For me, the term “cyborg” conjures up images of a futuristic world gone wrong, science fiction landscapes in which machines live among us, and even interchangeably with us, and the line between organism and mechanism blends and twists and combines. But as I look around in any public setting on any given day, I see more and more of this in real life: People looking down at their phones on the subway to avoid making awkward eye contact with their fellow humans, googling an actor’s name they can’t think of when it comes up in conversation, using WhatsApp or one of the other messaging apps to communicate with a friend across the ocean. We are becoming increasingly attached to our technologies, even reliant on them, in our daily lives. I doubt any of us would really consider ourselves cyborgs, but that’s exactly what we are now. Cyborgs: half human, half machine.
We may see a future where the cyborg is a common aspect of the human experience, brought into existence by the technologies with which we live. Technologies like the Google Contact Lens, a project announced in 2014 which monitors the glucose levels in the tears of diabetics. Or Touch Bionics’ i-limb prosthetic hand with a rotating thumb, and five individually powered fingers which can be controlled from a smartphone app or by muscle signals to form 24 different grips. According to Professor Harari from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, within the next 200 years, human beings will evolve “into some idea of a divine being” through our technological advances and biological engineering.
Right now, our technological devices are pretty obvious. We walk around at all times with little electrical boxes in our pockets, through the use of which we achieve what our ancestors would have thought impossible. Communicating across the continents in seconds? No way. Reaching a community of thousands at the click of a button? Insanity. Ordering food without having to speak to a single human being? Absolutely ridiculous. But these are not only possibilities but commonplace activities in today’s world.
Our technological devices may not presently be physically embedded into our beings, but think about your online activity. Your Facebook profile, your Instagram page, and any online presence you may have, is just an extension of your body. You are not physically present on facebook, of course, but if “you” exists in your mind rather than in your body, than the thoughts you express and the words you write on the internet are basically another version of the entity that is you.
Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Our technologies are advancing faster than you think. Soon, we’ll all be walking around with invisible networks implanted into our brains, becoming one with the machine.
So, let me ask you again. Are you a cyborg?
