100% Human Being – Pinned to #MSCDE on Pinterest

Just Pinned to #MSCDE: human-being-desing-white.jpg (300×400) http://ift.tt/2jbt19H

Given my thoughts on cyborgs over the last week, this graphic made me chuckle. Then I saw the bottom where it says 100% organic and I thought, well what would non-organic human be and the thought was maybe cyborg?

I’m still battling a little with the definition of cyborg in Miller (2011) where he suggests that we are indeed cyborgs when we use technology to “normalise”, such as glasses to correct vision. I think my issue is based on my conditioning to think of cyborgs in the terms of movie culture were a cyborg is part machine and part human but the machine part usually being skeleton and computer technology. I find the idea of using this label for something as simple as glasses of a prosthetic limb challenging. However, miller (2011) also suggests through Gray et al (1995) that a cyborg is an organism that is made of both organic and inorganic materials. I find that term easier to relate to I think because an organism, I don’t think of cyborgs as human.

The big futuristic question (and one being debated right now) is do I consider cyborgs as beings?

Gray, C.H., Mentor, S. & Figueroa-Sarriera, H., 1995. The cyborg handbook, Routledge.

Miller, V. (2011) Chapter 9: The Body and Information Technology, in Understanding Digital Culture. London: Sage.