Cyborgs, We?

Cybernetic Interface Credit: _MaO_

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a cyborg as, “A human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices.” Under this definition, people who wear glasses, hearing aides, and even drive cars are cyborgs. With physiological defined as “consistent with the normal functioning of an organism,” we would also consider people who use computers, calculators, and even wristwatches cyborgs for aiding their normal cognitive functions with technological solutions.

The Wikipedia entry for Cyborg defines it as “an organism that has both artificial and natural systems,” but then goes on to muddy this definition by excluding contact lenses, arguing they make us no more cyborg than a spear, but does include insulin pumps because they require feedback. This opens a whole semantical can of worms as we attempt to define what constitutes “feedback.”

Science fiction cyborgs are easy to define: anything part animal, part machine that’s too advanced for present technology. As a human living in a life support suit, Darth Vader is a cyborg. As a robot living in human skin, the Terminator is a cyborg. This definition is easy because it makes cyborgs a state of being always out of reach; however, it also makes the word doomed to obsolescence as we will inevitably one day create the cyborgs of science fiction dreams.

Gian-Cyborg Credit: Roberto Rizzato

The etymology of “cyborg” is Cybernetic + Organism. “Organism” is easy, but “cybernetics” isn’t. The word Cybernetics comes from the Greek word for steersman, kybernetes (controlling-governing), as in one who pilots a ship is a cyborg. The steersman controls the boat, ‘but the boat interacts with the steersman.’ They create a system, the steersman feeling the wind and the tilt of the boat, the boat responding to the steersman’s adjustments. Together, they become a cybernetic organism that is millennia old.

Cybernetics is a fuzzily defined academic study. Norbert Wiener founded Cybernetics as the study of ‘Control and communication in the animal or in the machine.’ Heinz von Foerster emphasized the word ‘circularity‘in describing cybernetics as a discipline, the feedback loop. Principia Cybernetica’s authors seek to narrow cybernetics to the search for general principles that govern complex, self-regulating systems.

The Earth is a cybernetic system, the organisms living on it modifying its environment, and the environment shaping the organisms in turn through natural selection. This makes evolution a cybernetic principle that explains the emergent complexity of the world around us.

We are each of us organisms. We are each of us complex systems of feedback and control. Are we therefore cyborgs at birth, before we have even supplemented our physiology with clothing to keep us warm?

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