Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you wasn't the stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Christian Sager.
Speaker 1: So Robert sideboard the words cyborg. You hear that, What
Speaker 1: does it mean to you? What is it? What pops
Speaker 1: up immediately? Well, you know, I'm it kind of depends
Speaker 1: on how far back in my own time when I
Speaker 1: go like, I can't help but instantly go back to
Speaker 1: being a kid, where cyborg meant terminator, cyborg meant RoboCop.
Speaker 1: And so you and I are both children of the eighties,
Speaker 1: and that's cyborgs were at their height of popularity, probably right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this idea that like, there's a machine, but it's it's
Speaker 1: got at least a little bit of humanity to it,
Speaker 1: but nothing nothing that's going to hold it back too
Speaker 1: much from being like a you know, a terrorizing robot
Speaker 1: or this this this brutal metal, all badass. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: U and I tease this a little bit on social media,
Speaker 1: but for me, I immediately go to a comic book
Speaker 1: character named Cyborg, and it's a character that it was
Speaker 1: first created in the seventies, and that's you know, seventies eighties,
Speaker 1: that's when I was reading these comic books. Uh. He
Speaker 1: is an African American character who becomes a cyborg because
Speaker 1: he's in some kind of like athletic accident or a
Speaker 1: car accident or something, and his dad is like a
Speaker 1: cyber next genius and rebuilds his body and he becomes
Speaker 1: a superhero and joins the Teen Titans. A lot of
Speaker 1: people out there may know this character from the Teen
Speaker 1: Titans cartoon show in the last decade. Yeah, my nephew
Speaker 1: was telling me all about Cyborg and I was hanging
Speaker 1: out with him in the past few months, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of I was impressed because it sounds like
Speaker 1: Teen Titans has done a good job of sort of
Speaker 1: giving a thoughtful treatment of Cyborg, Like what does it
Speaker 1: mean that this character is a little bit machine and
Speaker 1: a little bit human kind of middle it's kind of
Speaker 1: I mean, the cartoon is more of a comedy. But
Speaker 1: so the caveat I wanted to place on this is,
Speaker 1: you know, d C is rolling out its big summer
Speaker 1: blockbuster universe of superhero movies, and Cyborg is going to
Speaker 1: have his own movie and he's going to be in
Speaker 1: the Justice League. Movies and I haven't seen it, but
Speaker 1: I guess that Batman v. Superman movie spoilers like hints
Speaker 1: at him in somewhere. Uh So, I kept thinking as
Speaker 1: we were doing the research for this episode, which if
Speaker 1: you guys out there haven't guessed by now, is about cyborgs,
Speaker 1: uh it, I kept thinking, you know, the people who
Speaker 1: are writing and doing all the pre production on that
Speaker 1: cyborg tent pole movie right now, I really hope they
Speaker 1: listened to this episode because we've got a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting themes going on here with the idea of cyborgs
Speaker 1: in general, and and that is what this episode is
Speaker 1: going to revolve around. Now. Certainly, we've had episodes in
Speaker 1: the past that have dealt with sort of like mind
Speaker 1: machine interfaces, including Joe and I did one in the
Speaker 1: past few months. I'll make sure we linked to that
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode, and it will
Speaker 1: be doing episodes in the future. I'm sure about cybernetic enhancements,
Speaker 1: prosthetic loombs, etcetera. But this episode is, as the title implies,
Speaker 1: it's about what do we think about when we think
Speaker 1: about cyboards. What is the meaning of cyborg as a
Speaker 1: word and as a trope and as a metaphor for
Speaker 1: understanding the human experience. Yeah, and what I especially got
Speaker 1: out of it is that cyborg in general, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of philosophical arguments to make that we're already cyborgs,
Speaker 1: and that it is sort of like the natural evolution
Speaker 1: towards trans humanism, which is another thing we talked about
Speaker 1: on this show quite a bit. Uh. And I want
Speaker 1: to read a quote by Donna Harroway, who we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about later, but this really struck me as
Speaker 1: being crucial to us kind of thinking throughout the episode
Speaker 1: about she says, technology is not neutral. We are inside
Speaker 1: of what we make, and it is inside of us.
Speaker 1: We're living in a world of connections, and it mat
Speaker 1: rs which ones get made and unmade. So she's not
Speaker 1: just talking about like you know, pop sci fi, you
Speaker 1: plug a USB poured into your ear, cyborg, that kind
Speaker 1: of connection. She's talking about like cultural connections as well,
Speaker 1: and sort of how we define 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 think now that unt mean,
Speaker 1: you know, cast aside your sci fi ideas as well,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I think she even I can't remember she
Speaker 1: if she mentioned RoboCop in her money, and she definitely
Speaker 1: mentions some of the sci fi visions of cyborg because
Speaker 1: that's part of the metaphor. And we will, you know,
Speaker 1: if we haven't thoroughly satiated your pop culture cyborg references,
Speaker 1: will make them more throughout the episode. But there's too many,
Speaker 1: I think, maybe to get them all. Yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just they're rampant, especially in the wake of Terminator and RoboCop.
Speaker 1: Just just dealing with films alone, there's so many fabulously
Speaker 1: horrible be movies with cyboards and yeah, totally. But before
Speaker 1: we get into the the word cyborg and where that
Speaker 1: 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 Liner, who wrote Cybernetics or Control
Speaker 1: and Communication in the Animal and Machine Back And this
Speaker 1: is a work to dealt with information theory with a
Speaker 1: focus on feedback and the similarities between a vast group
Speaker 1: of different phenomena from everything from throwing a ball to
Speaker 1: running a company to launching launching a missile. It's all
Speaker 1: about you're doing things, you're getting feedback, and that allows
Speaker 1: you to uh for rational control of everything from machines
Speaker 1: to economic systems to communities. Uh, and even a way
Speaker 1: to arguably tackle WI coul problems. UM use the term
Speaker 1: we could problems, but essentially that was kind of the
Speaker 1: area was getting into. Yeah. And I think one thing
Speaker 1: that's important to keep in mind about Weiner's research, or
Speaker 1: I guess just it's not really research as much as
Speaker 1: just sort of like a general like pitch for the future,
Speaker 1: saying like this is a field, this is an approach
Speaker 1: that we can use to advance and to understand. He's
Speaker 1: coming right on the heels of World War two. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he is very much in particular considering cybernetics systems
Speaker 1: as being constituted by flows of information. And there's a
Speaker 1: really great article by a woman named Katherine Hales uh
Speaker 1: and she's she's at it, or at least this is
Speaker 1: hosted at u c l A. She may not be
Speaker 1: there anymore, but just faculty and uh. She's basically looking
Speaker 1: at like the idea of Winer's like version of cyborg
Speaker 1: ism and how it mixes with sort of liberal humanism
Speaker 1: as well. And she is my understanding, maybe not a
Speaker 1: student of but a disciple of Donna Harroway, who we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about extensively later. Um. But basically, the
Speaker 1: Winer version goes like this, right, and we're we're gonna
Speaker 1: use this analogy a lot. I think if a blind
Speaker 1: man is used in 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 is a cyborg? Right, yeah, And that is going
Speaker 1: to be a recurring theme, like to what to what
Speaker 1: extent is this individual cyborg? And I think this strong
Speaker 1: case to be made that, Yeah, when you are even
Speaker 1: basic tool use use cybernetic, it's inherently cybernetic. And when
Speaker 1: we're inherently cybernetic organism. I'm wearing contact lenses right now,
Speaker 1: that probably makes me a cyborg. Yeah yeah, So, and
Speaker 1: that also involves like dental low work. You know, you're
Speaker 1: wearing a time piece on your farm, wearable computing, um.
Speaker 1: And you can of course get into This isn't even
Speaker 1: getting into the smartphone. Yeah. The whole smartphone thing is
Speaker 1: just like mind blowing lee cybernetic. I should also throw
Speaker 1: in it. He took the name Cybernettics from the Greek
Speaker 1: word kuber mettes, which means steersman. Uh. And you can
Speaker 1: think of just sort of the classic image of you know,
Speaker 1: a helmsman at a boat, uh, you know, taking the
Speaker 1: taking the old raft across the river sticks. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I was thinking of immediately. Why is that
Speaker 1: like the first helmsman I go to his death? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a great helmsman. He has an important
Speaker 1: because he always gets across. Yeah, the Coxswain of the dead. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it's essentially here, the steersman is depending on a
Speaker 1: constant flow of information and that governs the interface. So yeah,
Speaker 1: one of Winer's you know, big arguments is uh. And
Speaker 1: he doesn't I don't think maybe make this explicitly, but
Speaker 1: you know, basically it comes across as our cyborgs modifications
Speaker 1: that are intended to compensate for deficiencies. So I just
Speaker 1: mentioned my contacts deficient eyesight, so I wear contacts, right,
Speaker 1: Or are they interventions that are designed to enhance our
Speaker 1: normal functioning. Right, So I'm you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: of this, but are there a lot of people who
Speaker 1: wear contact lenses to give themselves better than vision? Um, well,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily good if that happens, because my my
Speaker 1: eyesight changed, and it apparently occasionally, like I fight gets
Speaker 1: like it improves, which throws your contacts out of whack.
Speaker 1: And so that's what happened to me. So I'd actually
Speaker 1: get my prescription taken down a little bit. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's interesting. Okay, So but yeah, so basically we're
Speaker 1: looking at this as like, is it is it both?
Speaker 1: I think it is. I think it's both. It's both
Speaker 1: enhancing our our pre existing abilities but also compensating for
Speaker 1: deficiencies that we have. Yeah, and there's like a blur somewhere.
Speaker 1: But because deficiency and how do you define what's like
Speaker 1: the what is the ideal human experience that we are
Speaker 1: either correcting for or going beyond? Uh that Like there's
Speaker 1: no there's no just a template for the human. There's
Speaker 1: no basic human, right, so that line is just always
Speaker 1: going to be distorted. Yeah, and Haroway, who we're going
Speaker 1: 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: and including many primates crows, Jo 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 he 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 you know, or augment human
Speaker 1: form your change, you're also augmenting everything that is human,
Speaker 1: both 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 note that nowadays very few people call themselves
Speaker 1: cyberneticists in the you know, the original sense of the word,
Speaker 1: because cybernetics kind of petered out as a scientific discipline
Speaker 1: for a few different reasons. So it branched off into
Speaker 1: more promising fields of cognitive science and robotics, but it
Speaker 1: also lost on funding. It couldn't deal with the ultimate
Speaker 1: gap between organic and mechanic mechanisms of control and communication.
Speaker 1: And the first cyborg recorded in history was a white
Speaker 1: lab rat that was experimented on at New York's Rockland
Speaker 1: State Hospital in the late fifties, so that's a good
Speaker 1: ten years after Winer's making his proposals, uh, And basically
Speaker 1: it had a tiny osmatic pump that was implanted inside
Speaker 1: its body that injected controlled the control old doses of
Speaker 1: 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 this back to what is a cyboard 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 I've found in woods or certainly are our
Speaker 1: modern pharmacological world, like that is kind of inherently cybernetic.
Speaker 1: You're changing who you are and and creating this new,
Speaker 1: perhaps ideal, idealized version of who you are. So I'm
Speaker 1: on a penny dreadful kick, as as you guys out
Speaker 1: there might know, I've been talking about it a lot
Speaker 1: on the show lately. And uh, there's this great quote
Speaker 1: where the Victor Frankenstein on the show is a drug
Speaker 1: addict and he's I'm assuming it's harrowin or some opiate
Speaker 1: that he's constantly injecting into himself. He gives this big
Speaker 1: speech about why it's okay because basically the body is
Speaker 1: just a bunch of biological and chemicot chemical processes and
Speaker 1: all he's doing is either accelerating or decelerating those processes
Speaker 1: with the you know, the narcotics. He's a lying to himself.
Speaker 1: So you can 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 put the first human being
Speaker 1: in space, or more specifically, you know, 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 insformer with the C ladder
Speaker 1: with a K and it's called cyb worgs in space.
Speaker 1: And 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, we've put sending humans to stay.
Speaker 1: It is like, all right, look at the human being,
Speaker 1: Look at Homo sapiens. This is an organism that is
Speaker 1: evolved not only to live on Earth, but to live
Speaker 1: in 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. So the environmental constraints are very important for
Speaker 1: human life. So what we've been doing is we've been
Speaker 1: taking humans and sending them into space in a capsualized
Speaker 1: version of their own environment, or as much as one
Speaker 1: as we can manage to replicate Earth's environment, and take
Speaker 1: that replication with us. Yeah, it's and in a way,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like I'm gonna move from Ohio to Florida,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to make sure that I have all
Speaker 1: I'm bringing Ohio with me, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: like an encapsulated Ohio in flier. Yeah. You dig up
Speaker 1: like a chunk of Ohio and then move it to
Speaker 1: Florida and plant it there. My thermostat is always going
Speaker 1: to keep things Ohio. Um so what clines incline where
Speaker 1: are doing here? Is that? Well? How about we we
Speaker 1: do the the opposite. How about instead of bringing Ohio
Speaker 1: to Florida, what is as much as is humanly possible
Speaker 1: or or trans humanly possible, you become a Floridian? What events?
Speaker 1: To what extent can we take a human send them
Speaker 1: into space and change the human so that they can
Speaker 1: actually live in space, or at least they can better
Speaker 1: manage what is an imperfect representation of Earth's environment and
Speaker 1: what we're getting at here too. And those of you
Speaker 1: out there who are sci fi fans are probably well
Speaker 1: aware of this, But this is a trope that has
Speaker 1: been used in science fiction, probably before these guys pitched
Speaker 1: this idea. But but sort of the am I man
Speaker 1: or am I machine? Conundrum? And where you know, where
Speaker 1: do I begin? And where does the machine and kind
Speaker 1: of thing that we've seen in pop culture fiction for
Speaker 1: decades now, right. But but these guys, what's fast adating
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. 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's a way, here
Speaker 1: are some possibilities. This is these are some ways you
Speaker 1: can climb the mountain. And you know, it's it's very
Speaker 1: matter of fact. Now granted we've we've steered away from
Speaker 1: from what they outlined, but but you know, I still
Speaker 1: think it's a it's a valid argument. Um, 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 side word? Or if you're
Speaker 1: having to make all these changes to the human body,
Speaker 1: like does it? Then why are you doing it? To
Speaker 1: begin with? They're saying that this is a means to
Speaker 1: an end, that if you want humans to go into space,
Speaker 1: if you want us to expand beyond this world, then
Speaker 1: you have to change what humans are. And this is
Speaker 1: a means to an end. Not that we want to
Speaker 1: become cyborgs, but if this is what you want to be,
Speaker 1: this is what you have to Transcending Earth's boundaries are
Speaker 1: the most important thing for us, and we should be
Speaker 1: willing to commit these acts. Um. And the way that
Speaker 1: they 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 I
Speaker 1: probably talked about this on the show before at least
Speaker 1: talk to you about it. There's this really great Japanese
Speaker 1: manga horror called Geo that's all about fish climbing up
Speaker 1: out of the ocean and they're like strapped into these
Speaker 1: exoskeletons that like keep them alive, and they scuttle around
Speaker 1: and attack people, and it is one of the most
Speaker 1: horrifying images I can ever think of. So these guys
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty, we're basically pitching that and saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do that. But but to human beings, uh. And
Speaker 1: it comes down to efficiency, right, Like these guys were
Speaker 1: 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 in
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 dre 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, well,
Speaker 1: we need fuel for our space shuttle, right, and how
Speaker 1: much that way is and how much it will cost
Speaker 1: 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 si board 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 it. 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. So I'm gonna read a quick
Speaker 1: quote from Cyborgs and Space to just give you a
Speaker 1: taste here, Uh feel like muppet style like Cyborgs and Space, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe no one can put some sort of echo hopefully.
Speaker 1: Quote what are some of the devices necessary for creating
Speaker 1: self regulating man machine systems. This self regulation must function
Speaker 1: without the benefit of consciousness in order to cooperate with
Speaker 1: the body's own autonomous homeostatic controls. For the exo genuously
Speaker 1: extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously,
Speaker 1: we propose the term cyboord work. The cyborg deliberately incorporates
Speaker 1: exogeneous components, extending the self regulatory control function of the
Speaker 1: organism in order to adapt to new environments. So that's
Speaker 1: basically their thesis statement. They're starting off and saying like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is what we're proposing. May seem a
Speaker 1: little outlandish, but here, let us give you some examples.
Speaker 1: And when you read through the document, they they go
Speaker 1: through one by one of like, here's some cool things
Speaker 1: we could do to the human body. Right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a very readable document, so i'mcouraged one that's interested to
Speaker 1: seek it out for themselves. Include a link on the
Speaker 1: landing page of 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 actually this is one of the
Speaker 1: 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 in dou
Speaker 1: seeing pituitary drugs. So and it's and certainly some of these,
Speaker 1: um these pharmaceutical products are are utilized by astronauts, but
Speaker 1: this would be a situation where they wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: think about taking it. It It would just happen to their body.
Speaker 1: What astronauts speed is, um I just sounds like the
Speaker 1: best speed, but it's dried. It's like it's like astronite
Speaker 1: ice cream. Yeah, well they're gonna get the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Um I get a blog post years back off, 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 replaced 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 bioengineer.
Speaker 1: It's still suit. They also talked about enzyme tinkering to
Speaker 1: create anaerobic organisms, in other words, astronauts that don't require
Speaker 1: air or can live in different atmospheres. They would also
Speaker 1: drain your ear fluid or fill them up to cope
Speaker 1: with weightlessness. Also electronic electric slash drug cardigo, vascular control
Speaker 1: drugs that would prevent muscle atrophy. I wonder if that's
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about that topic, but I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's something they do. Um, I haven't. I looked
Speaker 1: at the research recently, but it's still that's the course,
Speaker 1: still very much in an area of interest. It seems
Speaker 1: like it would be, especially those guys who are up
Speaker 1: there for like a year at a time. Uh. They've
Speaker 1: also talked about lower press body pressure engineering lower body
Speaker 1: pressure in the human body kind of I like to
Speaker 1: think to facilitate naked spacewalks kind of sort of but
Speaker 1: essentially saying, all right, we can't maybe we can't actually
Speaker 1: put a person out there in the void because the
Speaker 1: void is just I mean, the void is death. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's maybe we can make the human body a
Speaker 1: little less you know, explosion e god. Yeah, yeah, space
Speaker 1: does not space will kill you. Uh. Engineering of a
Speaker 1: light sensitive, chemically regulated system which would adjust to its
Speaker 1: own reflectance so as to maintain the temperature desires. We're
Speaker 1: basically talking about like a uh light regulation system of
Speaker 1: of of the temperature of the body. And that's another thing,
Speaker 1: because like space can go from like being like incredibly
Speaker 1: hot to being so cold it'll freeze you dead. Uh
Speaker 1: it just in the blink of a shadow, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You need to be able to absorb solar radiation when necessary,
Speaker 1: but also to reflect it when it's just going to
Speaker 1: cook it. Yeah. Wow, I'm trying to imagine what this
Speaker 1: cyborg would look like. I wonder if I wonder if
Speaker 1: over the years, if anybody has like taken their recipe
Speaker 1: for the space cyborg and like developed that out somehow
Speaker 1: and to some fan art or something like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I would I would love to see it.
Speaker 1: One piece of fiction that that always comes to mind
Speaker 1: when I when I think about this paper was a
Speaker 1: Clifford Semic novel that came out called The Werewolf Principle
Speaker 1: Um And it's essentially a space werewolf story. But the
Speaker 1: the idea here is that we engineered human that would
Speaker 1: go into space and would rapidly adapt to life on
Speaker 1: other worlds. And uh so the space traveler goes to
Speaker 1: other worlds, adapts into these different forms that allow him
Speaker 1: to live in these strange environments, and then when he
Speaker 1: returns to Earth, he will sometimes shift into these forms.
Speaker 1: So he's changing into a quote unquote werewolf. But the
Speaker 1: werewolf is actually a form that he adapted in another
Speaker 1: world another in order to live there, and it's no
Speaker 1: longer acceptable in Earth's environment and society, right like because
Speaker 1: he probably makes them eat people or something. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been a while since I've read it, but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty trippy book. It has also has flying houses and
Speaker 1: brown as in like the little fairies, those brownies, because
Speaker 1: it just turns out that, oh yeah, brownies exist. Like
Speaker 1: it's like like humans advanced to the point where they
Speaker 1: realize they realize, oh yeah, there are brownies. They live
Speaker 1: out there in the woods and occasionally we can glimpse them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this does sound fascinating. All right, all right, so needles
Speaker 1: to say, as we already pointed out, NASA did not
Speaker 1: take all these recommendations to heart. And um, so there's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of space between cyborgs and space and
Speaker 1: where we are in the Atlantic magazines Alexis c Magical
Speaker 1: caught up with the co author Manford Eclines back in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, and by the way, as of this recording,
Speaker 1: Clients is still kicking at age ninety. This climbs with
Speaker 1: a c uh. One of the things that Madigal points
Speaker 1: out is that many uses of cyborgs seem to view
Speaker 1: that the human machine hybrid as as an end point,
Speaker 1: so like we're gonna get to the point where we
Speaker 1: become the cyborg uh and and and maybe as a
Speaker 1: compromise as well. But Clients saw it as as that
Speaker 1: means to the to an end quote a way of
Speaker 1: enlarging the human experience. Yeah, I highly recommend if you're
Speaker 1: interested in what we're talking about in this episode, go
Speaker 1: hunt down Madrigals Atlantic piece. It's really interesting basically what
Speaker 1: he gets out from talking with clients that Kleins saw
Speaker 1: cybe words as a means to enlarging the human experience.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just about space for him, and he was
Speaker 1: focused in particular on expanding our brains relationship with the world.
Speaker 1: And to me, like I wrote in my notes, isn't
Speaker 1: that trans humanism? Like this guy sounds like he's the
Speaker 1: father of trans humanism to me. Uh And and I
Speaker 1: know out there a lot of people have been asking
Speaker 1: us to do an episode. I think we're gonna if
Speaker 1: we do, we're gonna have to do a two parter
Speaker 1: on trans humanism. It's just such a deep topic just
Speaker 1: out and it's like this clearly interests us uh And
Speaker 1: 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 proposals.
Speaker 1: This is when post structuralism really erupted in communications studies
Speaker 1: 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: Madrigal 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 means language, like how language
Speaker 1: is encoded in the brain. Uh, but words don't have averages, right.
Speaker 1: You can't say, like, the word cyborg is five point six,
Speaker 1: so let's round it up to six, right, or or
Speaker 1: or the average of you know, in between whatever two
Speaker 1: different numbers gives you a number in between, it gives
Speaker 1: you a word in between two words. Right. Um, So
Speaker 1: he's not only does it seem like he is talking
Speaker 1: about trans humanism 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, definitely, yeah,
Speaker 1: which leads us it both connects back to Weiner's whole
Speaker 1: flow of information thing about being a cyborg, but then
Speaker 1: leads us further down the road of sort of the
Speaker 1: philosophy of what it would mean to be a cyborg. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so we've already touched on, you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: on on what we call a cyborg. You know, the
Speaker 1: blind man with a cane, a monkey with the stick, glasses,
Speaker 1: contact lenses. Um I would, And as I said, virtually
Speaker 1: all tool use counts, like not only because we're picking
Speaker 1: up and using something, but it all a lot of
Speaker 1: it comes down to our body scheme, our brains conception
Speaker 1: of our body's position in space. Uh, you know, just
Speaker 1: 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 it in my head
Speaker 1: of and 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? So our brains are constantly processing sense
Speaker 1: feedback to establish where our limbs are at any given moment.
Speaker 1: And here's the crazy part. When we wield a hammer,
Speaker 1: when we wield a sword, when we you know, use
Speaker 1: one of those reachy clothing e's to get a can
Speaker 1: off of a shelf extensions, Yeah, our body scheme updates
Speaker 1: to include that as part of our bodies. So on
Speaker 1: a very like neuroscientific level, we're we're already cyborgs. And likewise,
Speaker 1: our memory adapts to use the internet via transactive memory,
Speaker 1: we effortlessly outsource the remembrance of data. This is something
Speaker 1: that I thought about a lot as we were researching
Speaker 1: this episode that, uh, I don't know about you or
Speaker 1: the listeners, but I have definitely found in the last
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen years that like, not only do I
Speaker 1: have more information available at my fingertips than I ever
Speaker 1: would have before, but at the same time, like, because
Speaker 1: my brain only has so much RAM, I have to
Speaker 1: offload some of that into the cloud, right And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I can't particularly remember that right now, I'll put it
Speaker 1: in Google Docs, or I'll I'll let Wikipedia hold onto
Speaker 1: that for me for now, and I won't memorize. I
Speaker 1: don't know, like, uh, you know where Rod Stewart's from
Speaker 1: something some like casual bit of trivial knowledge. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the same phenomenon that would have that allows or enables
Speaker 1: like one member of a you know, romantic compulse. The
Speaker 1: couple say to forget like an important date. They forget
Speaker 1: it because I'm like a subconscious level they know the
Speaker 1: other individual will remember it. So why should It's just
Speaker 1: pure economics, right, Why should all members of this group
Speaker 1: of of interconnected humans a part of this network? Why
Speaker 1: should all nodes on the network carry that data? It
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense they should collectively carry it. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And subsequently we end up with ICL 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 and my phone
Speaker 1: buzzes and I pick it up, like, oh, this is
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 Cline's Incline had a very particular obsession. And
Speaker 1: again we go back to this. We talked about it
Speaker 1: with with Minor right, that there's an obsession for science
Speaker 1: in the military with this combination of machine and man,
Speaker 1: and what it comes down to is how can we
Speaker 1: 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 dream of
Speaker 1: the flash, right, is that he can move faster. He
Speaker 1: can do everything faster than we can because oh, these
Speaker 1: bodies are so slow, they're limited, right. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: bringing industry and man together in a way that it
Speaker 1: sounds like the military was very interested in this was
Speaker 1: when we get into uh clients incline. Their paper had
Speaker 1: a lot of influence in millions of US Air Force
Speaker 1: dollars were spent developing exoskeletons, robot arms, biofeedback devices, and more.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are obsessed with this dream. That's why
Speaker 1: it showed up in our pop culture over and over again. Uh,
Speaker 1: the six million dollar Man, the Bionic Woman. Right. I
Speaker 1: think if we were both a little older, like those
Speaker 1: would be the examples. Yeah, yeah for me, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned RoboCop. I think of like, um,
Speaker 1: surely Star Trek and Doctor who had their own iterations
Speaker 1: of cyborgs. But and again, like it was, it ultimately
Speaker 1: comes down to that whole like uh, like they're they're
Speaker 1: agonizing over the am I Man or am I Machine.
Speaker 1: Where do I you know, where do I exist? In comics? Uh?
Speaker 1: This character that was just recently portrayed by Paul Bettany
Speaker 1: in the Avengers movie, the Vision is an android and
Speaker 1: he there's this classic comic book cover with the Vision
Speaker 1: and it says even an android can cry. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it all comes down to, you know, to
Speaker 1: to what extent is a is a cyborg either an
Speaker 1: advancement 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. Uh.
Speaker 1: The authors spoke with Clins and Climbs 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'd never heard of this before. This is really I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, wow, that's creepy. I'll give you a
Speaker 1: second to see if you can guess what it does. Listeners,
Speaker 1: it's the lens of the eye. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: the quote. The lens is not in any way part
Speaker 1: of the body except that it happens to be there.
Speaker 1: In fact, it has no normal blood supply. It does
Speaker 1: have liquid surrounding it, but there's no blood supply, because
Speaker 1: if you had blood going through the lens, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: see too well. Nature has taken care of it. The
Speaker 1: biological control and invention of the lens is a beautiful
Speaker 1: and fantastic thing. Yeah. And he the way he talks
Speaker 1: about it, he and I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: the author of the Atlantic piece or Clients himself, but
Speaker 1: basically says that our control over the lens of our
Speaker 1: eye is the nearest thing that we have to telekinesis. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're talking. You know, it's a conscious movement of
Speaker 1: the body, but it's the only one not tied to
Speaker 1: the brain by neural feedback. You see either results of thinking.
Speaker 1: It's something you're thinking at it and it happens, but
Speaker 1: there's no muscular feedback from from those muscles that activate
Speaker 1: the curvature of the lens. It's exactly what they were
Speaker 1: talking about with their whole space proposal, right, that we
Speaker 1: have no knowledge of it operating automatically on its own,
Speaker 1: and just because we think a thing, it happens. There's
Speaker 1: no feedback, and it's just it just does it thinks
Speaker 1: and that big gun pops out of it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back we will launch into some ethical quandaries
Speaker 1: about cyborgs and into even indeed into the idea of
Speaker 1: cyborg feminism. All right, we're back and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about cyborg ethics. Um, there is a
Speaker 1: British cyberneticist by the name of Kevin Warwick, and a
Speaker 1: number of you that follow sort of trans human topics,
Speaker 1: you may be familiar with him thanks to his series
Speaker 1: of Captain cyborg experiments, and he's generally involved like placing
Speaker 1: chips in his body and sort of exploring you know,
Speaker 1: early examples of what it is to be a human
Speaker 1: cyborg based on you know, curcuitry. But he's also done
Speaker 1: some thinking about the ethics of it. Particularly he's he's
Speaker 1: asked if humans will one day be required to upgrade
Speaker 1: to a cybernetic state to become cyborgs, or if they'll
Speaker 1: be be able to live their lives in a primitive state,
Speaker 1: which he likens to that of a chimpanzee living in
Speaker 1: the shadow of a human. I imagine that that is
Speaker 1: probably like the the heart flutter that a lot of
Speaker 1: people had when Google Glass hit the scene a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. I remember like, oh god, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to wear that to interact with society. No, no,
Speaker 1: I'll go live on a farm somewhere and I will
Speaker 1: not participate in Google Glass. And luckily it didn't pan
Speaker 1: out for anybody. It's kind of like when you encounter
Speaker 1: somebody who doesn't have a smartphone, and which is to
Speaker 1: a large extent, I applaud those individuals who who do that,
Speaker 1: but you also you sort of act yourself like how
Speaker 1: do you how do you live your life like that? How?
Speaker 1: You know? How? Like we grow so accustomed to being
Speaker 1: just constantly plugged in, and when we're not plugged in,
Speaker 1: it it takes something out of you. Like when I
Speaker 1: went on vacation at the beginning of the year and
Speaker 1: my smartphone didn't work for a week. It was a
Speaker 1: little panicky. I was. I felt a little panicky at first.
Speaker 1: I had to sort of adjust to this new freedom
Speaker 1: of not being shackled to this device and all augmentation.
Speaker 1: I remember being in my early twenties and I didn't
Speaker 1: have a cell phone, and I was like, I hate
Speaker 1: that everybody's on these cell phones all the time and
Speaker 1: they just walk around and talk in and texting and
Speaker 1: not paying attention to the world around them. And I
Speaker 1: said something to a friend one time, like I'll never
Speaker 1: get a cell phone until they can implant them in
Speaker 1: your skull. And then like, you know, cut to fifteen
Speaker 1: years later, and I've got a smartphone just like everybody else,
Speaker 1: and it is kind of implanting exactly. It pretty much is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but a lot of individuals have have have studied, have
Speaker 1: written about 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 quandaries. Uh, it's a fun paper, very redal. The
Speaker 1: author lays out some quote unquote fanciful cases. They often
Speaker 1: kind of tread into black mirror kind of territory. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you noticed that as well. Yeah. As I
Speaker 1: was reading through it, I was like, man, this guy
Speaker 1: is 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, right. So he discussed
Speaker 1: discusses neuro reconstruction of a three year old. Sever your
Speaker 1: brain injury. It ends up changing who the three year
Speaker 1: old is, but the three old, the three year old
Speaker 1: gets tooked to live, okay, And I think most people
Speaker 1: can get okay with that one because it's like you
Speaker 1: saved a life, right, and it's not perfect, but you
Speaker 1: saved alright. The next one cybernetic eyes for the blind,
Speaker 1: the Jordy leafage scenario. Everybody's cool with Jordy. Another one,
Speaker 1: extensive brain injury and then replacement with micro networks. So
Speaker 1: this is like the natural evolution of brain computer interfaces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and saying like, oh, there's damage to the brain, but
Speaker 1: we can fix it with with this new technology, all right,
Speaker 1: And again we're treating the wound, we're treating an injury.
Speaker 1: Everybody's generally okay with that. An unborn child with an
Speaker 1: incompletely formed brain, and then doctors grow that brain out
Speaker 1: with cybernetic techniques to ensure the child is born with
Speaker 1: a working brain. This one's a lot that sounds like
Speaker 1: the beginning of a horror story to me. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it could be. But or but you could
Speaker 1: also say that it forced dolls the the real life
Speaker 1: horror story, right, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, So I think this
Speaker 1: one this, Yeah, this is a little more problematic because
Speaker 1: you're you're changing the the human in utero, creating a
Speaker 1: cyborg in utero, and then and then you have to
Speaker 1: ask to what extent is the resulting child still the child? 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, like,
Speaker 1: it's it's sent shivers. That might spend like the twist
Speaker 1: to one of those old, like nine fifties 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. 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 Stepford Wives. There's a very very like a
Speaker 1: sexist theme here as well, But ultimately this one is
Speaker 1: more problematic, right, because what happened to Peggy? Yeah, what
Speaker 1: happened to the old Peggy? Was that the real Peggy?
Speaker 1: And is the new Peggy the new Peggy? Yeah? Where's Peggy?
Speaker 1: Also says something And I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: just Grant Gelette or us how we approach this topic,
Speaker 1: but like how we think of depression too, as like
Speaker 1: that's a thing you cure. Yeah, we have a robot
Speaker 1: come in and just fix it. Yeah. He makes two
Speaker 1: main observations with all of these. At one, we are
Speaker 1: less concerned with the cybernetic components of the the of
Speaker 1: the person if they seemed peripheral or somewhat incidental to
Speaker 1: their psychological identity a character. Okay, so we're cool with augmentations.
Speaker 1: That's no big deal because certainly you apply that to
Speaker 1: real life. We augment ourselves all the time. The cup
Speaker 1: of coffee is an augmentation, pair of glasses an augmentation,
Speaker 1: But generally you don't. People may joke about their not
Speaker 1: themselves until they have that cup of coffee, but nobody
Speaker 1: actually believes that. You know, what's cyber netic for me
Speaker 1: taking a shower? Yeah, Like I was thinking about that
Speaker 1: this weekend, Like what did people do before showers? Because
Speaker 1: if I don't have a shower, I feel exhausted and
Speaker 1: tired and gross. But then like you're getting that shower
Speaker 1: and it's just boom, I'm ready for the day. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is. The same way. His second
Speaker 1: observation is that quote we are more concerned where a
Speaker 1: non human mode of relationship or reaction or response to
Speaker 1: others emergence. So that's pretty basic, right when when you're
Speaker 1: when when the result seems non human or the relationship
Speaker 1: is not seems non human, then we're saying, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: what's wrong? This is not a cybernetic scenario I can
Speaker 1: get behind. So Gillette like proposing all of these fictional
Speaker 1: scenarios is basically getting at his big question, which is
Speaker 1: how should we morally treat a cyborg. Right, we still
Speaker 1: treat each other well, we like to think we do
Speaker 1: as moral agents when we're interacting with each other through
Speaker 1: diaries or computers or even antidepressants. Right now, again, I say,
Speaker 1: I like to think we two and then like go
Speaker 1: take a look at some YouTube comments. Sometimes I don't
Speaker 1: know that they're necessarily moral agencies at play there. But
Speaker 1: his argument is, if we're ethical and moral to one
Speaker 1: another through those things, shouldn't we do the same thing
Speaker 1: if our brain is somehow connected to technology? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's uh, the Peggy example, especially at the morning, you
Speaker 1: chew on it because you have the android who is
Speaker 1: fake and it's just you know, a servant that is
Speaker 1: then turned back over. But if the same things that
Speaker 1: that that make her seem genuine, like the same sort
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, emotional programming. If that same programming
Speaker 1: is used to quote unquote fix Peggy, then is Peggy
Speaker 1: fake now too? And then by but then if the
Speaker 1: reverse is true, then was the android a real person
Speaker 1: as well? What does it mean to be human? What
Speaker 1: 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 eighty five and we're talking about a cyborg Manifesto
Speaker 1: by Donna J. Harraway. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of
Speaker 1: the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at
Speaker 1: the University of California, Santa Cruz. They have a History
Speaker 1: of conscious this department, or they did, who knows if
Speaker 1: they're funding is still available. But that's pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: let's just get this out of the way. We both
Speaker 1: read or in my case, attempted to read the Cyborg Manifesto.
Speaker 1: It's 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 that probably beautifully transforms and
Speaker 1: illuminates the idea of cyborder. We've been discussing this whole episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I find it particularly useful. Uh. And in seven uh,
Speaker 1: Robert found an article in Wired Is written by Harry
Speaker 1: kuns Rue that basically deconstructs Hairways cyborg manifesto and explains
Speaker 1: it much better. Uh. Let's see if we can take
Speaker 1: a stab at it here. But you know what, let's
Speaker 1: start with that quote, just to give our listeners an
Speaker 1: idea of what kind of reading material it is. Quote
Speaker 1: 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 out 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 everywhere. But she sees them in war,
Speaker 1: she sees them in sex, she sees them in medicine. Uh.
Speaker 1: And her thesis is essentially that cyborgs are a fiction
Speaker 1: that maps out our social and bodily reality that that
Speaker 1: can suggest what she calls fruitful couplings. And I think
Speaker 1: what she means by fruitful couplings are sort of like
Speaker 1: a redefinition of identity in such a way that is
Speaker 1: beneficial to the individual. We'll see, we'll see if I'm
Speaker 1: right about that or not. But yeah, we're all chimeras, right,
Speaker 1: and in particular that's important to her. And this is
Speaker 1: where it's not a cyber feminism or cyborg feminism is
Speaker 1: not her term, but it comes out of this paper.
Speaker 1: Cyborgs are post gender beings, right, or at least they're
Speaker 1: capable of being so uh and going back all the
Speaker 1: way to us talking about Winer and Catherine Hayes paper
Speaker 1: about him, Harraway sees cyborgs as being inherently a confluence
Speaker 1: of both militarism and capitalism, and she breaks down. She says,
Speaker 1: there's three boundaries that come into play when we're talking
Speaker 1: about cyborgs. There's the human versus animal boundary, There's the
Speaker 1: organism versus machine boundary, and then there's the physical and
Speaker 1: non physical boundary. And I guess like that one to
Speaker 1: me gets us back to that like flow of information thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the non physical Yeah, the flow of information, the
Speaker 1: network of information. That's very essential to all of this.
Speaker 1: But again a lot of you are probably wondering what
Speaker 1: the hell does that mean? And so let's turn to
Speaker 1: that come through article h He profiled and chatted it
Speaker 1: with Haraway for that piece and the one of the
Speaker 1: more useful examples that he brings up, and this is
Speaker 1: one where he's talking to her about this is the
Speaker 1: example of doping and sports. Okay, So Haraway sees this
Speaker 1: as just revelent because training, quote, training and technology make
Speaker 1: every olympian a node in an in an international technoculture network.
Speaker 1: So winning an Olympic foot race isn't just about running
Speaker 1: fast or running faster because you took this particular medication.
Speaker 1: It's about quote, the interaction of medicine, diet, training practices,
Speaker 1: clothing and equipment, manufacturer and manufacture, visualization and timekeeping. In
Speaker 1: other words, like that that that Olympic runner is the
Speaker 1: product of just this vast interconnected system, these ideas of
Speaker 1: what a runner is, and all of these technologies that
Speaker 1: make it possible. And it's all artificial to her, right,
Speaker 1: like all of that is an example of being a cybworg.
Speaker 1: She even goes so far as to point out that
Speaker 1: before the Civil War, I didn't know this. Before the
Speaker 1: Civil War, there weren't right and left shoes. You just
Speaker 1: had shoes, uh, And that the the invention of a
Speaker 1: right shoe and a left shoe, you know, was essentially, yes,
Speaker 1: it was for comfortability, but also to you know, maximize
Speaker 1: walking and running. Yeah, to say nothing of reboke pomps exactly,
Speaker 1: all those all those sweet hoops that you're and so
Speaker 1: Harroway actually addresses the feminism thing here, and it basically
Speaker 1: comes down to that she doesn't buy into that version
Speaker 1: of feminism, that is, she calls quote goddess feminism, where man,
Speaker 1: I really want Kristen and Caroline away on this, our
Speaker 1: our colleagues who do stuff. Mom. Now, I thought about that.
Speaker 1: I did a quick search. I don't think they've covered
Speaker 1: this topic before, but I think it would be awesome.
Speaker 1: Uh So, anyway, she doesn't. She didn't buy into that
Speaker 1: the the the kind of idea that you you shake
Speaker 1: off the modern world and somehow connect to Mother Earth. Right. Instead,
Speaker 1: she sees that the realities of modern life include a
Speaker 1: relationship between people and technology, and this is such an
Speaker 1: intimate relationship between those things that it's impossible to tell
Speaker 1: where we begin and they end. So again we're getting
Speaker 1: back to that science fiction cyborg and thinking of like
Speaker 1: episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation with data right,
Speaker 1: he was like, am I human? Am I in android?
Speaker 1: As opposed to the borg model, which is very much
Speaker 1: like look, you can see the human part is the
Speaker 1: white skin stuff and then the rest is just all
Speaker 1: you know, trip to lows madness. So yeah, so for her,
Speaker 1: one of the fundamentals about cyborgs and how we're connected
Speaker 1: to modern society is one of our most important commodities.
Speaker 1: It's a commodity that you're listening to right now, and
Speaker 1: that Robert and I make a living off of information. Uh.
Speaker 1: Cyborgs are information machines. Right. So I think like in
Speaker 1: a way we could say, like, if you out there
Speaker 1: right now are listening to podcasts like I do. You've
Speaker 1: got your phone, there's some kind of platform on it,
Speaker 1: it's running, uh the MP three file, and you're listening
Speaker 1: to us talk about cyborgs while you're doing whatever, your laundry,
Speaker 1: your commute. Uh, you know, whatever you're exercising. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is making you into an information machine. And we're part
Speaker 1: of that information machine. Yeah, indeed. Um. So, like one
Speaker 1: of the ideas here too is that there's there's no
Speaker 1: longer a dichotomy of natural and artificial in our world.
Speaker 1: Everything is camera, everything is cyborg. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's no natural order. There's only the order of reinvention.
Speaker 1: We're all the new Peggy, um, and we can be
Speaker 1: any version of Peggy that we want to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this, uh, this is where it gets really relevant
Speaker 1: I think, to modern day society. Right. So, Haroway further
Speaker 1: goes into it by talking about erotic fascination with cyborgs.
Speaker 1: She refers to quote the violation of boundaries by a
Speaker 1: cyborg as a pleasurable tight coupling between parts that are
Speaker 1: not supposed to touch. And I read that and I
Speaker 1: thought of and I hope you haven't seen this, and
Speaker 1: I don't wish it upon any of our audience. But
Speaker 1: the episode of Torchwood, the TV show that is called
Speaker 1: cyber Woman. Have you seen this? I have watched this one.
Speaker 1: It's just like, first second, yeah, first season's terrible. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did watch and it's and it's you know, basically
Speaker 1: the premises in the Doctor Hugh universe or these cyborgs
Speaker 1: called cybermen, and they just look like big kind of
Speaker 1: like robots, but they've got like human brains in them
Speaker 1: or some some organic parts in them. And uh, somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line they this woman was made into a
Speaker 1: cyber woman, and so she's like conflicted with between man
Speaker 1: and machine. But the design that they did for this
Speaker 1: episode is so insulting to this poor actress's basically wearing
Speaker 1: like a cyborg bikini. Uh and and and it really
Speaker 1: to me, I was like, oh, there's that erotic fascination
Speaker 1: with the measurable type coupling of the cyborg right, Like, Like,
Speaker 1: clearly somebody who had access to the BBC's UH finances
Speaker 1: was like, this is what our viewers want. They want
Speaker 1: to see this half naked cyborg lady. And to me,
Speaker 1: that leads us to the real heart of it, the
Speaker 1: heart of Harroway's argument, the trans humanism everything we've been
Speaker 1: talking about here today, And this comes via Hales and
Speaker 1: she says, the cyborg becomes the stage on which are
Speaker 1: performed contestation about body boundaries that have often marked class,
Speaker 1: ethnic and cultural differences. So we're looking at a complex
Speaker 1: hybridization that's going to get rid of our old fashioned
Speaker 1: concepts of what is natural versus what is artificial? Right Like,
Speaker 1: so again like this is what I imagined Harroway was
Speaker 1: thinking of. Breast implants was probably what she was thinking
Speaker 1: of when she was thinking about the like the erotic
Speaker 1: fascination of cyborgs. Uh. But it throws away binary concepts
Speaker 1: like gender right And as we're we're recording this, it
Speaker 1: made me think of what's going on in North Carolina
Speaker 1: right now with this law that's got a lot of
Speaker 1: people upset on both sides about transgender people and public restrooms. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know wherever you fall on that that is
Speaker 1: a transition from a binary duality that is totally freaking
Speaker 1: people out right. Uh. And that's just the beginning. Like
Speaker 1: when you think about the cyborg transition that our whole
Speaker 1: world is going through right now, get ready for infinite identities,
Speaker 1: like any possible combination. We're just squeamish right now about
Speaker 1: something that doesn't fit into one of our two categories,
Speaker 1: right for restrooms, cyborg Ism makes an infinite possible ability
Speaker 1: of identities available or genders available, right Yeah, indeed. I
Speaker 1: mean it also reminds me of the recent episode that
Speaker 1: we did on hyper religions. Uh. And some of 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 nashing of 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 we are
Speaker 1: all networked together and that's something that should, uh that
Speaker 1: we should pay more attention to and not the 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
Speaker 1: society that we're past that, and that we're already kind
Speaker 1: of post human in that respect, and I think kanz
Speaker 1: Ru sums it up nicely in that Wired paper from quote,
Speaker 1: feminists around the world have seized on this possibility. Cyber
Speaker 1: feminism is based on the idea that in conjunction with technology,
Speaker 1: it's possible to construct your identity, your sexuality, even your gender,
Speaker 1: just as you please. And that is kind of, I
Speaker 1: think the appeal of trans humanism. This is the point
Speaker 1: where I think we're moving from cyborg to trans human, right,
Speaker 1: or at least the conceptions. Maybe they're the same thing
Speaker 1: when you get down to it, right. I'd be curious
Speaker 1: what Harroways take is on that, But yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, is really kind of evolving your identity
Speaker 1: beyond what is considered your natural state. Right. And of
Speaker 1: course this also ties into the whole area of race
Speaker 1: and racial identity um which is certainly certainly falls under
Speaker 1: that messy category that Haroway laid out in her paper,
Speaker 1: Because you know, there are aspects of racial and transracial
Speaker 1: identity that we're very open to exploring and in our
Speaker 1: our modern culture, there are other areas that are a
Speaker 1: lot more taboo. Like, for instance, identifying as African America
Speaker 1: and if you are in fact of Caucasian descent, Like
Speaker 1: this brings to mind, uh the story of appum leader
Speaker 1: Rachel DOLLASLT that came out in recent years. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: specific example here being that but she was born Caucasian
Speaker 1: to a Caucasian family, but that she was portraying herself yea,
Speaker 1: and said that she identified as African American. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was an idea that note basically nobody was
Speaker 1: comfortable with. Yeah, everybody in the media and and so harroway,
Speaker 1: you know, she says, well, but everything can be reconstructed
Speaker 1: between technology and biology, right, so then everything's up for
Speaker 1: grabs identity wise, So all basic assumptions about quote unquote
Speaker 1: how things are come into question. So she you know,
Speaker 1: whether we're talking about identity, ethnicity, gender, all of it
Speaker 1: is fluid. And here's the part, right, like like we
Speaker 1: see examples like that pop up or the North Carolina
Speaker 1: rest stroom thing pop up, and and it's like they
Speaker 1: seem like they're blips. We cannot escape this. This is
Speaker 1: where humanity is heading. And it's just these are kind
Speaker 1: of like 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 meet whatever their
Speaker 1: needs are. But they also throughout their long lives, they'll
Speaker 1: change their own gender. Uh, they will change their they
Speaker 1: may decide they need wings, They might want to sort
Speaker 1: of change species. They might want to live in a
Speaker 1: virtual environment instead of a physical one. And uh, I
Speaker 1: can I can't remember remember a specific example, but I
Speaker 1: can well imagine an individual in the culture changing their
Speaker 1: race and it being no big deal either. But we're
Speaker 1: not quite there yet for a number of reasons. Maybe
Speaker 1: that'll Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm stretching a little
Speaker 1: too far here, but maybe that will be We we
Speaker 1: visit this idea often on the show. A couple of
Speaker 1: hundred years from now, people will look back at us
Speaker 1: and be like, they were just so uptight. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: 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 mention that
Speaker 1: har Waits work has been tremendously influential on individuals and
Speaker 1: a number of different different disciplines. She's an influenced views
Speaker 1: 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 superhero movies, I'm not you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of high hopes that they're going to
Speaker 1: particularly address Donna Harroway's themes, for instance, in the Cyborg movie.
Speaker 1: But hey, if you're listening and you're working on the
Speaker 1: Cyborg movie, maybe think about the fluidity I've identity that
Speaker 1: Cyborg could have, or the flow of information that seems
Speaker 1: to me like something that they'll probably tap into their
Speaker 1: like real excited about the idea of humanity connecting with
Speaker 1: machines and using information is like power in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. But the character
Speaker 1: is African American? Right? Is that explored at all in
Speaker 1: the comics? Like the idea that like the transformation of really,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember it ever being explored as like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not specifically like ethnically, No, there is a point
Speaker 1: where he transcends being human and he sort of becomes
Speaker 1: like the T one thousand, he turns into this like
Speaker 1: gold liquid metal. Uh. And that I think that I
Speaker 1: think was maybe somebody's saying like, oh well, the natural
Speaker 1: extension for the cyborg thing would be that it would
Speaker 1: be beyond the identity of of of being African American
Speaker 1: or of being even human. Right, But he was so
Speaker 1: recognizable in the other form that they brought him back
Speaker 1: around to the to the form that will be in
Speaker 1: the movie. You gotta put something on the comic book cover.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. Um. I wonder if he's going
Speaker 1: to go into outer space, if there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: little nod declines inclined there with the outer space stuff,
Speaker 1: and then you know, surely I would imagine they would
Speaker 1: talk about the ethics uh, surrounding it, how he will
Speaker 1: be treated. And what I'm concerned about though, is that
Speaker 1: it's going to end up being like all that nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties cyborg fiction we grow up with, which is just
Speaker 1: you know, agonizing over humanity. Is human anymore? Is he? Uh?
Speaker 1: And a gun comes out of his legs? Right exactly?
Speaker 1: 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 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,
Speaker 1: well this isn't him, this is just this is a
Speaker 1: tribute to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, that wasn't there.
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