
Speaker 1: information machine. And we're part of that information machine. Yeah, indeed. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like one of the ideas here too, is that there's
Speaker 1: there's no longer a dichotomy of natural and artificial in
Speaker 1: our world. Everything is chimera, everything is cyborg. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing. There's no natural order. There's only the order
Speaker 1: of reinvention. We are all the new Peggy. Um, and
Speaker 1: we can be any version of Peggy that we want
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah. And this, uh, this is where it
Speaker 1: gets really relevant, I think, to modern day society. Right. So,
Speaker 1: Haroway further goes into it by talking about erotic fascination
Speaker 1: with cyborgs. She refers to quote the violation of boundaries
Speaker 1: by a cyborg as a pleasurable tight coupling between parts
Speaker 1: that are not supposed to touch. And I read that,
Speaker 1: and I thought of and I hope you haven't seen this,
Speaker 1: and I don't wish it upon any of our audience.
Speaker 1: But the episode of Torchwood, the TV show that is
Speaker 1: called cyber Woman, have you seen this? I may have
Speaker 1: watched this one. It's just like first second, yeah, first season,
Speaker 1: it's terrible. Yeah, yeah, I did watch this one and
Speaker 1: it's and it's you know, basically the premises in the
Speaker 1: Dr Hugh universe or these cyborgs called cybermen, and they
Speaker 1: just look like big kind of like robots, but they've
Speaker 1: got like human brains in them or some some organic
Speaker 1: parts in them. And uh, somewhere along the line they
Speaker 1: this woman was made into a cyber woman, and so
Speaker 1: she's like conflicted with between man and machine. But the
Speaker 1: design that they did for this episode is just so
Speaker 1: insulting to this poor actress's basically wearing like a cyborg bikini. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and and it really to me, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's that erotic fascination with the pleasurable tight coupling of
Speaker 1: the cyborg right like like clearly somebody who had access
Speaker 1: to the BBC's uh finances, was like, this is what
Speaker 1: our viewers want. They want to see this half naked
Speaker 1: cyborg lady. And to me, that leads us to the
Speaker 1: real heart of it, the heart of Harroway's argument, the
Speaker 1: trans humanism everything we've been talking about here today, and
Speaker 1: this comes via Hales and she says, the cyborg becomes
Speaker 1: the stage on which are performed contestation about body boundaries
Speaker 1: that have often marked class, ethnic, and cultural differences. So
Speaker 1: we're looking at a complex hybridization that's going to get
Speaker 1: rid of our old fashioned concepts of what is natural
Speaker 1: versus what is artificial? Right Like, so again, like this
Speaker 1: is what I imagined Harroway was thinking of. Breast implants
Speaker 1: was probably what she was thinking of when she was
Speaker 1: thinking about the like the erotic fascination of cyborgs. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it throws away binary concepts like gender. Right. And
Speaker 1: as we're recording this, it made me think of what's
Speaker 1: going on in with Carolina right now with this law
Speaker 1: that's got a lot of people upset on both sides
Speaker 1: about transgender people and public restrooms. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: wherever you fall on that, that is a transition from
Speaker 1: a binary duality that is totally freaking people out right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's just the beginning. Like when you think about
Speaker 1: the cyborg transition that our whole world is going through
Speaker 1: right now, get ready for infinite identities, like any possible combination.
Speaker 1: We're just squeamish right now about something that doesn't fit
Speaker 1: into one of our two categories. Right for restrooms, cyborg
Speaker 1: ism makes an infinite possibility of identities available or genders available, right, Yeah, indeed.
Speaker 1: I mean it also reminds me of the recent episode
Speaker 1: that we did on hyper religion. Uh. And some I
Speaker 1: think we've had conversations about this as well, about religious
Speaker 1: beliefs that are, you know, kind of the salad bar
Speaker 1: approach to religion. It's like a lot of us are
Speaker 1: engaging in a kind of cybernetic religion instead of saying like,
Speaker 1: this is an absolute truth. And instead of saying this
Speaker 1: is an absolute truth, we're saying, you know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to build my truth out of this element and this
Speaker 1: element and this element and create the kind of cyber
Speaker 1: cyborg um worldview that makes the most sense to me. Yeah, totally. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and Harroway actually has a quote that actually makes
Speaker 1: sense to me, uh, with regards to this, especially to absolutes.
Speaker 1: She says, good or bad nature, or nurture right or wrong,
Speaker 1: it's messier than that. And that's that's a great way
Speaker 1: to put it, Like, it's messier than that. So if
Speaker 1: you're gnashing your teeth one way or the other over
Speaker 1: what's going on in North Carolina right now, it's messier
Speaker 1: than that. And then there's the networked aspect of all
Speaker 1: of this. So we're not isolated individuals within our own
Speaker 1: skulls were essentially part of the matrix. We're we're all
Speaker 1: part of that massive battery. And that's that's not a
Speaker 1: bad thing. That's one of the things that she drives
Speaker 1: home is that we are we are, we are, we
Speaker 1: are all networked together, and that's something that should uh
Speaker 1: that we should pay more attention to and not district card. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that subsequently, out of all of Harroway's ideas, is
Speaker 1: where we get cyber feminism from. And this is not
Speaker 1: her term, that's right, and this means that there is
Speaker 1: no natural role quote unquote natural for a female in society,
Speaker 1: that we're past that, and that we're already kind of
Speaker 1: of post human in that respect, and I think kanz
Speaker 1: Ru sums it up nicely in that Wired paper from
Speaker 1: n quote. Feminists around the world have seized on this possibility.
Speaker 1: Cyber feminism is based on the idea that, in conjunction
Speaker 1: with technology, it's possible to construct your identity, your sexuality,
Speaker 1: even your gender, just as you please. And that is
Speaker 1: kind of I think the appeal of trans humanism. This
Speaker 1: is the point where I think we're moving from cyborg
Speaker 1: to trans human, right, or at least the conceptions. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're the same thing when you get down to it, right,
Speaker 1: I'd be curious what harroway has take is on that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what we're talking about, is really kind
Speaker 1: of evolving your identity beyond what is considered your natural state. Right.
Speaker 1: And of course this also ties into the whole area
Speaker 1: of race and racial identity um, which is certainly certainly
Speaker 1: falls under that messy category that Harroway um laid out
Speaker 1: in her paper. Because you know, there are aspects of
Speaker 1: racial and trans racial identity that we're very open to
Speaker 1: exploring and in our our modern culture. There are other
Speaker 1: areas that are a lot more taboo, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: identifying as African American if you are in fact of
Speaker 1: Caucasian descent, Like this brings to mind, uh, the story
Speaker 1: of a c p UM leader Rachel dolisal but came
Speaker 1: out in recent years. Yeah, the specific example here being
Speaker 1: that but she was born Caucasian to a Caucasian family,
Speaker 1: but that she was portraying herself, yeah, and said that
Speaker 1: she identified as African American. Uh. Yeah, and this was
Speaker 1: an idea that basically nobody was comfortable with. Yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: the media and and so harroway. You know, she says, well,
Speaker 1: but everything can be reconstructed between technology and biology, right,
Speaker 1: so then everything's up for grabs identity wise, So all
Speaker 1: basic assumptions about quote unquote how things are come into question.
Speaker 1: So she you know, whether we're talking about identity, ethnicity, gender,
Speaker 1: all of it is fluid. And here's the part, right, like,
Speaker 1: like we see examples like that pop up or the
Speaker 1: North Carolina restroom thing pop up, and and it's like
Speaker 1: they seem like they're blips. We cannot escape this. This
Speaker 1: is where humanity is heading. And it's just these are
Speaker 1: kind lake I guess, growing pains along the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes me think of pretty much any
Speaker 1: kind of trans human topic makes me think of in
Speaker 1: in Banks Culture series. In in that setting, the humans
Speaker 1: of the culture they live these extra long lives. There
Speaker 1: they're able to consciously and perhaps subconsciously administer various levels
Speaker 1: of pharmaceuticals into their own body to to to meet
Speaker 1: whatever their needs are. But they also throughout their long lives,
Speaker 1: they'll change their own gender. Uh, they will change their
Speaker 1: they may decide they need wings, They might want to
Speaker 1: sort of change species. They might want to live in
Speaker 1: a virtual environment instead of a physical one. And uh,
Speaker 1: I can I can't remember remember a specific example, but
Speaker 1: I can well imagine an individual in the culture changing
Speaker 1: their race and it being no big deal either. But
Speaker 1: we're not quite there yet. Uh, for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: Maybe that'll Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm stretching a
Speaker 1: little too far here, but maybe that will be We
Speaker 1: we visit this idea often on the show. A couple
Speaker 1: of hun your years from now, people will look back
Speaker 1: at us and be like, they were just so uptight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were so stuck on their identities, their singular identities. Uh,
Speaker 1: and now we're all cyborgs. Well put, well put. Now.
Speaker 1: We don't have time to go into into all these
Speaker 1: in this episode, but I do want to to to
Speaker 1: mention that hard waits work has been tremendously influential on
Speaker 1: individuals and a number of different disciplines. She's an influenced
Speaker 1: views on science, economics, computer development, thermodynamics, information theory. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you can you can go online and you can look
Speaker 1: up cyborg economics and it is a thing that people
Speaker 1: have written about um rather exhaustively. Yeah, and so you know,
Speaker 1: here's how I want I want to close it out
Speaker 1: how we started off. So somebody out there is writing
Speaker 1: screenplay right now for DC's Cyborg movie. Uh, and I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot of potential there. I don't knowing,
Speaker 1: knowing what I know about superhero movies and in particular
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers super her movies, I'm not you know, I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of high hopes that they're going
Speaker 1: to particularly address Donna Harroway's themes, for instance, in the
Speaker 1: Cyborg movie. But hey, if you're listening and you're working
Speaker 1: on the Cyborg movie, maybe think about the fluidity I've
Speaker 1: identity that Cyborg could have or the flow of information
Speaker 1: that seems to me like something that they'll probably tap
Speaker 1: into their like real excited about the idea of humanity
Speaker 1: connecting with machines and using information is like power in
Speaker 1: a way. Yeah, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But the character is African American? Right, is that explored
Speaker 1: at all in the comics, Like the idea that like
Speaker 1: the transformation of Really, I don't, I don't remember it
Speaker 1: ever being explored as like, uh, it's not specifically like ethnically, No,
Speaker 1: there is a point where he transcends being human and
Speaker 1: he sort of becomes like the T one thousand, he
Speaker 1: turns into this like gold liquid metal. Uh. And that
Speaker 1: I think that I think is maybe somebody's saying like,
Speaker 1: oh well, the natural extension for the cyborg thing would
Speaker 1: be that it would be beyond the identity of of
Speaker 1: of being African American, or of being even human. Right,
Speaker 1: But he was so recognizable in the other form that
Speaker 1: they brought him back around to the to the form
Speaker 1: that will be in the movie. You gotta put something
Speaker 1: on the comic book cover. Oh yeah, yeah exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: I wonder if he's going to go into outer space,
Speaker 1: if there's gonna be a little nod declines incline there
Speaker 1: with the outer space stuff, and then you know, surely
Speaker 1: I would imagine they would talk about the ethics, uh,
Speaker 1: surrounding it, how he will be treated. What I'm concerned about, though,
Speaker 1: is that it's going to end up being like all
Speaker 1: that nineteen eighties cyborg fiction we carry up with, which
Speaker 1: is just you know, agonizing over humanity. Is human anymore?
Speaker 1: Is he not? And a gun comes out of his legs,
Speaker 1: right exactly. All right, Well, we will see, we will see. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope they incorporate some of those ideas that would
Speaker 1: be that would be very cool. Well, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we've done a pretty good job of tackling
Speaker 1: the theory the philosophy of cyborgs. We maybe didn't get
Speaker 1: into the technology that you might be interested in, but
Speaker 1: you know, out there, let us know, let us know
Speaker 1: what you know about cyborgs that we missed. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you think about harroway and uh, cyberfeminism or
Speaker 1: the ethics surrounding this, uh, the black mirror style Peggy
Speaker 1: android as wife scenario? Yeah, indeed. And one thing I
Speaker 1: would love to hear is, first of all, I would
Speaker 1: love to hear people take what you what we've talked
Speaker 1: about in this episode and apply that to like a
Speaker 1: night bad nineteen eighties cyborg and give us a like
Speaker 1: nice intelligent read on that simple character. Or likewise, if
Speaker 1: you can think of an example of a really intelligent
Speaker 1: treatment of of cyborgs in fiction does tie into this material,
Speaker 1: I would definitely want to hear about that. Man, there's
Speaker 1: a there was a missed opportunity when they remade RoboCop,
Speaker 1: they had a lot of opportunity to dive into some
Speaker 1: of this stuff, but they just kind of remade it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I haven't seen that one yet. It's not bad,
Speaker 1: but it's just, you know, it's pretty much just a remake.
Speaker 1: And then they have more c g I, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot more crazy gun play because I remember the
Speaker 1: original exported a little bit like the whole bit. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was in the sequel where they were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't him, this is just this is a tribute
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, that wasn't there. So hey,
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, pull that
Speaker 1: cybernetic enhancement out of your pocket. Head on over to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we'll
Speaker 1: find all the episodes. You'll find videos, you'll find blog posts,
Speaker 1: you'll find links out to our social media accounts like Twitter, Tumbler, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. And you could use the old fashioned cybernetic
Speaker 1: way of getting in touch with us, write us an email.
Speaker 1: You could use it on a desktop computer or a
Speaker 1: mobile device, or maybe with your mind. We are at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how Stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it,
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