50 Posts About Cyborgs

50. This is How it Ends/Begins

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:30:00 -0400

“Cyborg” is a child of the space age that almost immediately fled the nest. It found a home in the popular and critical imagination, where it’s flourished for the past 50 years. Hybrid creatures of technology, biology, and culture, cyborgs find purchase in our fantasies, our nightmares, and our purchase orders.

To those who have just discovered our project, greetings to you in the future! Poke through the archives, you’re in for a treat.

49. Alexis Madrigal, historian and lead tech writer for The...

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:00:00 -0400

49. Alexis Madrigal, historian and lead tech writer for The Atlantic interviews the very man who coined ‘cyborg’, Manfred Clynes.

Threaded through his career, Clynes has wanted to allow humans to communicate without words. In art and in science, he sought ways to escape the messiness and ambiguity of language.

Don’t miss the part about feedback and the eye.

The Man Who First Said ‘Cyborg,’ 50 Years Later - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

"Whatever I can tell you about the extraordinariness of the cyborg might be a bit mooted by the..."

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 21:00:00 -0400

“Whatever I can tell you about the extraordinariness of the cyborg might be a bit mooted by the strangeness of our present moment.”

- 48. Quinn Norton, who once gave herself a sixth sense, offers a wide-gazing analysis of the place of cyborgs in a very, very weird half-century.

It seems like the discussion of cyborgs in the time since 1960, echoing the discussion of robotics, bounced between news of DARPA and DARPA-like Sci-fi projects none of us will ever really see and Critiques on how We’d All Been Cyborgs, Really, Since We First Picked Up Sticks. I want a middle ground. I want to say there are inflection points where the scale of things changes the nature of what they do.

50 years of cyborgs: I have not the words. | Quinn Said

"If you want a society more frank about its integral reliance on technology, steampunk outfits are a..."

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:00:00 -0400

“If you want a society more frank about its integral reliance on technology, steampunk outfits are a far more affecting means to argue for your technophilic future than, say, a fake bluetooth headset.”

- 47. Stephen Becker normally writes about architecture, but today he’s interested in cyborg fashion. If we’re all already cyborgs, why do some of us insist on dressing up like them?

fake cyborgs – mammoth // building nothing out of something

46. Rob Holmes and I worked together on this piece exploring the...

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:00:00 -0400

46. Rob Holmes and I worked together on this piece exploring the ethical implications of being able to adapt yourself to a changing environment rather than having to grapple with the changes themselves.

As we are learning to our growing horror, changing the environment is an activity that becomes extremely perilous at scale. In light of this, the cyborgian program of self-adaptation begins to look mighty virtuous.

Wearable Ethics | Quiet Babylon

"For the next sixth months, visitors to the gloriously named Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland have..."

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:00:00 -0400

“For the next sixth months, visitors to the gloriously named Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be given a deep-tissue massage by a prototype double cyborg.”

- 45. Nicola Twilley examines an art installation that plays with the feedback mechanisms of our enteric system, the body’s “second brain”.

Gut Control | Edible Geography

44. This is the taxidermied body of Miss Able, one of the first...

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:00:00 -0400

44. This is the taxidermied body of Miss Able, one of the first two monkeys to successfully return to Earth after being launched into space. She died on June 1st 1959, four days after her trip.

The cause of death was a bad a reaction to anaesthetic, which she was under for surgery to remove an infected electrode. Like most of the monkeys that NASA launched into space, she had implants that allowed scientists on the ground to measure her vital signs.

While Kline and Clynes were envisioning technologically enhanced spacefaring humans, NASA was launching monkey cyborgs into space, to learn what would happen.

It didn’t go well for the monkeys. Most subjects of the program died during or just after flight. Exceptionally, Miss Able’s co-passenger, Miss Baker, survived until 1984.

Able (by Dan Coulter)

"No atmosphere in space? One solution: Don’t breathe!"

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:00:00 -0400

“No atmosphere in space? One solution: Don’t breathe!”

- 43. We’ve argued many times before in this series that the cyborg of Clynes and Kline was about much more than humans with robot bodyparts. Today, we offer a catalogue of the enhancements they envisioned.

The Clynes and Kline Enhancement Package | Quiet Babylon

42. Arikia Millikan, community manager of Haiti Rewired and...

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:59:00 -0400

42. Arikia Millikan, community manager of Haiti Rewired and research assistant to Nate Silver already spends most of her life online. She’s ready for the next step.

Hal: Now you Google things on your computer — of course. And you Google things on your phone. That’s the next stage. And I believe — people may laugh — but I think there will be an implant. So you’ll have it there, and I won’t say it’s necessarily Google, I’ll say the Web, it will access the Web of information.

Arikia: Sign me up when that happens.

Hal: You want your implant?

Arikia: I want it now

I Am Cyborg and I Want My Google Implant Already - Arikia Millikan - Technology - The Atlantic

"We don’t know what a cyborg is because there is no such thing as a cyborg."

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:23:35 -0400

“We don’t know what a cyborg is because there is no such thing as a cyborg.”

- 41. Johnnie Wilcox considers the nature of cyborgs across a range of classic pieces of fiction.

mistersquid: a digital fiction: Notes About a Network

"Most of the time, my followers and my phone and my networks feel like a sense."

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:27:21 -0400

“Most of the time, my followers and my phone and my networks feel like a sense.”

- 40. Simon Bostock discusses one of my favourite aspects of cyborgs - when cultural identity mixes with technical capability. Watch especially for the part about deaf culture and how the logic of those arguments gets applied elsewhere.

Managing Cyborgs- Cyborg Management 101

39. io9’s Annalee Newitz consider the question of cyborg...

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:17:58 -0400

39. io9’s Annalee Newitz consider the question of cyborg love (and lust).

Cyborg romance is the flip side of the robot uprising. Our mechanical creations love us instead of nuking us from orbit. The fantasy here isn’t about making it with a hot fembot. It’s about wanting approval from our children, wanting them to grow up without obliterating us.

Why do we keep falling in love with cyborgs? | io9

"Sure, sure, cyborgs don’t have to be libertarian wankers, but it isn’t until the Haraway..."

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:40:34 -0400

“Sure, sure, cyborgs don’t have to be libertarian wankers, but it isn’t until the Haraway conceptquake that we begin to move away from the technocratic, self-perpetuating wankerdom implied in Clynes and Kline’s original vision.”

- 38. Justin Pickard is a master’s student at Goldsmiths and a crazy person. His post is about memory palaces, real and virtual.

Cyborg Memories: Why Daniel Liebskind’s Jewish Museum (plus visitors) is a Cyborg « Justin Pickard

37. Earlier, we talked about Christ-as-cyborg. Medievalist Ruth...

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:29:37 -0400

37. Earlier, we talked about Christ-as-cyborg. Medievalist Ruth Evans offers this fascinating vision of Christ as cyborg-enhancement. (Don’t miss the article that introduced me to her, Our cyborg past: Medieval artificial memory as mindware upgrade.)

Surviving in an Alien Environment: Human + Christ as Medieval Natural-Born Cyborg | Quiet Babylon

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change..."

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:25:05 -0400

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

- 36. A young cyborg encounters Merleau-Ponty and Karl Marx in this piece of science fiction by Adam Rothstein. Did you know that reading about someone else reading dead philosophers could be gripping? Now you do.

P.O.S.Z.U. » Marx and the Cyborg

"It makes sense that the vector of this breakdown is a broadcast signal."

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:05:00 -0400

“It makes sense that the vector of this breakdown is a broadcast signal.”

- 35. Will Wiles returns, with a look at the broadcast body horror of Videodrome, Ballard, and Walter Pichler. This part isn’t strictly cyborgian, but boy does it give me chills:

Nothing but torture and snuff, filmed in a studio with walls of wet clay. Wet clay - absorbs sound, and it can be electrified. How’s that for a deviant architectural detail?

Spillway: The Image Accumulator

34. Weekend Reading: The Return Of The Intergalactic Planetary Landscape Architect

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:16:00 -0400

In 2008 Alexander Trevi looked at cutting-edge exoskeleton tech and could only imagine one thing: what if they were gardening?

The CEO of Caterpillar, an unavowed fan of Cinquecento garden design, wants to create for his palatial mansion located just outside the company’s world headquarters in Peoria, Illinois, a replica of the Villa D’Este gardens, an exact copy, in fact, except that it will be planted with native vegetation of Plant Hardiness Zone 5a.

Despite the complexity of recreating late Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque landscape elements, not to mention the signature terracing of the original site in contourless prairie country, the project is finished in record time. In one day.

Pruned: The Return of the Intergalactic Planetary Landscape Architect

33. Joey Comeau and Emily Horne have done a very special comic,...

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:22:00 -0400

33. Joey Comeau and Emily Horne have done a very special comic, just for us. This one is also great.

"Throughout his life and work, there is an effort to make sense of the human condition: kindness vs..."

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:37:51 -0400

“Throughout his life and work, there is an effort to make sense of the human condition: kindness vs cruelty, Bach and Beethoven vs. butchery and brutality, the Boundaries of Compassion.”

- 32. Havi Hoffman, writing for the Yahoo! Developer Network, takes a deeper look at Manfred Clynes, surviving father of ‘cyborg’. I particularly enjoy the bit about musical Turing tests and sincere computers.

Manfred Clynes, Cyborgology, and the Real-Real Time of Our Lives (Yahoo! Developer Network Blog)

31. Keiichi Matsuda, the creator of the Augmented (hyper)Reality...

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:33:44 -0400

31. Keiichi Matsuda, the creator of the Augmented (hyper)Reality videos: Domestic Robocop & Augmented City presents a practical mini-guide for designing the cities of today’s cyborg.

Cities for Cyborgs: 10 Rules | Quiet Babylon