Talk:Cyborg/Archive 1

message: The article currently says "clothing can be seen as a cybernetic modification of skin". I don't think this statement is true for any definition of cybernetic that I've seen. The control and communication processes that occur within all animals and some machines are cybernetic. There is nothing cybernetic going on within an inanimate piece of fabric. The only way I can see this statement making any sense at all is if you are talking about a hypothetical fabric which incorporates some type of computational process that is able to communicate with the human in some way (there are numerous examples of this in SF).
--Srainwater 06:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor Issues 

message: masterchief isn't a cyborg, he is just a guy in a suit, and terminator is completely a robot, only covered with organic stuff because of space-travel limitations (that's why he came "now" naked)
And AFAIK droids are simple robots, not cyborgs.
:The details at Master Chief (Halo)#Character history seem to pretty clearly fit just about any definition of "cyborg" to me: having "Advanced carbide ceramic material grafted onto bones to increase durability" is a lot more than being "a guy in a suit". 
:T-800 contains similarly persuasive clues that at least that model of Terminator used genuine living skin; I'd say making flesh and skin "work" around an artificial skeleton is pretty much mixing organic and artificial (although from the other direction, as it were, compared to most examples). This one's more open to interpretation, I guess, but it seems to me that it's more than "covered with" "organic stuff", it's a pretty intrinsic part of him.
:As for droids, I can't see to what you're referring; if you mean the listing of "Admiral Screed", note that "Droids" is the name of the cartoon, in which s/he was presumably a character. - IMSoP 19:37, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  some of the guys in the examples aren't cyborgs 

message: I believe I've heard of people talking about cities as if they were cyborgs.
People like William Gibson.
William Gibson credits "City Comes a Walkin" as Proto-Cyberpunk, which features the city of San Fransisco, in the person of "City."
I think there should be some treatment of this theme in the article: A cybernetic organism is not necessarily a single person.
LionKimbro
I'm going to continue working on this. I think we'll have a separate section on "the city as cyborg," or "Cyborg beyond the human form."
It can include the links to William Gibson's observation, reference to City Comes a Walkin', and point to Natural Born Cyborgs.
I believe a segregation of the two trends (human-form, and city-form cyborg) is warranted.
:Hey; this gets even freakier (and perhaps more valid) if one embraces the Gaea hypothesis ... :) E Pluribus Anthony 19:18, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The City and Civilization as Cyborg 

message: Gary, I just edited that awkward phrase...  It reads to the effect of what you suggested...  I read the article myself and found myself feeling the same way.
Michael 14:54, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gary- 

message: I think that this is an issue that needs to be resolved, yet it seems that it won't be for a while. Go over to android, and you come across the same debate, and it needs to be resolved there as well. The main problem is one of interpretation, and both the android Terminator advocates, and the cyborg terminator advocates both have valid points of view, but the issue needs to be adressed with other "robots" as well, such as the main character of bi-centennial man, data, and C3PO. Data sticks out in my mind, as apparently he was originally meant to be organic, and make no mistake, the issue at hand is of "organicness". Aside from that he strikes me as the penultimate template for an android, as externally, he resembles a person, and he has a capacity for learning, intelligence, ethics, and a limited capacity (before the movies anyway) for emotion. He is treated as an equal, yet does not forget his role on the ship, and he is more advanced than a human in some ways (strength, information processing, etc). Personally, these things seem more important than the organic nature of him or any other "robot". Anyway, this is just my personal opinion.
Ona different note, the bulk of this page needs to be transferred to some other page or space, and a new talk page created, citing the most relevant points. First and foremost the Terminator issue.
Dessydes
It's even more complicated.  Blade runner has introduced the term "replicant" to describe what Karel Capek would have called a robot (human like beings made from human parts grown in vats or tubes and then assembled in a factory) and what later science fiction authors of the 50s and 60s came to call androids, reserving the name robot for mechanical men.  Worse still, Star Wars as introduced the term "droids" to describe both mechanical men (which some would call androids) and robots who do not have human shape like R2D2.   All of these creations are artificial intelligences, that is AIs like HAL in 2001.  Or are they? In addition there is the question of the Art of the author in creating a word, a character, or a universe.  Fans may want all the details filled in, but this kills Art off completely in the eyes of many authors (some film directors included) who leave the nature of things imprecise and vague, on purpose.  When considering terms literary warrant, that is usage in textual science fiction has to be considered as well as the science fiction in sequential art like movies, TV series, comics. Right now, the inclusion of the Terminator as a cyborg only takes one type of warrant in one particular movie into account.  --AlainV 23:16, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminator Issue 

message: Much as I enjoy making fun of him, I avoid the temptation to vandalize Wiki articles. Is this a joke or what? 
As for the general question of "who qualifies as a cyborg?" that's a toughie. I would define a cyborg as anyone who has a major organ replaced with a microprocessor-controlled device OR has new machinery grafted onto him; I am also biased towards thinking a "proper" cyborg would not be suffering any limitations due to the device. A pirate with a peg leg isn't a cyborg, he's just an amputee with a cheap prosthetic. The Iraq war amputees with the titanium legs, they're still amputees, I wouldn't quite call them cyborgs. The examples linked in the article with the thought-controlled limbs, that's a "proper" cyborg. To refer to scifi examples, someone like a Geordi from Star Trek, he's got cybernetic eyes. Picard has an artificial heart, thus making him technically a cyborg. The Six Million Dollar man, cyborg. Ash from Evil Dead, he's just replaced a hand with a chainsaw, not a cyborg. 
Gmuir 15:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rush Limbaugh