COMS 465:Computer Mediated Communication

Plan

Posthumans & Cyborgs

Artificial Intelligence

Preview

Review

Posthumans & Cyborg Amber Case – We are All Cyborgs Now (Ted Talk)

D. Gunkel – Resistance is Futile (reading)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7KFfbjg3Iw

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Best of Both Worlds (1990)

Review

Locutus of Borg is Correct• Life as we have known it is over.

• Resistance is futile; We are Cyborg

• And this is a good thing!

Review

Review Terminology

CyberneticsThe Science of control and communication in the

animal and the machine.

“We have decided to call the entire field of

control and communication theory, whether in

the machine or in the animal, by the name

Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek

Kybernetes or steersman.” (Norbert Wiener)

Cyborg = Cybernetic + Organism

Review Terminology

“From a cybernetics viewpoint, the boundaries

between humans and machines become almost

inconsequential. Self imposed human subject

boundaries are seen as being nothing more

than historical and philosophical dinosaurs that

arise from evolved human mental states. The

human and machine together become an

integrated system, a Cyborg, part human part

machine.” (Warrick, 2003, p. 131)

Review Terminology

Manfred Clynes & Nathan Kline“Cyborgs and Space” Astronautics 1962

Review Terminology

“Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the

requirements of extraterrestrial environments

would be more logical than providing an

earthly environment for him in space.”

“For the exogenously extended

organizational complex functioning as

an integrated homeostatic system...we

propose the term cyborg.”

Review

1) Literal/Technical Cyborgs“There are many actual cyborgs among us in

society. Anyone with an artificial organ, limb

or supplement (like a pacemaker), anyone

programmed to resist disease (immunized)

or drugged to think/behave/feel better

(psychopharmacology) is technically a cyborg.”

Gray et al, Cyborg Handbook

(New York: Routledge, 1995)

Review

N. Katherine Hayles,

“The Life Cycle of Cyborgs” (1995)

2) Metaphorical Cyborgs“A much higher percentage participate in

occupations that make them into metaphoric

cyborgs, including the computer keyboarder

joined in a cybernetic circuit with the screen,

the neurosurgeon guided by fiber optic

microscopy during an operation, and the teen

gameplayer in the local video game arcade.”

Review

Amber CaseCyborg Anthropologist

We are All Cyborgs NowTechnology is evolving us as we become a

screen-staring, button-clicking new version of

homo sapiens. We now rely on "external brains"

(cell phones & computers) to communicate,

remember, even live out secondary lives.

http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html

Review

Donna Haraway“A Cyborg Manifesto”

3) Ontological CyborgsThe Cyborg is the product of two crucial boundary

breakdowns that occur in the late 20th century:

• Breakdown of the boundary between animals

(or other organisms) and human beings

• Breakdown of the boundary dividing self-

controlled, self-governing machines and

organisms especially humans

#1 “By the late twentieth century in United States, scientific

culture, the boundaries between human and animal is

thoroughly breached. The last beachheads of uniqueness have

been polluted if not turned into amusement parks—language,

tool use, social behavior, mental events. Nothing really

convincingly settles the separation of human and animal”

#2 “Late twentieth century machines have made thoroughly

ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind

and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many

other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines.

Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves

frighteningly inert”

Review

Review Boundary Breakdown #1

Review Boundary Breakdown #2

DNA Common feature of human and animal life

CodeDNA is code; our bodies are information processing machines

Review

1) Dehumanization“From one perspective, a cyborg world is

about the final imposition of a grid of control

on the planet, about the final abstraction

embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged

in the name of defense.” (Donna Haraway)

Review

2) Transhumanism“Machines are not taking over. They are

helping us to be more human, helping us

to connect to each other.” (Amber Case)

Review

http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-declaration/

Review

3) Posthumanism“The posthuman does not really mean the end of

humanity. It signals instead the end of a certain

conception of the human, a conception that may

have applied, at best, to that fraction of humanity

who had the wealth, power, and leisure to

conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings

exercising their will through individual agency and

choice” (N. Katherine Hayles)

Review

Review

Review

Dehumanization Transhumanism(Negative Concept) (Positive Concept)

- +

Posthuman

Human

Today

Artificial IntelligenceSlavin - How Algorithms Shape Our World (video)

Gunkel - Mind the Gap

Preview

Robots- Darling - Ethical Issues in Human-Robot Interaction

- Gunkel - The Other Question