Cyborg

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There are many different types of technological advances that are in the arena of “self aware,” most notable being: the robot, the cyborg, and the hologram (hereafter simply alluded to as the grouping “cyborg”). These creations are often developed by humans, but like many children, develop in unique and unexpected ways once beyond the child stage, and begin to question their own natures. Spatially these are "created" to make the lives of humans, or humanoids, easier – often to work as slaves in menial positions that humans no longer wish to hold or to simply be a source of entertainment or service. It can best be described in a sense of coexistence is questioned:

If men and machines coexist in a natural continuum in which there are no gaps, quantum jumps, or insurmountable barriers preventing the assimilation of the one to the others they they also coexist in a moral continuum in which only relative but never absolute distinctions can be made between human and machine morality (Versenyi 248).

The problem then begs where agency should fall. Should the creator of the cyborg have more power and ability because of that creation, they have the ability to destroy. But with agency those creations attempt to sustain their own lives. There are innumerable dystopian science fiction texts that examine such a relationship – The Matrix, Meet The Robinsons, etc. - but very few that attempt to even examine a world where machines and humans co-exist in peace. Thus the nature of the machine is judged differently as if they are not ever to be seen as creatures with agency. The nature of the cyborg is as changing as that of humanity, though the AI (artificial intelligence) is often advanced in ways that humanity cannot be (super strength, etc.), though limited in others that perhaps some humans do excel at. Much like the viewpoint of colonizers; cyborgs exists heavily in the conceptual “Other” space. The Self is moving, slowly with the advent of globalization, to the concept of all humanity, and thus the binary opposite must find a new place to inhabit.

This figure is also fabricated, creating a sense of the unreal – or the Todorovian uncanny perhaps -- around them, allowing any sense of agency to be dropped as the cyborgs were created by another person. “The main trouble with cyborgs , of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism” (Haraway 2271), creating a sense of confused identity that the cyborgs are unable to claim. The fear around the cyborg figure is also highly apparent, possibly because the human fear of their own imperfection becomes apparent. The fear of invasion is perhaps one that drives humanity to be both enthralled by the cyborg figure and reject it in the same moment. The fear of the “Other” is apparent in every society, possibly because of the fear that the Other is stronger than the Self, and thus, in post colonial theory, the Other must be “erased” or changed so that the Other is more like the Self. In the case of the cyborg this is technically easily feasible as they can be programmed, but the fear that exists is that the programming may become faulty and be over written.

The nature of the cyborg becomes tangled with the nature of humanity as:

Microelectronics mediates the translations of labor into robotics and word processing; sex into genetic engineering and reproductive technologies; and mind into artificial intelligence and decision procedures (Haraway 2285).

The segregation of the cyborgs into different simplistic technological divides becomes simple, indeed, it could almost be said easier as more technology is made. Racially they are stigmatized because they look different, as the plethora of cyborgs seen in The Animatrix shorts “The Second Renaissance Part I and II” are use in an economic fashion, slaving for corporations to build more. These automaton-esque figures are easily seen as references to the problematized issues of factory work, sweat shops as the most economical form of capitalist business. Indeed, the historical aspects of the cyborgs is in reference is almost wholly economic; war exists in this world because the humans refused to work with the cyborgs:

Thus did Zero-One's troops advance outwards in every direction. And one after another, mankind surrendered its territories. So the leaders of men conceived of their most desperate strategy yet. A final solution: the destruction of the sky.

The destruction of the Earth becomes more important to the humans then allowing the cyborgs to chance to gain a sense of self. Interestingly, this is primarily where the fear of technology -- and the fear of the Othered Cyborg -- inevitably leads.

[edit] References

Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. 1985. 2269- 2299.

The Animatrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski. Perfs. Keanu Reeves, Julia Fletcher. DVD. Warner Bros. 2003.

Versenyi, Laszlo. “Can Robots be Moral?” Ethics. Vol. 84:3 (1974) 248-259.