My Extended Body - From Cyborgs to Robots to Cyborgs

Abstract

Relationships between humans and technology are constantly fraught with controversy, utopian idealism and in particular, dichotomies. In a recent short communications article titled “Insight into Bio Inspired Robotics” by Shaikh and Begum [1] present a bio inspired model of robotics that among other things includes soft robotics, plantoids and cyborgs. This is an interesting article for many reasons, such as the mimicry of living organisms to generate form and movement (biomimicry), inspiration from nature to create intelligent robotics that exceed the imagination in terms of their embodiment, and relevant to this short piece, the relationship between robotics and humans. Often times cyborgs and cyborgism are considered new concepts. Particularly in light of movements such as body hackers, artists (Neil Harbisson, Moon Ribas, Stelarc and active scientist-developers Steve Mann and Kevin Warwick), the idea of the cyborg has become synonymous with the implantation of information technology into the human body. Discussions of the post-human focus on traits of artificial construction and especially the role that information has on the definition and framing of humans as a whole the discourse and representation of human groups see e.g., Haraway [2].