From Psycho to Cyber Strategies: Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence

Abstract

The body needs to be repositioned from the realm of the biological, to the cyberzone of interface and extension – from genetic containment to electronic extrusion. Strategies towards the post-human are more about erasure, rather than affirmation – an obsession no longer with self but an analysis of structure. Notions of species evolution and gender distinction are remapped and reconfigured in alternate hybridities of human/machine. Outmoded metaphysical distinctions of soul/body or mind/brain are superseded by concerns of body/species split, as the body is redesigned – diversifying in form and functions. Cyborg bodies are not simply wired and extended but also enhanced with implanted components. Invading technology eliminates skin as a significant site, an adequate interface or barrier between public space and physiological tract. The significance of the cyber may well reside in the act of the body shedding its skin. As humans increasingly operate with surrogate bodies in remote spaces they function with increasingly intelligent and interactive images. The possibility of autonomous images generates an unexpected outcome of human/machine symbiosis. The post-human may well be manifested in the intelligent life form of autonomous images.