"Cyborg" is a science-fictional shorting of "cybernetic organism".

The idea is that, in the near future, we may have more and more artificial body parts - arms, legs, hearts, eyes - and digital computing and communication supplements. The logical conclusion is that one might become a brain in a wholly artificial body. And the step after that is to replace your meat brain by a computer brain.

Introduction People usually agree that we are living through a technological revolution, and at the same time they seem confused about what it means. A revolution may be defined as a leap between two quasi-stationary states, so if we want to understand the meaning of it, we should identify the current and next stages, as well as the nature and purpose of the transition. There are many ideas about the meaning of technological progress, usually surface observations regarding temporary phenomena. Reading about transitions to cyberspace and things electronic, digital, or democratic, one cannot understand how these transitions originate, how they fit into the grand-scale evolutionary process, and what may happen next. In this essay I will not only discuss recent technologies but also their classification and their meaning, as well as the nature of the process of systems evolution, history of relations of humans and technology, and long-term future trends.

Evolution of functional structures There are different ways to look at what currently exists, what constitutes an identity, and what is being augmented. We can examine the distributed environment of functional patterns temporarily incorporated in bodies, brains, machines, and social structures. In this essay I will utilize the common model of the world as based on physical elements of people, with their bodies, tools, and ideas. Today there is much stronger integration of features within a physical body, so physical entities are conscious, and understandably they want to talk to each other about their own development. In the not-so-distant future distributed entities may become more conscious, and then they will talk to each other in different terms. We can view the world as an arena of systems evolution. To maintain competitive efficiency, systems have to develop certain features, such as complexity, integration, and [what I call] liquidity. They also should be able to utilize the legacy of system structures that were developed earlier and often for quite different purposes.

Complexity and integration are useful for optimizing current behavior; liquidity allows transformations and growth. All three are means, not ends, however. Nobody is interested in making things more complex or integrated just for the fun of it. Within any complexity limit, one can implement only a limited number of functions, so competition provides the impetus for systems to attempt more and more complex patterns. By liquidity, I mean two things. One, is independence of structure from the physical substrate, facilitating more replication and other functions. Structures originally imbedded in the substrate developed more independence. Things like pressure, waves, and electric current, can already move across the substrate - so techniques of " moving bits without moving atoms" are actually billions of years old. Crystal structures can replicate more complex patterns within the same material; living organisms pass features and behavioral patterns to physically unconnected bodies; information technology allows structures to travel between different substrates and change representations (which is basically the same thing but one level of abstraction higher - it is passing semantics between different syntactic substrates). Replication represents only obe simple aspect of functional evolution. It allows proliferation, but not qualitative growth. For growth, systems must possess internal structural liquidity. Functional structures should be able to modify themselves and combine with each other, to optimize behavior, to adapt to changing conditions, and to occupy new domains. This liquidity requires generalized layered architectures, modular adaptable designs, common communication interfaces, etc. In a search for compromise between complexity, integration, and liquidity, the evolutionary process invented a system of organisms. Physical connections within an organism allow it to form a complex and integrated functional unit. At the same time, by making bodies temporary and assembling real living systems ecologies and societies - out of dynamic configurations of communicating organisms, nature achieves the liquidity necessary for growth. It is difficult to assemble a complex living system from identical functional bodies performing similar functions - there are too many tasks to perform to put each of them within one organism. Therefore, functional bodies specialize. Biological organisms specialize, with different species performing different functions - that happens in ecologies and early human societies, with domestication of animals. In a human society, where a phenotypic variance is relatively small, generic bodies can learn and integrate different skills. This is still insufficient for unlimited growth, because of two reasons: The physical abilities of an organism are limited, and it is very difficult to develop additional functions through a trial-and-error method. If a complex functional entity permanently incorporated all useful functions in one physical body, it is clumsy; the person would have to carry all specialized implements everywhere, even when just one of them is needed. Evolving such a body would also be difficult, as mutations in each function would have a smaller and smaller influence on the survival of an organism, slowing the evolutionary process. The solution here is a dynamic physical configuration. Here, the original organism forms a generic core that accepts attachments and extensions on a permanent (learning) or temporary basis. The attachments get tested and evolve independently, which dramatically speeds up the development. Also, this allows specialized personality configurations useful for social division of labor. This "dividual" construct lies in the foundation of human nature, and even though accepting attachments takes a lot of learning and practicing, and will never be done with the "Plug and play" ease that we now implement in our computers. Still, it allows much faster evolution than that previously achieved in the prehuman world. Individuals have their value and take pride in having strong bodily features; for the next stage, the more important thing is to own lots of resources and tools and be able to manipulate them, and take part in the division of labor - that's exactly the current human perception of self-worth. The second limitation of a human organism lies in the limits of its functional abilities and architecture. So we need to extend our memory and intelligence as well, which is what we are trying to do now with the information technology.

Human role/interface with attachments becomes increasingly abstract. From finding and manipulating a tool we turn to communicating to it. Ideally, we may just express our needs, and the tools will understand which of them can do it, and how it should be done. In many cases, we no longer take any part in making/"compiling" objects which may sometimes create an illusion that this production process is gone. "We're starting a new chapter in technological history. Chapter one - machines built out of something; chapter two, machines built out of nothing. Merely enacted, temporarily embodied by an irrelevant hunk of metal, plastic and silicon called a computer".

The Futurist Roots of the Cyborg "After being conquered by Futurist eyes our multiplied sensibilities will at last hear with Futurist ears. In this way the motors and machines of our industrial cities will one day be consciously attuned, so that every factory will be transformed into an intoxicating orchestra of noises."
Kevin Warwick outlines his plan to become one with his computer.
PLUS Neuromaster

I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change. I will tell you why. In August 1998, a silicon chip was implanted in my arm, allowing a computer to monitor me as I moved through the halls and offices of the Department of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, just west of London, where I've been a professor since 1988. My implant communicated via radio waves with a network of antennas throughout the department that in turn transmitted the signals to a computer programmed to respond to my actions. At the main entrance, a voice box operated by the computer said "Hello" when I entered; the computer detected my progress through the building, opening the door to my lab for me as I approached it and switching on the lights. For the nine days the implant was in place, I performed seemingly magical acts simply by walking in a particular direction. The aim of this experiment was to determine whether information could be transmitted to and from an implant. Not only did we succeed, but the trial demonstrated how the principles behind cybernetics could perform in real-life applications. Eighteen months from now, or possibly sooner, I will conduct a follow-up experiment with a new implant that will send signals back and forth between my nervous system and a computer. I don't know how I will react to unfamiliar signals transmitted to my brain, since nothing quite like this has ever before been attempted. But if this test succeeds, with no complications, then we'll go ahead with the placement of a similar implant in my wife, Irena.

My research team is made up of 20 scientists, including two who work directly with me: Professor Brian Andrews, a neural-prosthesis specialist who recently joined our

project from the University of Alberta in Canada, and professor William Harwin, a cybernetics expert and former codirector of the Rehabilitation Robotics Laboratory at the University of Delaware in the US. The others are a mixture of faculty and researchers, divided into three teams charged with developing intelligent networks, robotics and sensors, and biomedical signal processing - i.e., creating software to read the signals the implant receives from my nervous system and to condition that data for retransmission. We are in discussions with Dr. Ali Jamous, a neurosurgeon at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in nearby Aylesbury, to insert my next implant, although we're still sorting out the final details. Ordinarily, there might be a problem getting a doctor to consider this type of surgery, but my department has a long-standing research link with the hospital, whose spinal-injuries unit does a lot of advanced work in neurosurgery. We've collaborated on a number of projects to help people overcome disabilities through technical aids: an electric platform for children who use wheelchairs, a walking frame for people with spinal injuries, and a self-navigating wheelchair. While Jamous has his own research agenda, we are settling on a middle ground that will satisfy both parties' scientific goals. My first implant was inserted by Dr. George Boulos at Tilehurst Surgery in Reading into the upper inside of my left arm, beneath the inner layer of skin and on top of the muscle. The next device will be connected to the nerve fibers in my left arm, positioned about halfway between my elbow and shoulder. (It doesn't matter which arm carries the implant; I chose my left because I'm right-handed, and I hope I will suffer less manual impairment if any problems arise during the experiment.) Most of the nerves in this part of the body are connected to the hand, and send and receive the electronic impulses that control dexterity, feeling, even emotions. A lot of these signals are traveling here at any given time: This nerve center carries more information than any other part of the anatomy, aside from the spine and the head (in the optic and auditory nerves), and so is large and quite strong. Moreover, very few of the nerves branch off to muscles and other parts of the upper arm - it's like a freeway with only a few on- and off-ramps, providing a cleaner pathway to the nervous system. While we ultimately may need to place implants nearer to the brain - into the spinal cord or onto the optic nerve, where there is a more powerful setup for transmitting and receiving specific complex sensory signals - the arm is an ideal halfway point. This implant, like the first, will be encased in a glass tube. We chose glass because it's fairly inert and won't become toxic or block radio signals. There is an outside chance that the glass will break, which could cause serious internal injuries or prove fatal, but our previous experiment showed glass to be pretty rugged, even when it's frequently jolted or struck. One end of the glass tube contains the power supply - a copper coil energized by radio waves to produce an electric current. In the other end, three mini printed circuit boards will transmit and receive signals. The implant will connect to my body through a band that wraps around the nerve fibers - it looks like a little vicar's collar - and is linked by a very thin wire to the glass capsule. The chips in the implant will receive signals from the collar and send them to a computer instantaneously. For example, when I move a finger, an electronic signal

travels from my brain to activate the muscles and tendons that operate my hand. The collar will pick up that signal en route. Nerve impulses will still reach the finger, but we will tap into them just as though we were listening in on a telephone line. The signal from the implant will be analog, so we'll have to convert it to digital in order to store it in the computer. But then we will be able to manipulate it and send it back to my implant.

Part human and part machine, the cyborg is a familiar figure in cyberpunk science fiction. But this figure looms ever larger -- as metaphor and as reality -- in all our lives. Today, cyborgs are real; in cyberspace, we are all cyborgs. Diane Greco explores the significance of the cyborg in 20th century writing. from Thomas Pynchon and William Gibson to Haraway and Derrida. The cyborg is more than just an interesting fiction; Cyborg: Engineering The Body Electric explores cyborg's impact on political action and personal identity. After reading Cyborg, you'll never again look at your body (or someone else's) quite the same way.
If cyborgs know about anything, they know about parts. Spare parts, parts and wholes, prostheses, replacements, enhancements. How do you make sense of all these pieces? After the disaster, when things fall apart, cyborgs know how to stitch themselves back together.

Introduction Your Body Is Meat Machine Dreams Mind, Body, Anti-Body Cyborg Visions Communication & Control Writing The Cyborg What Do Cyborgs Know?

Engineering cyborg ideology

Have you seen a cyborg today? Would you know it if you had? A creature of science fiction novels, electronic engineering, and postmodern theory, the cyborg is like the white heron of Sarah Orne Jewett's story, often discussed but seldom glimpsed. The ambiguity of what one means by a cyborg rumbles through Diane Greco's electronic hypertext Cyborg: Engineering the Body Electric as she plays a series of electronic riffs on Donna Haraway's now famous essay "The Cyborg Manifesto," giving it, to my Los Angeles ear, an unsettling quality not unlike the queasiness I feel when I go through the mountain tunnel of the Universal Studios tour. Designed to simulate an avalanche, the tunnel rotates while the

hapless passengers move straight ahead on a rail line, resulting in a sensory dissonance that makes one feel as if one were teetering on the edge of a precipice, falling and yet not falling. So it is with Cyborg, which moves with cursory speed (in the double sense of a moving cursor and of topics briefly treated) through speculations which ought to be profound but are finally simply unsettling, because they are so little grounded in the terra firma of historical specificity and technological practice. Greco's inquiry starts from the premise, articulated by Haraway, that the cyborg is a hybrid creature who has no particular reason to be faithful to the origin myths, patriarchal structures, or military funding that spawned her. Part machine, part woman (or man), part plugged-in-cybernaut, the cyborg has the power, Greco claims, to destabilize accepted boundaries and open spaces for liberatory action. "The cyborg conflates, confuses, and reassembles technology and social reality. Technology provides the tools for interactions with others, and from this interaction, cyborgs (like us) construct narrative histories of selfhood that acknowledge limits of self and other, limits thrown into relief by the very visceral awareness that this technology interpenetrates the body." But what (or who), exactly, is a cyborg? Are we talking about people who have had literal technological interventions on their bodies, such as my friend and colleague Vivian Sobchack, who has written and lectured about herself as a cyborg, now that she has an artificial limb? If so, parts of the argument do not make sense, as when Greco claims that "unlike the essentialist critics of the past who implied that one's biology must restrict one's destiny, no one forces or delimites the intimate relationship between her body and her self; 'cyborg' is an identity she chooses on her own, with an eye towards its limits as well as its possibilities." People who have had these kinds of interventions in their bodies generally cannot choose, or they choose only in the Hobson's sense of having an artificial limb or no limb. Perhaps then, Greco means the term to be taken metaphorically. She intends us to think not about actual cyborgs but ourselves as postmodern subjects wired into the electronic circuits that make it possible for me to write this review and you to read it. But here again, parts of the argument work only if we think of the cyborg in a more literal sense than the pluggedin subject, as when Greco wants to insist that the cyborg body is "essentialist" because it is the object of conscious technological design. "Because she has no clear boundaries, and connects with the technology to create an interface with it, the cyborg is in some sense the essentialist creature of which feminism has so long been wary. She is her body, but don't forget--it's an ironic body, a body that is not merely physical, but technological, and definitely more than the sum of its parts." Such pronouncements are possible, I think, because this is theorizing in a void, theorizing that starts with the abstract idea of a Cyborg and then tries to work out its implications. Anything that the term might be taken to mean becomes what it in fact means, as if the free play of the signifier translates instantaneously and effortlessly into physical and social realities. Here's another sample. "Although encouraged by the technology to inscribe the world only in terms of an individual perspective, the cyborg situates her knowledge in order to be accountable for that part of the self that she constructs, and for how the part is reflected." The gritty complexity that comes from engaging what one thinks something ought to mean with what it signifies to actual people enmeshed in particular circumstances is, in this

study, almost completely lacking. What is being fashioned here, in short, is cyborg ideology. If we read it as an ideology, it has many salient points to make. It takes as given that the postmodern body is an amalgam of biological processes and technological prostheses. It uses the technological component of the cyborg to reintroduce physicality into the body's construction, arguing that the body must be understood technologically and biologically as well as discursively. It invokes Elaine Scarry's analysis of pain as the place where language breaks down to underscore that the body is alarmingly vulnerable in its physicality, a vulnerability no amount of discursive analysis can erase. Following N.O. Brown, it suggests that one way humans deal with this vulnerability is through technology; "technology is the symbolic fantasy of a sublimated inability to cope with the forces in the world beyond individual control." (Marshall McLuhan, who carried this argument further than Brown, is oddly not mentioned.) It asks whether technology combats this inability to cope or extends it, shrewdly observing that there may be hope in the fact that technology, despite being the "fantasy cathexis of the body," is nevertheless reassuringly mundane and comprehensible. When it doesn't work, it can be fixed. Finally, it argues that a given line of technological development is never inevitable. We choose our technologies and how to use them. All things considered, this is not the worst ideology one could espouse. Although I have been summarizing the text as if it puts forth a coherent argument, in fact the writing is dispersed across multiple hypertextual links and lexias, leaving to the reader the task of figuring out how they all go together -- or if they go together. In a parallel seldom made explicit but resonant throughout, Greco has made use of hypertext technology to create a cyborg text, composed of heterogeneous parts joined together by electronic circuitry, including varying font sizes, different typefaces, multiple voices, and thousands of potential narrative paths. "The point is that you are doing it yourself," one lexia proclaims, presumably addressing the reader as well as the writer. "Creating a world of electronic impulse, blips, patterns in the ether -- out of writing. It's where the world and the word meet in the late age of print. Entangle them, however briefly, and you've got a hypertext designer, the hybrid of textual artist and software engineer." Greco is currently employed as a software consultant by the start-up company Eastgate Systems, a small firm that publishes the Storyspace software that she uses to create her text as well as such hypertext titles as Cyborg. I wish that she had developed this part of her argument more fully, for it provides a potential body of practice that she might have used to ground her arguments and give them more specificity. Despite its flaws, Cyborg is an interesting attempt to find a discursive style and articulate an ideology that fits electronic hypertextual writing. Perhaps the best tribute I can pay it is to acknowledge that I cannot imagine it as a print text. Its hybrid form is so completely interwoven with the electronic prostheses through which we encounter it that the cyborg body is the text, and the text is the cyborg body. Which, I take it, is precisely Greco's point.

Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality. Cyborg 'sex' restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice organic prophylactics against heterosexism). Cyborg replication is uncoupled from organic reproduction. Modern production seems like a dream of cyborg colonization work, a dream that makes the nightmare of Taylorism seem idyllic. And modern war is a cyborg orgy, coded by C3I, command-control-communicationintelligence, an $84 billion item in 1984'sUS defence budget. I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Michael Foucault's biopolitics is a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open field.

By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. Ths cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and

material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of 'Western' science and politics--the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other - the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. It is also an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a postmodernist, non-naturalist mode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. Nor does it mark time on an oedipal calendar, attempting to heal the terrible cleavages of gender in an oral symbiotic utopia or post-oedipal apocalypse. As Zoe Sofoulis argues in her unpublished manuscript on Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, and nuclear culture, Lacklein, the most terrible and perhaps the most promising monsters in cyborg worlds are embodied in non-oedipal narratives with a different logic of repression, which we need to understand for our survival.

The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, preoedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense - a 'final' irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the