num_pages: 568
description: Are you a cyborg? Is your neighbour? Do cyborgs have a gender? Will cyborgs live forever? What does cyborgism mean for the human future? These are only a few of the thought-provoking questions the authors in this handbook address.The Cyborg - short for cybernetic organism - is an entity that mixes the machinic and the oranic, for example a creature that is part human and part machine. Today's technology is transforming and maybe even transcending the human. People who have implanted pacemakers or attached prostheses are certainly cyborgs. Even the millions of people whose immune systems have been reprogrmmed to resist disease can be considered cyborgs. Cyborgs are everywhere, multiplying. And many people, cyborged or not, now live in cyborg societies where humans and machines exist symbiotically. The Cyborg Handbook is an initial look at cyborg society and at the range of cyborg technologies, from the restorative and normalizing to the reconfiguring, and enhancing. These technologies can restore some to health and they can prolong horrible deaths, but they can also remake humans into more effective killers. Cyborgs, good, bad, and indifferent, are with us.The handbook brings together key documents from the history of cyborgs as well as the best writing about them, including recent cyborg cultural theory. The contributions cover the role of space technology, war, medicine, and the imagination in the production of cyborgs. The appendix lists cyborg films, videos, stories, and books.Contributors include George Annas, Adele Clarke, Manfred Clynes, Philip K. Dick, Cynthia A. Fuchs, Katherine Hayles, Sandy Stone, and David Thomas.
language: English
title: The Cyborg Handbook
titlecomplete: The Cyborg Handbook
genres: Theory, Reference, Philosophy, Technology, Cyberpunk, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 72
publisher: Routledge