Doing what your body can’t
The fantasy of upgrading Homo sapiens with sweet gadgets isn’t exactly new. At some point in time, humans started using inanimate objects for their own purposes. Either a task was impossible to accomplish using just their bodies, or tools were found to do the job more efficiently.
A rock isn’t exactly a part of your body, but if you hit somebody with it, it kind of acts like a super-fist. Similarly, if you sharpen it, it will do all kinds of things your hands just won’t.
Their new tool-making habit provided one of our hominid ancestors with their name: Homo habilis, or “the handyman.” They lived between 2.3 and 1.5 million years ago and used tools for butchering and skinning animals.
However, we are not the only lineage of species praised for outsmarting the restrictions of our bodies. Various animals are known to do so too. Many of the great apes use sticks to fish for termites or ants, and materials such as leaves or moss as sponges to drink from hard-to-reach sources. Sea otters use stones to crack open shellfish while floating on their backs without a care in the world.
The New Caledonian crow is the only non-primate species known to manufacture their own utensils. From twigs to metal wires, they alter objects in such a way that they can be used to wiggle food out of its hiding place. Rather than just using a tool to get food, New Caledonian crows are able to build new tools out of multiple parts, called compound tools. This skill requires cognitive abilities previously thought to be unique to primates.
You get the gist. While most animals are entirely dependent on whatever their mommas gave them, some have escaped these evolution-induced restrictions by thinking outside the box.
Inventions, inventions, inventions
We have come a pretty long way from cutting up jackals with a sharp stone. Throughout history, humans have found ways to do things that were previously inconceivable.
Some honorable mentions:
- We are able to produce enough heat (physically or chemically) to alter things found in nature into very practical or delicious objects;
- We are able to float on water and use the wind as a means of going places;
- We are able to move things that could never be moved with muscle power (be it human or animal);
- We are able to talk to somebody who is not within earshot;
- And, before I forget: we are able to fly — to space.
Like the New Caledonian crow, we use tools on other tools (on tools on tools) in an endless cycle of more complex production. This process has led to the likes of electric light, radio and TV, and the combustion engine.
And to our first adventures into the realm of computing.
Our leap into the digital era has changed the game forever. The ability to translate information into ones and zeros and process it incredibly fast didn’t just help to invent and use tools in a smarter way. It enabled us to manufacture tools that can do many different things at once, and ultimately, do our work for us.
Cyborg territory
If it weren’t for those ones and zeros, you wouldn’t be a cyborg. And you are.
The term cyborg is a contraction of “cybernetic organism” and was introduced by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in an essay called Cyborgs and Space in 1960. The he difficulty with space travel, they argued, is that we cannot take our livable Earth environment with us . Just like a fish cannot live out of the water, we cannot live outside of our atmosphere.
If, however, a particularly intelligent and resourceful fish could be found, who had studied a good deal of biochemistry and physiology, was a master engineer and cyberneticist, and had excellent lab facilities available to him, this fish could conceivably have the ability to design an instrument which would allow him to live on land and breathe air quite readily.
Technology enables things that would never be possible under normal circumstances, the two argued. By introducing smart technology into the human body, you might create a superhuman who breathes Martian air.
This isn’t as sci-fi-ey as it sounds. Pacemakers or hearing aids technically make the human using them a cyborg. Other examples are brain implants to treat colorblindness, certain types of prosthetic limbs, and automated insulin pumps used to treat Type 1 diabetes.
While such machines rely on complex technologies, they are designed to do just one thing — to better your hearing or enable you to get around more freely.
Like a sharp stone, these inventions are used as a means to a specific goal.
Which brings me to why you are a cyborg.
All it took was the introduction of one small component into your life: your phone.
For a human being who was previously able to only remember a handful of facts, who couldn’t predict the weather, and who got lost so easily, all of these tasks are now a piece of cake. Why not add talking to people on the other side of the planet or knowing your exact heart rate to that list?
Aren’t you already the superhuman Clynes and Kline were talking about, but wielding gear that is more sophisticated than they imagined? Rather than having just one function, our phones perform many tasks on demand and simultaneously that it is debatable where your thinking starts and your phone takes over.
Even if I don’t quite remember how many centimeters an inch is, I feel like I’m in possession of this knowledge. What is the difference between trying really hard to think of something, and googling it? Between having something in your mind, or having it in your hand?
Granted, our phones aren’t built into our bodies. But when was the last time your phone wasn’t in your immediate reach? Why do you worry when your battery is about to die, or grow frustrated when your wi-fi isn’t working?
Checking our dependency
As we rely on our bodies to be able to move, talk, and feel, we rely on our phones to help us remember, find our way, connect us to others, and find the answers to our questions.
Our phones are no longer tools we use for one specific function; rather, they are multi-purpose appliances that look after a considerable part of our cognitive activity. Even if they are not a part of our physical bodies, they have become inextricably ingrained in the way we think and function. In this capacity, our phones help us organize and interpret the way we see the world.
Like the aforementioned insulin pump, integrating technology into our lives sets a new (and hopefully better) standard for what it means to be human. But this is not without its risks.
By contemplating our cyborg status, we are forced to think seriously about the degree of machine we are willing to become. If there is a fine line between using a spell checker and having AI write your text for you, where is it? And what happens when we cross it?
For the first time, we have created tools that not only make our lives easier, but are able to outsmart us. We should be aware of what there is to be lost: our agency and our ability to make decisions for ourselves.
Cyborgs are capable of amazing feats so long as we, humans, can take credit for it.