Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the meaning and application of the term "cyborg." It argues that human beings who use the Internet, machines, pacemakers, heart implants or prosthetics are not cyborgs. Instead, it suggests that the contrary assertion is indicative of a corruption of language and thought as human beings enter the new world of 21st century neuronic technology. The paper analyzes this thesis and assertion.

From the Paper:

"It is both curious and instructive that the Greek origin of the word "organic" means "tool" or "instrument", hardly relevant to the current sense of "organic foods" or an organic lifestyle. In fact it construes closely to the definition of a cyborg, "a term condensed from 'cybernetic organism'...typically defined as an entity comprising organic as well as machine parts and information circuits" (Soufoulis, 2002, p.88). The definition co-opts the modern invasive meaning that enables Donna Haraway to "proclaim[s] the cyborg as an identity: "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. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics" (Soufoulis, 2002, p.88)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Best, S. (1987. Robocop: The Crisis of Subjectivity. Discussion Paper 4.
• Hayles, K. (1993). The Seductions of Cyberspace. In Conley, V. (1993). Rethinking Technologies. University of Minnesota Press, 1993. p173-190 Discussion Paper 4.
• Soufoulis, Z.(2002). Cyberquake: Haraway's Manifesto. In Tofts, D. (2002). Prefiguring Cyberculture. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2002. Discussion Paper 4.

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