Cyborgs Among Us

Silly at best, elitist and faintly fascist at worst. There are some underlying truths to the article, but they are buried under so much extremist nonsense.

— Anonymous

:-)
Very interesting writing.
Very interesting information.

What do you say about Autistic child/ren ?
Are they cyborgs or should be a normal human being ?

Sandybali,
http://www.autisme-counseling.com/
* * * * *

— Autism e-Counseling

Good intriguing article, with Heidegger references.

Is this just another inter-generational problem? a new techno-elite aristocracy?, or is the international independent individual association an eventual societal endpoint.

Either way the augmented hive mind of mankind is increasingly a technical possibility.

But alas the the poor will continue to be burnt to heat the house of the masters.

— wozza.xing

So it seems everyone got a little defensive…I agree that a lot of things on this site are a little extreme, but I think many readers took this way out of context. I don’t believe that this article was written to make everyone feel bad about using technology, its the idea that we are so consumed by it that we don’t enjoy anything other than an artificial, customized, user-created life that is our technology. I think that we should all probably take a break every once in a while and enjoy whats happening here, now, and out of our control. But that may just be me… — Chelsea

And yet we’re all reading this article on our laptops while simultaneously watching boob tube and listening to our iPhone’s notifications of email and texts. It’s slightly ironic that the article was published on the online magazine version. Technology is a beautiful and eye opening tool that I believe has created the ability for people to become more open minded and informed of the world today. Instead of placing blame on the electronics, one should turn to the people who refuse to acknowledge its presence. It’s much like the rest of America and their lack of understanding presence. This article would be like stating due to American’s over consumption and lack of appreciation of food we should all not eat. It’s more about learning to take pleasure and give thanks in enjoying what we do have. — netzirk

I think Micah makes a very valid point. She is introspecting on the fast pace of change in our everyday world. We need more writers like her and articles like this that take a very serious look at the technologies most people embrace without second thought. After all, lemmings couldn’t follow each other off the cliff fast enough. — Pippy

If the man with a hammer sees only nails, the man without one sees only insurmountable problems. — Gorgiamus Nunc

I think the author here is exaggerating. I don’t agree with her that humans and what she calls “machine human” could not live peacefully. She can’t get the fact that those she called “machine humans” are still human. They are still people who have emotions. They maybe addicted and dependent on the convenience of our new technologies, we can’t deny that human touch and real things gives us incomparable emotions. carpal tunnel exercises — tom-carpal-nicholson

Micah,

Please quit being so vague. Maybe I'm missing something here, but where do you want to go from here?

Do you want to bring down industrial capitalist civilization, or do you believe that this system is somehow sustainable if we become "enlightened"?

History has told us that the preeminent groups, those that have the power, will do what they can to maintain power. Today, this means these groups will abuse privacy-invading technologies at will.

No need to be vauge, tell me what you think. Do you want to?

1) Develop modern technologies within this technological culture that are less susceptible to these abuses?

2) Sing Kumbaya and live like a bunch of pacifists while these technologies are exploited by those who control them and other people?

3) Bring it all down?

Perhaps you just want a dialogue.

- Huey

— Huey

The first machine to ever connect to human skin is the watch. Back in the day, you would be informing us of the evil of watches. Perhaps you really are a religious bunch of weirdos and would like us to be like the Ahmish and grow beards and ride horses. Blah. Humans are more capable than just throwing away every new invention. We can adapt and use them with moderation. More articles about moderation rather than cancellation, please. Thanks. — Anonymous

Also, much of the same language and errors of reasoning were used in your article about the kindle…im just saying, it looks to me like you are too involved emotionally with your subject matter and therefore cannot make well reasoned and rational arguments… — Michael M.

It seems you’ve taken a very complex and dynamic concept (machine - human interface) and seriously oversimplified it in a very naive way using nice flowery, poetic language to drive your point home. ( a logical fallacy by the way). It seems your argument is this: because the frame through which the cyborg sees the world is one in which the mystery of existence has been programatically obscured. Thus, the human and the machine-human, cannot peacefully co-exist for long. First, I’m not even sure what your premise is stating, and your argument for it is pretty weak, but also, clearly your the conclusion doesnt even follow from such a premise. you offer a weak argument littered with euphemisms and logical fallacies…my friend. the machine- human machine interface has alwasy been a double edged sword ever since the time man has held a hammer in his hands…instead of resisting it we need to act more responsibly about it. Moreover i think its evident that you have not read much about the situation or its complexities… — Michael M.

adbusters turning conservative… *eg* — Anonymouse2

*sigh* Adbusters does so much of value. Then you come out with these silly, extremist attitudes that just make you look like crackpots. Cyborg is a loaded word. A very, very loaded word. Using it, intentionally, in this context and with this much mass behind it is not only disrespectful, but like PETA, counter-productive to your end goals. Plus it makes you look stupid when you rant about the evils of technology by posting on a website. Just saying. This neo-Luddite nonsense doesn’t serve you. You are trying to hold back a flood with a garden trowel. The only path forward is one of innovation. With progress and innovation, comes unanticipated social ills and sometimes worse evils. That’s merely a fact of life. The murder rate has gone up, since the invention of personal firearms. Any argument that entails ‘get rid of guns’ is non-functional. Period. It does not serve your cause. It is, by definition, short-sighted and empty liberal feel-good flailing. Any time your argument can be summed up as ‘if everybody just does good, all the time, the world will be a perfect place’ or any time it can be defeated with ‘what if I kept a gun, then I’d be the most powerful person on the planet’ you’ve wasted your time and the time of your supporters. I think the idea that screens muddy the world is an interesting one and one that deserves more investigation and research and experimentation. I think, as a personal choice, we have to commit ourselves to ‘keeping it real’. But expecting everyone in the world to do so, because you think it is good, and convincing them of the strength of your idea via anti-based propaganda is dishonest. And dishonorable. It is immoral. And, like the anti-drug ‘just say no’, DARE campaigns…any time you lie or spin to your audience, about anything, no matter how trivial you lose credibility. All you have to sell, at this point, it sounds like, is your credibility. I know it’s fun to be liberal and want to change the world. I’m not conservative, in case that sounds like a politics-based imprecation. But, policies have to make sense. They have to actually work. Railing about problems, while offering no realistic, practical, useful solutions is spume. Needless, useless, emotional venting. Like 13-year old friends drama. One little girl hates the other, nobody knows why, the dispute drags on for years, involves horrible gossip, slander, even possibly physical violence, but accomplishes nothing and has no realistic, rational goals. In effect, it becomes emotional masturbation. Most sane, adult people are too busy, too stressed out, and too occupied with life and practicalities to indulge in that for very long. Make a change. Make progress. Find a solution. Railing about the problem, particularly with childish, cheesy demagoguery does nothing useful toward the problem. Though it does get you a lot of attention, most of it is expressed in the form of a sigh. Or changing the channel. K. — Khall

it is not an egotrip and if people can't see this then what the writer is saying is proven. It is not about saying that this way of life is better than the other, is about taking control of where we are going as humans. To not let humanity's understanding of life be constrain by the new, but that it evolves towards the wisdom and curiosity of life. — ngonzálezcasiano

Dear Adbusters, I'm getting sick of these egotrips and holier-than-thou attitudes. Stop trying to impress angsty teens and start producing better material. — Lione

I tried to read this article without the prejudice against hippy Luddites that can creep into my opinions when I review an argument against technology. I think that we would have been better served by an argument against the brain numbing memes delivered by such devices. Neil Postman wrote about the same thing in relation to the printed word being destroyed by Television, in "Amusing Ourselves to Death". I think we should be creating the entertainment, philosophy, and protocols that run on these quasi-cyborg tools that enhance and broaden the human experience, instead on just giving up on the idiots using them to their detriment. We can master our own evolution in this way, and not take a side step to a dead end path, resolved to the artifice of the sacred and the spiritual, the old and the culturally and mentally conservative. At the same time we must not allow the Pop-culture Corporatists to get away with stealing our future. I'll be out in my organic garden getting my robot to clear away pests and check soil samples in the meanwhile. More CyberPunk, less Pop-punked. — jimzello

While I don't consider a person using a mp3 player or cell phone a cyborg I still don't like using them while walking down the street or driving my truck. I think they can distract from what is going on around me. If I have headphones on, I can't really hear what's going on around me. Now vehicles have bluetooth so an ipod or mp3 player can be played through the stereo system but I've seen people driving older cars actually using the ear buds while driving. — hogey

I honestly can't take this article seriously...what a joke. — Klass

how old is the oldest dude that writes for Adbusters? — Anonymous

i'm more of a cylon per se than a cyborg. — Anonymous

For me it's very simple: we are inevitably, sooner or later, going out there into space. There's a whole Galaxy waiting for us to be discovered and we will not achieve said exploration without the technology integrated into our being. What you refer to (Bluetooth, iPod, iPhone) are but crude tools of what's to come. Are we losing our humanity and becoming cyborgs? I don't think so. On the opposite, we're expanding who we are the same way the advent of past technologies, be it the hammer or the print, expanded who we were. Humanity is ever going forward, integrating the technology it creates and interacting with the world as it transforms it, and there's no going back. Remember, there's but one constant in our Universe: change. — Jean Chicoine

Given that Adbusters used Twitter to drive readers here with the clever phrase "Cyborgs: are you one?", I'm not sure if this is a genuine effort to awaken a hypothetical Neo from a perceived Matrix, an attempt to shame the reader (gotcha … SUCKER!), or an opportunity to let either hypocrisy or irony rule the day. — Anonymous

While I don't have a bluetooth headset or use an iPod device/functionality I do use my iPhone quite a bit. Do I really need to waste my time reading this while I am at home or can I give it the 2 second skim it deserved while I am headed off to something else? You can live in the past with your landline and desktop while the rest of the world gets shit done better and easier to make room for the things in life that matter more. — Anonymous