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Play
“To Borg or not to Borg?”
To borg, or not to borg: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The risks and costs of outrageous modifications,
Or to resist the rising sea of technologies,
And by refusing continue to die. Human
No more, and by borging do we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd? To die or to borg;
To borg: perchance to enhance: ay, there's the rub;
For in that mode of borg what dreams may come
True before shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so short life;
For who would bear the ache and wounds of not time
Enough to o’throw the oppressor's wrong,
Avoid the pangs of loves lost by fate's delay,
Crush the insolence of office and honor
That patient merit of the worthy takes,
When he himself might his future make
With a moded bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after human,
The undiscover'd country cyborg from whose bourn
No traveller returns human, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus carefulness does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with weak meat thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of god to cyborg.
ARE YOU A CYBORG?
Have you been genetically engineered?
Do you have an artificial arm or leg or hand or foot or ear or heart?
Do you have a xeno transplant?
Do you have a human transplant?
Do you have a brain or heart pacemaker?
Do you have any other kind of interactive implant or prosthesis?
Do you control your wheelchair, your intelligent bed or your computer with your thoughts?
Have you been immunized? (ie. Had your immune system reprogrammed.)
Do you play or work in cyberspace?
Do you wear contacts or glasses or a hearing aid?
Can you drive a car without thinking? A bycycle? Ski? Snowboard? Skate? Surf?
Do you suffer withdrawal without your ipod or blackberry or cell phone or laptop?
Have you been branded, pierced, or tattooed?
Do you work with or on machines?
Do you wear clothes?
Do you use tools?
Where are the lines between human and posthuman, between the mundane cyborg and the enhanced?
By the exact definition of Manfred Clynes, the first 10 all qualify you as a technical cyborg. The rest just implicate you in cyborg society. But it is obviously so much more complicated than that. It isn’t if you are cyborged in some way; we all are. It is how you are ‘borged, why, and what you are going to do with it.
More coming soon.
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