Week 10: Games & Avatars

Do you agree that you are cyborgian in nature?

Cyborgs are considered as a half human and a half robot. I agree that humans are a cyborg in nature. This is because humans rely on something else rather than excepting the fact that they are not really capable of doing things naturally. For example, in figure 1, below:

Figure 1

In figure 1, it shows that the woman needs to wear her spectacles in order to see things. Without the spectacles, she would not be able to see things clearly. So, this is one of the evidence that humans are cyborgs in nature.

In figure 2, it shows that humans are wearing shoes to protect their feet from being dirty, hurt or infected by diseases.

Figure 2

What if human does not wear shoes for one whole day? Is it possible for them?

Another example is the use of technologies. Nowadays, the technologies are getting better and better.

With the use of technologies, humans tend to do their works easily. They become cyborgs because they are sort of wired to the technologies. Everywhere they go, they would bring these technologies around, such as their smartphones, tablets and also laptops.

In figure 3, it shows that humans need a vehicle to drive them to their destinations. They tend to feel comfortable with that situation. According to James (1996), the idea of us being cyborgs, a half-man, and a half-machine is when our capacities and capabilities are extended beyond our physical limitations.

Figure 3

Another evidence of humans is being cyborgs are they tend to create multiple selves of their identities through social networking or games. For example,

In Facebook or twitter, someone will make an account with a different personality of their selves. By doing so, they tend to have many friends and they communicate almost every day, even though they have not met each other face-to-face. This is because they tend to feel more convenient with the way they represent their selves in the social networking sites.

Another example of multiple identities is when humans interact with their family or friends. When talking to an elderly person, such as grandfather, father or mother, people tend to speak in a polite and respectful way. However, when people talk to someone who is younger than them, they tend to speak differently in order to fit in with the person they are talking to.

The other example of humans having a multiple identity is when they create an avatar of their selves in the games or social networking sites such as, The Sims.

In the virtual world, humans create their own avatar with their own desire. Humans tend to feel that they actually live in the game rather than the reality of their life. In The Sims, humans are able to feel free to do what they want. They can eat, sleep, take a shower, go to work, go to the mall, fall in love, make friends, and almost everything in life is also in the virtual world. As it is said, the virtual world is where they actually belong where they feel that they are free to do anything there.

In this modern era, humans tend to seek answers from Google rather than thinking using their brains for answers. Our dependence on the use of the technologies such as smartphones, laptops, tablets and also our cars shows that without them, we cannot perform our daily activities better. Therefore, these technologies serve as prosthetics, maintaining and reinforcing our physical bodies (Grenville, 2002).

In conclusion, humans are cyborgs whether they are conscious or unconscious. According to Clark (2004, p.3), “For we shall be cyborgs not in the merely superficial sense of combining flesh and wires but in the more profound sense of being human-technology symbionts: thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological cicuity.” For example, all the documents in the laptops, the pictures saved in the phone gallery, if all of those are gone, and humans will definitely feel the big lost inside their hearts.

Humans are wired with technologies, therefore they become cyborgs without even noticing.

References

Clark, A., (2004), Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the future of Human Intelligence, Oxford University Press, Inc., USA.

Grenville, B. (2002). The Uncanny: Experiments in cyborg culture. Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press.

James, J., (1996), Thinking in the future tense, Industrial and commercial training, 28(7), 28 – 32