Cyborg Technology Research Articles

From a Science Fiction to the Reality: Cyborg Ethics in Japan

This study deals with young people’s attitudes towards and social acceptance of “cyborg technology” including wearables and insideables (or implantable devices) to enhance human ability in Japan as part of the international research project on cyborg ethics, taking Japanese socio-cultural characteristics surrounding cyborg technology into consideration. Those subjects were investigated through questionnaire surveys of Japanese university students, which was conducted in November and December 2016. The survey results demonstrated respondents’ relatively low resistance to using wearables and insideables to improve human physical ability and intellectual power. On the other hand, the morality of insideables were questioned by respondents. In various aspects, statistically significant differences in attitudes towards the technologies between genders were detected.

Intelligence or Counter Intelligence? Cognitive and Behavioral Implications of Mediated Cyborg Images on Children

“Human mind contained the ‘indelible stamp of his lowly origin’ Human could differ from animals only by their ability to control these passions to suppress the beast within”- Charles Darwin, The Decent of man, 1871. Neurological system plays a significant role in establishing the human as intelligent beings on the earth, distinguishing it from its predecessor. With its well built communication network and mechanism and, nervous system prepare the body and mind to react to any occasion through reciprocate actions. There is a well-built communication network system internally that facilitates communication among the innumerable cells so that the internal body organs function properly. What if when artificial intelligence in the name of cyberog is here to think, deliberate and act on our behalf and where are we heading to? How is it going to affect our abilities like thinking, reasoning, and being analytical? What happens to the socially constructed systems and agencies like families, schools, organizations and institutions that groom and shape individuals from birth to death? What might happen to the cultural diversity of this universe rooted deeply in language, gender, race, ethnicity, place of origin, physical and biological features and capabilities at large are vague, wild questions posed in dark. Cyber technologies are to stay with us. Their omnipotent and ubiquitous presence reached a stage that the humanity started cohabitating with them. They are part of daily life, as human are employing them at every level. Children as young as two or three are absorbed in operating smart phones, spell bounded by the colorful moving images, sounds, music and mobile games. Computer-mediated education has long ago replaced the face to face interaction, limiting the teacher to a facilitating role, as if human are lacking physically, emotionally and intellectually (Voithofer, R.J.,). Meticulous updating of technology is constantly forcing the man to adapt to it, involving huge politics of economy. Socially, you are not fit without having adapted to the latest technology. The present study would like to deconstruct the politics of economy and polity, while unearthing the sociocultural, physiological and psychological impact of Cyborg technologies among children using the secondary data. By reviewing the existing literature in this aspect the study would like to assess the cognitive and behavioral implications of mediated cyborg on children.

For the Love of Doll(s): A Patriarchal Nightmare of Cyborg Couplings

For the Love of Doll(s):A Patriarchal Nightmare of Cyborg Couplings Veronica Cassidy (bio) Thirty years after the publication of Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto, machine-human couplings have manifested in a subculture of men who love dolls. More than sexual objects, these increasingly lifelike machines serve as intimate companions. Self-identified iDollators offer a case study in the potential mutations of Haraway’s vision, revealing what can happen when cyborg technologies are controlled by those invested in conventional social boundaries. The capitalist-patriarchal culture is a stark contrast to Haraway’s socialist-feminist utopia. The innovations she hoped would lead to a postgender dream world have instead resulted in a hyper-gendered nightmare. The centre of iDollator culture is the RealDoll, “the world’s finest love doll,” according to the website, RealDoll.com. Created by Matt McMullen of Abyss creations, RealDolls are the fantasy of most of the thirty-thousand-plus members registered online with The Doll Forum, “the worlds [sic] largest community of doll owners and admirers.” Many members insist that dolls provide companionship, even love. When the website polled users about “the main purpose of [their] doll(s),” the two most popular choices were “sexual companion–primary sex” and “cuddle/hanging out buddy,” with 42.68 percent weighing in for the first and 23.17 percent for [End Page 203] the second. The word companion is striking and speaks to the emotional intimacy many owners feel with their dolls. Some clients go as far as marrying their dolls, according to McMullen (Reddit), who notes, “I don’t know that the marriage was actually legally binding, but ceremonies have taken place.” Ninety percent of RealDoll owners are men and almost all purchase female dolls (Reddit). Standing between 147 and 177 centimetres tall and weighing up to forty-five kilograms (RealDoll.com), the dolls are made of a flesh-like, heat-retaining silicone, with detailed facial features and first-rate replications of female orifices. The vagina, anus, and mouth are all designed to create suction upon use. Male dolls are available, as are special-order mixed-sex dolls, but the quality is noticeably inferior. This year, McMullen announced the launch of Realbotix, which will incorporate virtual reality (vr) and artificial intelligence (ai) to animate his creations. The first task is to produce a head with the ability to blink and move its mouth. Eventually, McMullen plans to offer vr headsets to enhance interactions with the physical doll and a Bluetooth-enabled mobile app that will allow owners to communicate with their dolls while out of the house. The centrepiece of Realbotix will be “the customizable programming of personality—‘What is she saying to me while I’m doing this? Is she enjoying this? Does she like making me feel this way?’ … You want to have that illusion that she’s actually talking to you and that she’s got sentience,” explains McMullen. “The hope is to create something that will actually arouse someone on an emotional-intellectual level, beyond the physical” (Canepari, Cooper, and Cott). Yet, for many owners emotional arousal is already in place. Perhaps that is why they are willing to pay between $5,000 and upwards of $10,000 U.S. for a single doll (Gurley), often collecting more than one. The technologically enhanced dolls will retail for as much as six times that amount, but McMullen is confident his clients will pay. Silicone substitutes: better than being alone Abyss Creations is not the only company that produces lifelike dolls, but RealDolls are renowned as “the Rolls-Royce” of the industry (Gurley). The company has sold over five thousand of its customizable creations since starting production in 1996 (Cott). Over the last two decades, RealDolls have featured prominently in fetish culture; the Museum of Sex in New York City includes one in its permanent collection. Meanwhile, they have made occasional appearances in the mainstream. The year McMullen began production, he and one of his creations were guests on The Howard Stern Show, with the host proclaiming, “Best sex I ever had! … This Real-Doll [End Page 204] feels better than a real woman!” (Gurley). Since then, RealDolls have appeared in more than twenty...

Editorial

The final months of 2014 have seen many critical events in respect to mobility: Apple introduced its Apple Watch, a cyborg technology that adds a novel, substantially corporeal layer to our “always on” connectedness—what Sherry Turkle has termed the “tethered self.”1 Moreover, it is said to revolutionize mobile paying systems, and it might finally implement mobile body monitoring techniques into daily life.2 Ebola is terrorizing Africa and frightening the world; its outbreak and spread is based on human mobility, and researchers are calling for better control and quantifi cation of human mobility in the affected regions to contain the disease.3 Even its initial spread from animals to humans may have had its origin in human transgressions beyond traditional habitats, by intruding into insular bush regions and using the local fruit bats as food. Due to global mobility patterns, the viral passenger switched transport modes, from animal to airplane. On the other hand, private space fl ight suff ered two serious setbacks in just one week when the Antares rocket of Orbital Sciences, with supplies for the International Space Station and satellites on board, exploded, and shortly after, SpaceShipTwo crashed over the Mojave Desert. Th ese catastrophic failures ignited wide media discussion on the challenges, dangers, and signifi cance of space mobility, its ongoing commercialization and privatization, and, in particular, plans for future manned space travel for “tourists.”4

Rewriting the Matrix of Life. Biomedia Between Ecological Crisis and Playful Actions

The paper discusses concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘life’ as subjected to historical changes. The 21st century seems to be obsessed with ‘life’ and ‘nature’, which are reconfigured as objects of simulation practices and of a multitude of technoscientific enterprises as well as of political struggle. The historical influences and epistemological shifts of systems thinking are significant within two distinctive and interwoven fields: On the one hand the discourse of environmentalism with the paradigm of ecological crises, centered around ideas of resource management, sustainability, the general idea of an ‘endangered nature’ and the interconnectedness of global politics and individual actions. On the other hand the optimistic promises of artificial life, with synthetic biology and digital cyborg technologies as its avantgarde, which are very much driven by the idea of technoscientific mastery to surpass natures ‘weakness’ and by desires to improve ‘life’ and to even refashion ‘life itself ’. On the field of historical ecology, concepts of systems thinking are traced back to the middle of the 19th century, where ecological thought emerged at the intersections of biology and geography. Meandering between vitalistic, holistic, and mechanistic concepts, between living and non-living elements, systems ecology finally substitutes ‘nature’, which in turn is re-established in its new ‘gestalt’ as computer simulated world model since the early 1970s. Resurrected as an interrelation of system variables at the level of global simulations ‘nature’ strikes as a zombie. As a second turning point of the rewriting of the matrix, of life we will discuss the advance of ‘games’ since the early 1970ies, with the example of ‘Game of life’ (‘Life’) as a significant landmark. When ‘life’ becomes ‘Life’, it is by computerized modeling in terms of dynamic processes. Computer games can be thought of as instances of the popularization of cybernetic system thinking, functioning as interdiscoursive fragments between the specialized discourse of system theories and the sphere of ‘common sense’ (Nohr 2008), where the specific “gaming situation” (Eskelinen 2001) foregrounds playful individual action and manipulation of system objects within a set of given rules or the manipulation of system rules itself on the level of the ‘code’. We will argue that both, the ecological discourse and the algorithmic model of self-reproduction of ‘Life’, are historically and systematically related manifestations and mediations of system theory. While they can be regarded as referring to different scales of application (macro-economic reasoning in the case of global ecosystems, modeling of bottom-up-complexity on a micro-level in the case of ‘Life’) and belonging to distinctive disciplines (economic and ecological research vs. mathematical theory of automata and artificial life studies), they share some common ground in being “algorithmic media” (Marks 2014) that are functional as “rhetorical software” (Doyle 1997) and as “allegorithms” (Galloway 2006) of the new compositions of the technobiological and techno-ecological situation of the 21st century.

Is the post-human a post-woman? Cyborgs, robots, artificial intelligence and the futures of gender: a case study

This study aims to shed light on the debate about the futures of gender, by taking into account its significance in the current development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cyborg technologies and robotics. Its reflections are sustained by empirical data obtained between November 2010 and January 2011, when the author engaged in a study related to Gender and Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Cybernetics, University of Reading (England) under the supervision of Professor Kevin Warwick, known as the first human cyborg for his experiments “Cyborg I” (1998) and “Cyborg II” (2002). In this context, the author formulated a questionnaire which was answered by more than one hundred students and researchers of the Department. The specific question motivating this research was: how and to what extent do gender and the intersectional differences characterizing the human species inform the development of cyborgs, robots and AI? The results of the questionnaire, presented in this article, offer original and controversial perspectives on how such epistemological approaches may impact the futures.

Ethical Issues in Cyborg Technology: Diversity and Inclusion

Progress has reached the point where cyborg technology is leaving the sphere of mere science fiction. Whereas society as a whole formed a symbiosis with technology long ago, individuals are now starting to merge with technology as well. The effects can already be studied by looking at the examples of smartphones, computers and the Internet. The idea of ‘repairing’ humans, medical implants more sensitive than our natural, human faculties and even non-medical implants raise a lot of ethical questions, and require the concept of inclusion to be re-thought.

Snapshots from sari trails: cyborgs old and new

In this paper, the author draws upon an examination of two apparently opposed cyborg locations and technologies to show how, in specific instances, globalization, technology, economics, culture and diasporas intersect. Such intersections produce very specific, situated contexts for productive labor forces to emerge at the interface of technologies ‘old’ and ‘new’. These situated contexts place the individual in relation to market forces and community production logics through which labor and affect are placed in hierarchies of digital globalization. The author does this by looking at how the ‘sari’ is produced, marketed and worn in two ‘cyborg’ contexts. One of the cyborg locations this article explores is online, the other is offline. By juxtaposing these ‘old’ and ‘new’ contexts of production and marketing a sari the author hopes to allow for issues to be raised that otherwise would be invisible.

#9: Cyborg Technology and Gait Assistance—A Possibility of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES)—

#9: Cyborg Technology and Gait Assistance—A Possibility of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES)—

#1 : Now and Future of Cyborg Technology

#1 : Now and Future of Cyborg Technology

Who's afraid of Stella Walsh? On gender, ‘gene cheaters’, and the promises of cyborg athletes

In this article, I argue that there are moral reasons to embrace the construction of self-designing and sex/gender-neutral cyborg athletes. In fact, with the prospect of advanced genetic and cyborg technology, we may face a future where sport (as we know it) occurs in its purest form; that is, where athletes get evaluated by athletic performance only and not by their gender, and where it becomes impossible to discriminate athletes based on their body constitution and gender identity. The gender constructions within sports and sports culture are solid, however. Here, I argue that the rough distinctions we use to define people in terms of sex/gender tend to create and recreate old-fashioned and discriminatory sex/gender-boundaries. A morally reasonable way of meeting this issue, is to say that the problem is not the individuals who (for one reason or another) transcend certain gender categories, but the categories in themselves.

The Ethics of Using Cybernetics and Cyborg Technologies: What Every Rehabilitation Nurse Should Know

Cybernetics and cyborg technologies are rapidly developing in the field of biotechnology. Such developments have yielded a wide variety of devices and prosthetics that have promoted the quality of life for many individuals with physical limitations and generally have been applauded by society and the rehabilitation field. However, such rapid developments have given rise to multiple ethical concerns. Understanding these ethical concerns and the implications they have for rehabilitation nurses is imperative. While the potential benefits of advances in technology are great for those with disabilities and chronic conditions, ethicists suggest that skepticism must be balanced with the zeal that often accompanies cutting-edge developments. As Hook notes, "We must show not a fear of technology, but a courageous control of technology, and refuse to let technology control us" (2002, p. 67).

Cyborg Politics and Economic Realities: Reflections on Elaine Graham's Representations of the Post/Human

This article seeks to examine the political and economic context of cyborg culture and technology in Elaine Graham's Representations of the Post/Human. It begins by drawing out the relationship between Graham's study and Foucault's genealogical method and seeks to establish the ‘silent machine’ operating in Graham's analysis. By following three critical strands —knowledge as technology, economic determinism and imaginative agency and the economics of transcendence—the article highlights and extends a critique of capitalism and technology in the text. It argues that economics is now shaped by the machine and concludes by opening up a ‘politics of refusal’. Graham's work is acknowledged for bringing to light uncomfortable questions surrounding the politics of the machine.

The cyborg, the ideology chip and the guru programme: the implications of cyborg technologies for the development of human consciousness

There has been little thought given in science to the impact of direct brain‐machine interfacing upon the future development of human consciousness. Even less thought has been given to the possibilities for both optimizing and thwarting development in the cyborg child. A neurocognitive model of the evolution of cyborg consciousness is summarized, and from this model grounded speculations are offered pertaining to the future development of the higher cognitive functions in the cyborg child. It will be shown that cybernetic implants are “multistable”; that is, the artificial intelligence (AI) component of the cyborg brain‐machine linkage may function to condition development along ideological lines (the brain conditioned by the “ideological chip”), or may operate to open up neurocognitive development to new and heretofore unrealized limits (the brain’s development optimized by the “guru programme”). Development of the cyborg child may be conditioned in the interests of ideological concerns, or may lead to a consciousness that easily transcends all forms of ideology. Application of the guru programme may foster the emergence of new levels of cognitive complexity and information processing (à la Piagetian and neo‐Piagetian theory) that in turn allows new strategies of adaptation previously beyond human comprehension. The ethical and regulatory problems raised by cyborg technologies are addressed.

Of Cyborg Technologies and Fascistized Mermaids: Giannina Censi's Aerodanze in 1930s Italy

Of Cyborg Technologies and Fascistized Mermaids: Giannina Censi’s Aerodanze in 1930s Italy Anja Klöck* (bio) Technologized Discourses I Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Aerodanze. Giannina Censi in her aluminum-colored costume. (Picture without indication of photographer and date.) Reproduced with permission of Mart, Archivio del '900 di Rovereto (Italy), Fondo Giannina Censi. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Aerodanze: partenza di aeroplano (departure of the airplane). Photo from the book Cultura fisica della donna ed estetica femmenile by G. Poggi-Longostrevi (Milan: Hoepli, 1933), 247. Reproduced with permission of Mart, Archivio del '900 di Rovereto (Italy), Fondo Giannina Censi. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Aerodanze: trivello verso l'azzurro (drilling towards the blue). Photo from the book Cultura fisica della donna ed estetica femmenile by G. Poggi-Longostrevi (Milan: Hoepli, 1933), 253. Reproduced with permission of Mart, Archivio del '900 di Rovereto, Fondo Giannina Censi. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Aerodanze: rovesciamento d'apparecchio (capsizing of the apparatus). Photo from the book Cultura fisica della donna ed estetica femminile by G. Poggi-Longostrevi (Milan: Hoepli, 1933), 247. Reproduced with permissioin of Mart, Archivo del '900 di Rovereto, Fondo Giannina Censi. At the end of the twentieth century, we can no longer be innocent of the understanding that technologies—and the question of who has access to them—condition both what and how events are represented, signs ordered, theories articulated, identities (re)produced, performed and modified. The question of where and how technologies penetrate social interactions, human minds and representational practices can never be separated from the politics of power-relations and material conditions within particular places. Hence the dynamic relationships that emerge between certain technologies (apparati that organize knowledge and experience) and technological practices (activities that are informed by such apparati) need to be situated and historicized. Technologies condition the knowledge and experiences produced in a specific site at a particular historical moment. The need to historicize and contextualize the interrelationships between certain technologies and technological practices becomes particularly apparent in the case of Italian Futurism, 1 an early twentieth-century avant-garde movement that embraced and glorified the latest technological innovations with its representational practices. Much of the scholarly study of Italian Futurism, however, has tended to dehistoricize and decontextualize the futurist works of art, literature and performance. 2 For a long time after the traumatic experience of World War II, this [End Page 395] movement was ignored by scholars across all disciplines. It was generally assumed that futurist practices of representation had informed the Italian fascist propaganda of the 1920s and 30s. 3 Thus most of the presently available studies in the field of futurist performance and theatre try to legitimize the presence of these works in the history of the avant-garde. They treat the futurist productions as autonomous from the field of political and technological forces within which they emerged and focus on their revolutionary form or aesthetics. Such aestheticizing practices have prompted scholars to multiply rather than analyze the polemics of revolution, of destruction and of a future of men, machines and technology in the early futurist writings (that is, those [End Page 396] texts that were written in the years immediately after the movement’s foundation in 1909). Furthermore, they continue to spread the myth of Futurism as a universe of “men multiplied by machines” 4 without “the help of the vulva,” 5 and as an avant-garde movement that existed exclusive of women. Despite the hostilities against female-gendered bodies on the surfaces of the futurist works, many women participated in or responded to specific moments in Italian Futurism. 6 Giannina Censi’s Aerodanze (Aerial Dances) in 1930s Italy are one example of how a woman’s practices of representation and self-representation acquired visibility within the futurist movement. With her dance-performances of aeronautic experiences she desired not only to simulate the movements and vibrations of the apparatus of an airplane in flight, but also to show the effects of the airplane on the human mind and body. These representational practices were informed by Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifesto of Dance” from 1917, in which the...