Illustration by Eleanor Qu
Brave New World
For most of us, the word cyborg likely conjures images of RoboCop or the Bionic Woman. We envision bodies where limbs are replaced by machines, enhancing one’s way of life: Darth Vader, whose helmet hides a face obscured by burns and scars; Star Trek’s Borg, whose coldly calculated plans of assimilation make them a force to be reckoned with; and Steve Austin, who would be a penny short of a Six Million Dollar Man without his bionic eye, arm, and legs.
Our current pop culture narratives depict cyborgs as human bodies integrated with high-tech gadgetry, electronically empowering the mind and body. The typical science fiction story often portrays the human part of the body as dependent upon the machine part to survive, and this dependence never comes without super-human benefits.
Our concept of distance has been minimized by our access to technology.
But consider this: are these tales still futuristic fantasies, or do they finally reflect a real-life rewiring of our human hard drive?
Technology has advanced to the point where it is fair to argue that many of us depend upon it to survive. Cell phones, the Internet and other digital technologies are a must-have for communication in a global, business-savvy world where now is always preferable to soon. Such technology provides us with more convenient ways to complete tasks, store information, and do something we once deemed possible only in fictional worlds: bend time and space.
Does that not sound superhuman to you? Maybe not — most of us are so accustomed to this way of life, we don’t take the time to question it.
The word cyborg refers to a person whose abilities and senses are enhanced by technology beyond the capacities of a regular human being. Without the help of our digital technologies, we would not have the ability to communicate instantly with millions of people, or to bend space and time. Compared to the way people lived a century ago, we may as well be superhumans.
Modern Cyborgs
Donna Haraway, a professor at the University of California, states in her 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” that “we are all cyborgs now.” Every time we click, scroll, dial or type, we essentially become electronically-augmented people.
It’s in our nature as humans to want to augment our abilities and extend our reach — as Marshall McLuhan states in The Medium is the Massage, “All media are extensions of some human faculty, psychic or physical.” In our increasingly tech-mediated world, cyborgs have gone from fantasy to everyday reality.
Such are the concepts that scholar Amber Case has dedicated her life’s work to. She explores these concepts as part of a rapidly emerging academic discipline: cyborg anthropology.
As in every anthropological discipline, cyborg anthropology is concerned with the study of humankind and how we relate to the world around us. Case’s fascination with our high-tech world has inspired her to pen ethnographies focusing on our relationship with — and reliance on — technology. She studies how we interact with technology, and the positive and negative effects of its increasing influence on our lives.
Ultimately, much of her work is devoted to examining how our brains have begun to work in the same way as the machines we carry around with us. The line between humans and machines has become increasingly indistinguishable: machines behave more like us, and we behave more like them.
The human race has always been trying to enhance its own potential. Neanderthals constantly strived to discover new ways to hit harder, move faster, and kill more efficiently. More recently, industrialisation was inspired by the necessity of business and war — we look to make our lives easier and more manageable through the invention of tools to extend our abilities. In the modern age, we’ve become equally concerned with increasing our mental faculties as well as our physical ones.
Case sums up her research brilliantly in a recent TED talk, in which she describes her ideas and those of cyborg anthropology at large. She views a personal device, like a laptop or cell phone, as a kind of “Mary Poppins technology” that never becomes physically heavier, no matter how much technology it stores.
If we were to print out every piece of information we own, we’d never be able to store it all — it would pile up to mountainous levels. To earlier generations, this would seem like magic.
The idea of teleportation, which seems even more fantastic, also appears in Case’s work. Stories of characters traveling immeasurable distances in a matter of seconds have been around for hundreds of years: Douglas Adams describes the process in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as “not quite as fun as a good solid kick to the head.”
Having to maintain our identities and images online has led us each to create another version of ourselves.
You might be surprised to realise that teleportation is hardly fiction anymore. While we may not be able to physically transport ourselves from point A to point B, we are now mentally able to do so. As Case says, we can “whisper something on one side of the world and be heard on the other,” all through the wormhole technology that we carry in our pockets.
A quick visit to Google Maps and you can digitally walk through the streets of Paris or the jungles of Brazil. Our concept of distance has been minimized by our access to technology.
The Second Self
But perhaps one of Case’s most fascinating ideas is the notion that we have become two separate people because of the technology we use. Having to maintain our identities and images online has led us each to create another version of ourselves, or what Case calls “the second self.”
Whether we like it or not, it is inevitable that each of us has appeared on the Internet in some form. Once our names, faces, or any information about us has surfaced online, that second self has been created, and it’s our job (or at least our inclination) to make it reflect our physical selves in whatever way we deem appropriate.
For many of us, the second self has a different personality, or presence, than our actual selves — most real life people are never as funny as their Twitter accounts or as impeccably dressed as their Facebook profile pictures.
This dichotomization of the self has been a cause of much social anxiety among adolescents. Teens today not only have to deal with the awkwardness of puberty and social interaction; they’re now equally burdened with the grueling task of maintaining a second image online.
This second self is also constantly accessible. We’re able to be contacted and viewed at any time, and once we’re on the web, we never really disappear. With this in mind, do our electronic selves really have any privacy? While the actual self has the option to hide away in a small, dark and dingy corner concealed from any contact with the world, the online self does not have this luxury. We are always available, always open, never alone.
Case’s research delves into psychasthenia, a psychological disorder characterized by phobias, obsessions, compulsions and anxiety. Because of the unprecedented control we have over time, the constant access to a world of people in our pockets, and perpetual need to maintain our online images, Case believes many of us have developed these feelings.
Many have become seriously anxious about what the world of online identities is up to, even if they have been logged off for only an hour — experts have coined the term “fear of missing out,” or FOMO, to describe this phenomenon. We think of ourselves as belonging to two worlds: one physical, one electronic, both equally important.
Such anxiety leads to what is called ambient intimacy: we are now constantly intimate with ourselves, engaged in a neverending conversation between me, myself, and I.
Think of our online identities as sculptures of ourselves that we are constantly moulding. Every day we find parts we decide don’t make us appear exactly the way we want to, so we continue to cut and shape and press to no end. Maybe our noses are actually a little too large, or our foreheads jut out too much. We are compulsively indecisive artists, constantly reinventing ourselves in order to represent our best selves. It’s a lie that we tell ourselves and others, and with the advent of new technologies, it becomes a harder one to maintain.
“We are all cyborgs now.” – Donna Haraway, University of California professor
As a cyborg anthropologist, Case is very concerned with these notions, believing a continuous sculpt is mentally dangerous, especially for youth. She describes how young people today are not spending enough time self-reflecting because they are too immersed in the competition to establish the best online identity possible. “When there is no external input, no technology,” she argues, “we can actually create ourselves, do long-term planning, and figure out who we really are as real-life people.”
Case feels that once we unplug and discover who we truly are in the physical world, we can then make the move to maintain our second selves in a legitimate way that is reflective of who we actually are.
Children and youth today have lost the privilege of having downtime: our instantaneous, button-clicking culture hinders our ability to develop a good sense of real-world presentation, and develop truly comfortable, real life relationships with others.
A Brighter Future?
However, cyborg anthropologists also cite the positive effects of our high tech world. Case argues that our gadgets can actually help us to enhance our humanity, rather than marginalize it. We are naturally social beings who are biologically wired to live together, communicate and, inevitably, form relationships with one another. Our machines help many of us to connect with others more easily. The most successful technologies help us to increase and improve our interactions with other humans, rather than solely with ourselves.
In my opinion, cyborg anthropology should be considered as a new discipline to be offered at Simon Fraser University. While we do offer a wide variety of media and technology classes, our increasingly tech-centric world is too often ignored in lectures and course materials. Amber Case’s work could be a starting point, introducing the concepts and theories of cyborg anthropology to students and faculty alike.
Think about it: we cyborgs should have the chance to learn about our superhuman abilities and how they are truly influencing our selves and our lives. Doing so in an academic setting may allow us to strike a greater balance between our real and digitally sculpted selves, and to make the most of our cybernetic brains.
After all, it’s not easy being digitally enhanced.
