Your EDIT raises a point that I hadn’t thought about at all: is there a need by the architect for the cyborg in this division? I don’t know, but you can bet that I’m going to spend a bunch of time thinking about it. I feel like there might be a way that it’s needed. still not sure how.

I’ve got this sheet of notes and in big letters in one place it says “Infrastructure is POWER crystallized” and then there’s some other stuff about being able to say “we were here” and “we intend to be here for awhile”.

Your EDIT raises a point that I hadn’t thought about at all: is there a need by the architect for the cyborg in this division? I don’t know, but you can bet that I’m going to spend a bunch of time thinking about it. I feel like there might be a way that it’s needed. still not sure how.

I’ve got this sheet of notes and in big letters in one place it says “Infrastructure is POWER crystallized” and then there’s some other stuff about being able to say “we were here” and “we intend to be here for awhile”.

They are very clear in the paper that they are not just talking about implanting things in people.

In the past evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible to achieve this to some degree
without alteration of heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications of man’s existing modus vivendi.

Their primary interest was in making self-regulating (i.e. not requiring conscious acts on the part of the cyborg to maintain homestasis) manmachine systems. An exoskeleton that is controlled as naturally as moving but which offers considerable strength is a tool yes, but it’s also a cybernetic device. The users wears it and BECOMES stronger, without thinking about it. The body-type relationship that you want is there. Ditto, I think, for glasses. You put them on, they correct your vision and then most of the time you forget about them.

In the paper, they actually (and this is sort of awesome) go on to talk about Yoga and Hypnosis as control systems that can impact the functioning of an organism. They discuss using drugs (automatically administered) to keep pilots awake for longer, protect from radiation, and to induce hypothermia and hibernation at appropriate times during a mission.

Indeed, aside from brief references to electrical physiological solutions, it’s pretty much 4 pages of “ways we can use pharmacological tech to adapt people to space”.

In the 80s the cultural emphasis turned to hardware adaptations — installed artificial limbs and implants and endoskeletons and the like, but the origins of the term are still there and still meaningful.

The cyborgs of the near future will very likely not have mechanical parts at all. It’ll be nano and bio and

I think that this is not a case of a fuzzy distinction between cyborg and tool user, but rather that all these cases are just examples of tool using, ditto eye glasses. Ditto Ironman.

There is a really clear division between cyborg and machine user. A cyborg would be someone who had a body type relationship to a synthetic product. I think this would have to include propriocetpion and inclusion of the thingy into the body schema. Whether that has or hasn’t happened in a particular case is an empirical question.

Are glasses crude cybernetics? What about contact lenses? What about eye implants? What about eyes rebuilt through laser surgery? What about contact lenses that project a HUD of data to the user? What about night-vision goggles? What about night-vision eyes?

When NASA was looking into their cybernetics programs, a huge amount of the work they were doing we wouldn’t recognize as cybernetics in the modern chrome sense of the idea. They spent a lot of time looking at pharmaceutical interventions as ways of enhancing the human machine. Performance enhancing drugs.

Does this make women who use the pill cyborgs? What about IUDs? (Actually there’s a tonne of crazy writing about cybernetics and reproduction by feminist thinkers, lots of interesting stuff).

I’m definitely pushing the edge of the category when I look at the various U.S. Army tools and tech. But at some point along the line between // Guy with Gun / Body Armour / Powered Exoskeleton / Iron Man circa 1960 / Iron Man Extremis version / The Terminator // people turn into cyborgs. it’s not at all clear to me when that happens.