It was fascinating to read about biohacking in Jeannine’s “The real Cyborgs” in the Telegraph, and the article prompted me to further explore ideas raised last week from the Miller reading on the human as a cyborg species and to reflect on the concept of cybernet extensions as body parts rather than devices. I had never encountered the term biohacking and had no idea that DIY biohacking kits are available online meaning that anyone today has the opportunity to become a cyborg.

While I was in Thailand this week I visited a temple and reflected on the Thai view of the body as the temple of the soul. Before starting this course I took this it to mean venerating the body and not enhancing it, but sitting looking at the how the temple was elaborately decorated and thinking about how women in tribes in the north use rings to lengthen their necks (technology as in tools not digital technology) made me realize that embellishment and enhancement really are part of human nature.

Watching Gumdrop and The Trail’s End made me think that it’s not so much a case of cyborgs being almost human but more human than human – at least in their way of thinking. Gumdrop’s shape challenges our perception of the cyborg created in our image and although she looks clearly out of place in the film clips, her performance is touching. I did wonder whether our dystopian view of cyborgs in general (think I, Robot) is because they are made to look like humans and whether this facilitates the projection of the dark side of human nature and our fear of losing control/other forces rising against us. Google’s new robot reflects a more utopian view with the Atlas robot being designed to provide useful human controlled assistance in disaster scenarios, entering dangerous situations where humans should not or cannot operate.

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The visual dimension is very much at the centre of cyber culture studies and the auditory dimension is almost always left out. Yet the virtual world is a multi-sensory experience, and ‘audialization’ (the process of making information more comprehensible by rendering it as sound) is just as important as visualization. We often take the auditory aspect for granted and only appreciate it when we have issues with microphones, echo and reverberation.

Stern, J. (2006) The historiography of cyberculture. Chapter 1 of Critical cyberculure studies. New York University Press pp.17-28.

http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/the-future-is-android/index.html ‘The Real Cyborgs’ by Arthur House

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/21/googles-massive-humanoid-robot-can-now-walk-and-move-without-wires‘Google’s massive humanoid robot can now walk and move without wires’ by Samuel Gibbs