Thursday, September 18, 2008

Cyborgs - Survival through Technology

Cybernetic Organisms is the full name for cyborgs. These are organisms that are altered or enhanced by technology. A cyborg does not necessarily have to be human. Bunnie Rabbot for example, is a cybernetic bunny from the cartoon Sonic the Hedgehog animated series and comic books whose body was altered by Dr. Robotnik before being saved by Sonic. Cyborgs maintain some of their biological functioning unless it is replaced. Cyborgs can be change in numerous and various ways. Some could go as far as the whole body like Alex Murphy, who had his brain and face implanted into a robot after being killed and became Robocop. Other cyborgs you can’t really even tell if they are cyborg or not, like Luke Skywalker after getting his hand severed off by Darth Vadar’s light saber or Tony Starks after having a fatal injury required to have a magnet built into his chest to keep the shrapnel from getting to his heart and ultimately killing him.

Not to be mixed up with the term android or robot, cyborgs are different do to the fact that mixed within their makings is actual living cells, muscle or tissue, making them actually living beings. Androids and robots are artificially constructed and do not have the same biological construction as cyborgs. Although android are made to mimic the appearance of a human or animals, cyborgs can actually be human or animals, just altered. For example, we could look at some films and classify the difference between cyborgs, android, and robots. One movie, that you can easily notice all three as different is Star Wars. C3PO is an android, while R2D2 is a robot, and Darth Vadar is a cyborg. See the difference?

I could not be extremely frightened by the future of Cyborgs, because for the most part, some things that are artificially made could help the future survive, and some of them are completely useless of the sort. The world already conducts surgery now, from breasts to replacement joints. How much more artificial can we get? The only the man-kind would do is embrace the new technology and find ways to reverse their creation inevitably making more capital both ways.

Many People have already embraced the age of technology including me. I utilize various technology everyday without noticing half of it. Soon enough we all accept it, because we have to conform to the time that we live in today. Technology is the future and utilizing technology to your advantage would make you unseemly rich. Thus the invention upgrades from house phones to cell phone, headsets to blue-tooth, from analog to digital cable, candles to light bulbs. Some people do not realize how much technology they have been conformed to using, due to the state that some of this technology could possibly save your life and that it has been normalized in today’s society. Most importantly, this is a quote from my favorite movie The Island, “Many People will do anything to survive.” So give a man the option of having artificial mechanical legs to run again, and even faster than before, or be paralyzed for the rest of his life. I’m fairly certain that he would take the artificial mechanical legs or at least I would.

I would like to think as mankind is just nearing the era of cyborgs. We want to survive, make life easier, and still be of the norm. So I could say that if we are not there, we are extremely close. Cyborg humans are not too different from humans, in the same sense that we all have that same will to survive, and will do anything to accomplish that common goal.