The Cyborg Handbook [Paperback]

This hefty tome is a real find for those who like a little science with their fiction. The basic premise is that in one way or another most of humanity is already a CYBORG. The definition is a bit broader than say Arnold in the Terminator and encompasses everything from fillings and eyeglasses to using a computer. I enjoyed the exploration of the CYBORG as a media icon. The technical discussions and NASA reports were a bit dry but do add to the overall credibility of the subject. This book is a real winner and anyone interested in the interaction of politics,philosophy and the human body will enjoy it.

I would not suggest this book for someone looking for a quick, easy answer to the world of cyborgs. There are papers here from dozens of authors, each talking about a wholly different aspect of the cyborg - some cover the idea that technology has already turned many of us into cyborgs, others that fetuses are cyborgs, some stick with the traditional notion of the cyborg as half-man half-machine, some examine the role of the cyborg in film. It takes all kinds. And, in sturdy academic practice, some of the authors even give gentle jabs to other papers in the book, noting flaws or the overlooking of some fine point. Most of the research draws from Donna Haraway's original research into cyborgs, but there are a few people that are trying to break away from her hegemonistic mold. For a very entertaining and much needed example of this, try to find the two or three digs at Donna Haraway's definition of cyborg.

This book is one of the most invaluable resources for anyone doing serious research into the idea of the cyborg. Though there is a great interview with Clynes, co-inventer of the term "cyborg," The Cyborg Handbook won't do for primary source material. The bibliography is wildly extensive, however, and the book functions as an excellent starting point for the researcher. For those who aren't afraid to work for it, but who have a more casual interest, this book can be both a starting and ending point.

Introduction

The Cyborg Handbook, a compendium of articles and interviews about prosthetics and the historical impact of the human/machine "cyborgs" that the book contends now roam our planet and solar system is a wonderful read for many reasons.

The primary thinker behind this avenue of educational effort is University of California, History of Consciousness Professor Donna Haraway. Her forward to the text, Cyborgs and Symbionts: Living Together in the New World Order, intends to further feminist thought, but rises above the boring, stereotypical dualities of oppressive stories such as female victim/male violator as her prose cannot be summed up by any one ontology. However this same escape from any particular system of knowledge, this attempt to transcend analysis and instead align her text with many diverse narratives, is also her weakness. This review will address both the positive, thought-provoking aspects of the book and, on the other hand, the failings of the book which are less specific in nature and more of a literal bend.

Body

In a broad sweep The Cyborg Handbook uses Haraway's analysis of cyborg narrative to relocate the "history of cyborgs" focusing on the field of medicine, the military and aerospace industries, the anti-racist struggles of Africa, anthropology, political processes and science-fiction.

The chapters on aerospace and military cyborgs are particularly intriguing. "Cyborgs" such as fighter pilot/autopilot, the robot character in the film Short-Circuit who "transcends" its programming to become a sentient, peace activist and many others are addressed. In an interview with Patricia Cowlings, the director of the Ames-NASA psychophysiology laboratory, ones learns that Cowlings has, with the help of one other investigator, practically conquered extraterrestrial motion-sickness, a problem that has plagued NASA since the beginning of its manned space flights program. The interview showcases what may be a surprise to many liberal readers; the US "shock and awe" industry is one of the most open-minded businesses in the world today. Cowlings solution to micro-gravity, motion sickness is one clear instance of this open mindedness: NASA had been searching for decades to cure their problem of motion sickness in their astronauts; they had primarily been exploring pharmaceutical research, but after many abject failures were ready to try anything, even including alternative therapies like acupuncture. In marched Doctor Patricia Cowlings with a background in "biofeedback." A less mainstream approach to a mainstream problem has never existed. Although she used scientific methodology to develop her research, her goal was unheard of at the time. She intended to make astronauts aware of there physiology in miniscule ways. She states that she can make a trainee aware of the exterior pulse of the pinky finger of the right hand. Of course the training is accomplished in a "cyborg" fashion where body signs including blood pressure, lung efficiency, pulses, intestinal movement and about 20 others are in a continually, logically varying circuit. By changing aspects of the circuit, Cowlings can, in five hours or less, drastically reduce potential astronauts predilection to micro-gravity, motion sickness.

One of the positive aspects of much of the content of cyborg narratives that go back to WWII is an often surprising use and combination of a wide ranging vocabulary and an inventiveness of probing. These attributes, which are especially noteworthy in the foreword to the text, have resulted in greater and greater manifestations of cyborg narrative at all levels of culture even including many massive, commercial texts, such as The Matrix and its sequels.

Overall, The Cyborg Handbook is a thought provoking read, however Haraway's text and the focus of the book remains a post-modern fairy tale that is not grounded in reality. Literally, the times we live in, as are the times in which anyone at any time has lived in, are "modern" times, not post-modern; post-modernity implies that we exist in the future rather than the present. Secondly, Haraway's use of the word "hybrid" to describe her cyborg is incorrect as "hybrid" signifies literal, physical procreation, not figurative "evolution." It is not true that all or even any of us are cyborg "hybrids" because we have not been bread into organisms that are part machine. The idea that we could be bread into cyborgs seems ridiculous as the line between living forms and inert objects within whose boundaries machines fall. Clearly, we are presently humans first and foremost and anything else, cyborgs for example, later and our organic basis seems likely to continue for some time. To Harawy's credit she never actually claims that cyborgs are not human beings but, she does claim, and makes quite a strong case incidentally, that her cyborg is itself a being that is not separable into live and dead or human and machine parts.

Haraway's fairy tale is a futile attempt to dismiss one of the most beautiful philosophical products that human beings have yet created, as what "comes next" is absolutely unknowable, we cannot be sure of anything even the

"inevitability" of death. The preceding development puts Haraway's cyborg work in an ironic light because it places her cyborg stories in the tradition of male-centric, death-drive culture, which is in stark contrast to her political aspirations.

Conclusion

Harawy's theory that a new species arrived in the post WWII, "New World Order" can only be applicable to where we find ourselves if prophecy were able, which it is not. Therefore, her argument is marginal. If cyborg academia founded on Haraway's "discovery" of a new species is brought up to date perhaps theorists may reconstruct her description of an assimilation between living being and machine into an exploration of the mysterious separation between life and technology however small, cosmic or poetic.