INTRODUCTION

“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. Ths [sic] cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality” (Haraway 1991, p.150)

The changes the development of computer and communication technologies have made are irreversible; we have seen (and can see) ‘the better’ happening, so would it not be illogical and against human nature, to turn back and return for the worse. Wait – worse? Must mean earlier. Technology with its constant ability to improve surely has taught mankind something about versions: previous is always worse, so must be it with humans too.

As today, the children of our mind, our creations, start to educate the industrial world by its infinite values, so does the human need to evolve – this is where cyborgism comes in. First, considered as a steppingstone, came ‘transhumanism’  – we, with all excitement, yet unintentionally, have become dependent of the machines; we have formed an addiction with no intentions, or frankly, without even an option, to return to the previous version of human – the time before technology.

This essay is to analyze the implications of digital cultures and new technologies, the consequences of this invisible evolution and its effects.

CYBERNETICS

As the new technological innovations, that cause a change in the notion of ‘humanity’, are constructed from the knowledge that the study of Cybernetics has revealed, I will briefly introduce it in reference to the posthumanist theory of information losing its body.

“The contemporary pressure toward dematerialization, understood as an epistemic shift toward pattern/randomness and away from presence/absence, affects human and textual bodies on two levels at once, as a change in the body (the material substrate) and as a change in the message (the codes of representation).” (Hayles 1999, p.29)

 As Cybernetics it is applicable to many disciplines and a topic hard to wholly understand, I will analyze it specifically in context of technology. At the simplest (and only to give an outline), it can be explained as an investigation of the world of entities; how it is constructed and structured of information and the regulatory patterns of it. The research into the controllability of systems, cybernetics, is considered to have deployed in three ‘waves’, that all sought to resist the reification, concretization of information, as discussed by Hayles (1999, p.50)

“The first was concerned with the construction of information as a theoretical entity; the second, with the construction of (human) neural structures so that they were seen as flows of information; the third, with the construction of artifacts that translated information flows into observable operations, thereby making the flows “real.”

For the reason of human being inspected as information for us to gather and examine (the second wave), cybernetics have so far affected the society with no less than by providing us a reason to revise what actually constructs a human. As the neural structures are considered as bodiless data flowing in our systems; with the aid of technological innovations, extreme posthumanists are keen on theorizing the disembodiment of our consciousness thus freeing us from the constraints of the bodily form.

“This notion of human existence as patterned information underpins the anti-body rhetoric of contemporary techno-immortalists like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, whose theories of mind transfer disregard the need for a brain or a body. As Wiener concludes, ‘The physical identity of an individual does not consist in the matter of which it is made.’ He believed that, eventually, it would be possible for ‘a human being to be sent over a telegraph line’”. (Dinello 2005, p.61)

It is, however, unnecessary to fantasize a complete disembodiment (such human existence inside a virtual reality as seen in the Matrix), to realize that we already do, partially, exist in multiple realities – illuminated by our addiction, and by the use of the cybernetic technologies 21st century transhuman does not want to live without.

“Following Donna Haraway, I take informatics to mean the technologies of information as well as the biological, social, linguistic, and cultural changes that initiate, accompany, and complicate their development.” (Hayles 1999, p.29)

IMPLICATIONS OF INFORMATICS

In her book Hayles (1999, p.29) makes a statement that our textual bodies are due to change “as they are encoded within information media”, that is, when we, in a sense, become information ourselves and go on-line – when we begin to exist in another reality, a man-made virtual environment.

“Some theorists, notably Edward Fredkin and Stephen Wolfram, claim that reality is a program run on a cosmic computer. In this view, a universal informational code underlies the structure of matter, energy, spacetime – indeed, of everything that exists.” (Hayles 1999, p.11)

In regards to the creation of multiple realities, we can interpret the extract above within the terms of our current technological state. Instead of assuming that the whole reality is running on a cosmic computer, we can analyze the details about us and our existence available not on computers oh-so-cosmic, but on the ones that are vastly remote to us – the servers running the virtual realities in which we choose to live in.

As the ideal aim for new technologies, at least from posthuman point-of-view, is to break boundaries that restrict the capabilities of a human being, to liberate us, Facebook is an outstanding, world-class representative of such. When communication is possible without the restrictions of time, space, absence/presence, we enter a virtual reality – an environment where our material existence as embodied beings is irrelevant. This affects the mankind (well, to some extent – at least the industrial societies) with changes in their ideology and understanding of the world around us.

“As Carolyn Marvin notes, a decontextualized construction of information has important ideological implications, including an Anglo-American ethnocentrism that regards digital information as more important than more context-bound analog information.” (Hayles 1999, p.19)

What seems obvious, and is invisible to the transhuman of the early 21st century, is the multi-existence in different types of realities; which, in the most natural sense, is really inorganic and past human. This, however, does not seem to bother us. Human inarguably is a species looking for development and capacity to evolve; transhumanism, before complete posthumanism, offers that possibility of augmentation by enabling us to extend and merge with the children of our mind – by making us one species in combination with the Cybernetics – a Cyborg.

This raises a question. Whereas to the Western industrial societies the evolution is obvious and invisible, yet welcomed and embraced, some human beings are not given the capability to do so. As political liberalism within humanism is heavily built on a principle that “all men are equal”, as stated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the on-going evolution and its exclusive occurrence only within the industrial world is to make a bigger gap, a notable differentiation between two types of human – those who can afford to follow the development and those who cannot. This distinction is critically discussed by Fukuyama (2004), and he points out an important problem, a consequence caused by the creation of the transhuman and new technologies; “the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human.” As worded by him:

“If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the world’s poorest countries — for whom biotechnology’s marvels likely will be out of reach — and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.

To return to the previously analyzed topic of semi-disembodiment, existence within a virtual reality, and its implications, I will give a tangible example.

It was about two years ago when I started forcing my anonymous friend to join Facebook. She resisted the overpopulated online community for quite a while (which is reasonable), but the instance of her finally joining in is to show how dependant of technology humans have become. To exaggerate yet to elaborate my point more clearly, before her so-called ‘transformation from human to transhuman,’ I considered her conservative and out-dated.

We are bound to use and adapt to the new technologies in order to be classified as a human of our time. To stay within the same instance; as a person highly interested in the new computer and communications technologies to come, and as a transhuman who sees the instrument of virtual reality as an extension to our species, Homo Sapiens that is, I did not understand her uninterest, therefore not really giving her a choice – nearly forcing her to partake. (I would have, but the still-existing human attribute of empathy and understanding did not let me.)

This is an important issue to consider, as it does relate to something as significant as the evolution of the human race. Arguably, we are no more given an option whether to get, or not to get involved with technologies – in this case social networking – because the changing society is becoming increasingly, and massively technological. Today, the western society demands us to participate in the techno-life, and ‘ideally’ to exist in a virtual reality too (online, within the Internet).

Referring to the mentioned instance; Joy (2000), in his article, includes an extract from a book by Ray Kurzweil, a considerably significant figure within the technology ‘scene’ of the 21st century. The text depicts dystopian scenario regarding the future. Kurzweil describes, quite truthfully, a plausible threat that the new technologies might (or will?) cause as a result of ‘over-technologizing’ society:

“But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions.”

My friend was not obligated to join the social network by a machine at all – but as we are not completely posthuman yet, but on the way there – transhuman, it is understandable as well as positive, that human interaction is still needed in this procedure of ‘brainwashing’ and ‘semi-forced opinion changing’, instead of the horror scenario where humans have no choice. This argues against the liberal posthumanist thoughts of the technology setting us free and removing boundaries – rather this creates new, inorganic borders and restrictions: “you are not a classified as a human if you are not involved with technology”. In the topic of liberalism, Hayles (1999, p.87) argues: “What can these complex negotiations tell us about the pleasures and dangers of the posthuman subjectivity that would soon displace the liberal humanist self?”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dinello, D. (2005). Technophobia! : Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. Austin, TX, USA: University of Texas Press.

Fukuyama, F. (2005). Transhumanism. Available: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/09/01/transhumanism.
Last accessed 2nd Dec 2011.

Hayles, N. Katherine (1999). How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago Press.

Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. New York, USA: Routledge. pp.149-181.

Joy, B. (2000). Why the future doesn’t need us. Available: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html. Last ­accessed 3th Dec