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Cyborg Communities

The neuroscientist Manfred Clynes described cyborgs (cybernetic organisms, or organisms whose biological functions are enhanced by electronic mechanisms; also called borgs and sometimes posthumans) as representing a synergy between the human and the machine such that operation of the machine does not require conscious thought or effort on the part of the human.

Humanistic intelligence (HI) theory has made the cyborg concept more precise. HI is defined as intelligence that arises from a human being in a feedback loop of computational processes in which a human and a computer are inextricably intertwined. This inextricability usually requires the existence of some form of body-borne computer. When a body-borne computer functions in a successful embodiment of HI, the computer uses the human's mind and body as one of its peripherals, just as the human uses the computer as a peripheral. This reciprocal relationship, where each uses the other in its feedback loop, is necessary for a successful implementation of HI. This theory is in sharp contrast to many goals of artificial intelligence research, which aims to have the computer replace or emulate human intelligence.

Glogs

Early cyborg communities of the late 1970s and early 1980s were constructed to explore the creation of visual art within a computer-mediated reality. Then, with the advent of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, cyborg logs (known as glogs) became shared spaces. With the World Wide Web came the Wearable Wireless Webcam, which made an online video record of daily activities. Joi Ito's Moblog is a variation on that theme; Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs examines how computer technology enhances the power not just of the individual human but of collective groups, and how this capacity can be used for both good and ill.

Cyborg communities typically evolve around a glog and often entail several cyborgs sending live video to one another, as well as to the rest of the world, and receiving input from non-cyborg participants, in real time, as well.

Glogs take many of the concepts of the Internet beyond the confines of the desktop. Wearable computermediated reality (such as digital eyeglasses) also blur the boundary between cyberspace and the real world. But the most profound effect is probably that of decentralized personhood, as the site of one's persona is no longer limited to one's physical body.

Decentralized Personhood, “Sousveillance,” and Cyborg Law

The concept of an ambiguous and fragmented identity is not new; corporations have for many years enjoyed the rights and benefits conferred by personhood without having all the accountability associated with a single individual. Online communities now make similar constructs available to the individual. Glogs also capture the ideas of inverse surveillance (or “sousveillance,” from French sous, meaning “from below” and veiller, meaning “to watch”).

The ambiguous identity of the cyborg body has moved the world away from the modernist ideal of universally agreed-upon global objective reality to a postmodernist vision of fragmented, indeterminate, subjective, collective individualism. But its weakness is its reliance upon centralized wireless infrastructure, which makes it vulnerable to a postcyborg model of authoritarian, dictated, and centralized control. Only after a recent incident in which a cyborg's wearable computer was ripped from his body during an airport search (despite documentation explaining its purpose), resulting in harm both to the individual and his electronic implantations, has cyborg law started to develop. It raises many ethical issues, such as the damage (both physical and psychological, and to both human and electronic components) that may result when unplugging a cyborg, and how to bring the perpetrators of the unplugging to justice. (Is it a crime against a person or against a machine?) Other problems may arise when essential services are terminated, or threats of termination are encountered, as explored by science fiction writer John Varley (who coined the term “sidekick” to describe a wearable computing apparatus). Moreover, until most humans are cyborgs, non-cyborgs may feel threatened by both the personal capabilities of cyborgs and the privacy-threatening ability of cyborgs to transmit their sights and sounds over the Internet. The future of cyborg communities may rest upon the development of independent indestructible wireless peer-to-peer networks that have the unstoppable nature promised by the early Internet. For example, it is now possible using the Ouijava programming language to create group-created computer programs: a true collective consciousness. Such infrastructure might give rise to a past-cyborg (post-postcyborg) age.

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