For this weeks reading, we studied a piece by Andy Clark entitled Natural Born Cyborgs. Although we only read the introduction, the argument Clark seemed to be trying to make was that we are "thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological circuitry" (p 3). Basically, his mission is to convince us, through a series of evidence, that we are a sort of natural-born cyborgs.
To be honest, when I was reading the introduction, I really didn't buy his argument, at least in the beginning. One of the first examples that he used to demonstrate his point that we are these natural born cyborgs was the fact that we use pen and pencil to figure out long-handed multiplication problems. Somehow, by acting in "concert with the pen and paper" and not being able to do such mathematical problems without these devices, our brain interacts with these external resources. In some sense then, I believe what Clark tries to do is connect this use of a pen and paper and the fact that we have evolved to not being able to do difficult math in our brain and are thus propelled to use external resources, makes us a sort of natural born cyborg. Is this true? I think it's quite a leap. Afterall, we don't really need a pen and paper for our survival, right?
But maybe I'm just mistaken on what the author means when he uses the term cyborg. In the first few pages of the introduction, he tries to make the point that we are becoming sort of highly-developed. We have an ability (one that is solely a human capability) to enter into "deep and complex relationships with nonbiological constructs, props, and aids" like a pen and paper. But even more than this, Clark makes the point that many of our tools are not just "external props and aids, but are deep and integral parts of the problem-solving systems we now identify as human intelligence." So I am a little confused. Have we always been cyborgs, unique to other species, or have we just recently became them, as our technology continues to grow and we become more dependent on it? It was hard to determine what he meant within the reading.
Lastly, Clark tries to make the connection of the cyborg issue with that of a "wired world" or the connection age.
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3 comments:
I think i definately missed that we were born as cyborgs already which is something I didn't think about in our response. Your questioning this notion definately threw me off and made me think that according to Clark that's true. I'm not sure if I would call that modernization or to stay away from that idea but then all the tools that we use every day like the pen and paper and the cell phone would fit in with modernization. I agree with Clark on saying that we are a bit like cyborgs and that we are using the cell phone as an extension of ourselves and i've seen more than one person freak out when they loose theirs or it runs out of battery. I think that when you pointed out that we were born as one and going to the root changes my perspective on his notion on a cyborg more then I had before. -H-
I think your comment about "we don't really need a pen and a paper for our survival" is interesting. I think that almost everything we do is using tools and machines for our aid, so we are very much like cyborg in that sense. But after all, we actually could live without almost all of them, and many cyborgs in movies, like Terminator and RoboCop, actually need those machine parts to live. So maybe we are cyborgs in a different way. Although I do not think we are necessarily losing any human quality because everything we create is from the reasoning and logic of the human brain, which is the key to us being different.
I think that a new word should be invented besides cyborgs because I think that is what mainly throws people off. I also thought his term mindware upgrade was kind of wierd because I mean....we aren't making ourselves smarter by using a calculator we are just able to reach our full potential. Its just a strange concept.
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