Our future: an interview with a cyborg

Source: Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas original article

on how we should change in order to reach our maximum potential.

The word “cyborg” is familiar to every science fiction buff, but Neil Harbisson and Muna Ribas, a couple of “cyborg activists” from Catalonia, claim that they were never interested in the literary component.

Active and creative personalities, they try to return the term to its original, “scientific” meaning - associated with the idea of ​​conquering an alien space and overcoming innate limitations - so that through technology it becomes closer to nature

"Way Up" for Humanity

In 1960, Manfred E. Kleins and Nathan S. Klin published an article entitled “Cyborgs and Cosmos,” which pointed out the importance of techno-evolution, which would make it possible not only to explore space, but also to live there like a fish in water. Cyborg, as a combination of KIBernetic and ORGANIC, is able to duplicate the skills of other living organisms, their organs, channels of perception in order to go beyond the biological framework, rather than transform the alien environment for themselves. Quoting the original article, “the cyborg deliberately adds additional external components to itself, expanding the range of adaptation of its own systems to the new environment.”

This very concept is promoted by Harbisson and Ribas, integrating the advanced achievements of science into executable performances.

Neil, famous for the “antenna” and the title “first officially recognized cyborg”, was born color blind, but now he can recognize colors through an implant that converts color into vibration. This happened a long time ago, in 2003, when he worked with an IT specialist Adam Montadon at the Darington College of Art (England). Inspired by the way dolphins communicate using electromagnetic waves ( translator's note: probably a journalist’s mistake. Dolphin’s language is based on the position of the body in space and ultrasonic signals ), Neil created for himself a way to “hear” color, receiving not only a kinesthetic sensory channel, but also a completely unusual “look” at the environment.

In approximately the same way, Muna Ribas made her performances as a dancer and performance artist more expressive with an implant embedded in her elbow. This seismic sensor allows the girl to smell earthquakes, wherever she is. Merging with a hitherto unknown feeling, Muna came up with the dance “Wait for the earth to shudder”, in which she moves in accordance with the power and duration of the earthquake that she felt at the time of the show.
Together with Harbisson, Ribas created the Cyborg Foundation , a non-profit organization , and launched the Cyborg Nest online store , where you can buy a personal implant and implant it in the body of a piercer.

Using these initiatives, Harbisson and Ribas want to make cyborgization more mundane and affordable.

“We get a lot of emails from teenagers who want to become cyborgs and rebuild their bodies,” Ribas says. “They are ready to experience the world not only with the usual methods.”


Source: original article

Inevitable change

While Harbisson believes that certain steps should now be taken to popularize the topic, Ribas, by contrast, is confident that cyborgization is inevitable in the future anyway.

“Technology will be in people's bodies, not just as a tool, but as part of their being,” she says.

At the moment, the main problem is the ethics of the process. According to Neal, the medical professional community does not accept cyborg surgery for bioethical reasons, especially after realizing that the procedure for introducing devices is much simpler than it seemed. But even if you find a surgeon who agrees to undergo an operation, you can hardly count on a warm welcome in society after you change.

“Many groups of people see us as a threat, considering Augmentation a loss of humanity. And there is no way to get rid of such remnants, ”Harbisson says.

The position of the duet in this matter is very specific and deliberate. They are convinced that the use of technology solely as a tool not only distances us from nature, but also from each other. “Let's say mobile phones. Everywhere there are people who have buried themselves on the screen and are walking along the street without seeing or hearing anything. If this is the gap between individuals, then it’s easy to figure out how big the gap is between the world and society, ”Harbisson explains.

In his opinion, "technology is too distracting from what is happening," but "if we ourselves become technology, we can again focus on what's around us."

In other words, Harbisson and Ribas are trying to breathe new life into the slogan of Klin and Kleins that "cyborg is a step forward." In early September, they traveled to Brazil to collaborate with Mesa & Cadeira, an agency forming specialist teams to solve specific problems. This time, the guys had to work together with a team of 15 professionals, among whom were an engineer, dentist and dancer, for six days.

The result was a dental implant called WeTooth, equipped with a radio module for receiving and transmitting morse code. During a performance in São Paulo, the couple sat back to back at the table, but each of them could find out that he sees the other, receiving messages through the vibration of the implant, like elephants that talk over long distances, stomping their feet on the ground.

The expansion of perception will lead to the development of cognition

As Harbisson said during a speech at TED in 2012 , “everyone will want to improve their own senses if they find the courage to admit how limited our capabilities are compared to some animals.” “Sharks can detect electromagnetic fields,” Neil recalls. “Dolphins hear through bones, bats have echolocation. Becoming a cyborg, we will get a chance to “look” at the world through the “eyes” of other species. ”

Cyborg activists believe that in this way our understanding of the world will become more "natural." When the conversation about WeTooth started again, Harbisson said that the implant will be modernized for global connectivity. “We are going to the transhuman, ” he laughs. “But by the way, we have always been on this road since the time of the first protocell.”


Source: original article

Of course, the desire for progress through the modification of the body and senses is commendable, but one should not forget about the harm to the environment. “Many of our methods for nature are not very pleasant,” Harbisson sighs.

For example, in his opinion, there is no need for electric lighting if you see in the dark. “In order not to use lighting equipment everywhere, it would be much smarter to transform yourself, and thus change not only yourself, but also the surroundings, and the entire planet.”

Many dystopias, such as Aldous Huxley's book “On Brave New World” (1932), claimed that technology not just harmful, but threaten the very essence of our species, describing the classic confrontation "culture-naturalness". The same Huxley, using an advanced version of the archetype“Noble savage” , he painted pictures of a terrible future, where “civilized” people are not only incredibly divided by casting, but also completely divorced from reality by mass entertainment and the constant use of the drug “catfish”.

The manner of Harbisson and Ribas in promoting the principle of "back to nature" may seem somewhat similar, but they do not at all call for the destruction of all mechanisms, becoming some kind of "neoluddites." Their desire is only to “fill technologicalization with meaning”, as well as to learn to recognize what is “real” and what is not, in an increasingly “digitized” environment.

To the question “are they interested in using virtual reality in projects or presentations”, the guys answered that they would prefer to “complement” reality ( AR, augmented reality), using HoloLens , getting, as they call it, “Real Reality”. “There are technologies, like my antenna or Moon’s seismic sensor, that allow you to sense phenomena that objectively exist, but are inaccessible to an“ ordinary ”person,” Neal gives an example.

And if there is a choice between “virtual” and “upgrade”, they will undoubtedly choose the second. “By adding layers to the environment or vice versa by removing, you change the experienced experience depending on the context, and virtuality, unlike augmented reality, isolates the context from the user, we don’t like this,” says Harbisson, “BP is not very effective at all, but if there are no other options, then you can use it. "

What's next?

And while Neil Harbisson and Muna Ribas, as mentioned above, are not interested in science fiction, using real scientific research as their base, the relevance of their work has grown not least due to cyborg heroes of science fiction stories of the past few decades. These characters have gone in literature from the first mention in Martin Cydin’s Cyborg novel in 1972 to Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto , which summarized many important thoughts on philosophy and sociology on this subject in one piece. And a little later, things like Statrek, Star Wars, or the Gibson trilogy Cyberspace showed us that being a cyborg is also “cool.”

In order to know and understand the world around us, people throughout their history have created and disseminated a countless amount of myths and legends; Considering this fact, I think that it is worth counting from the point of occurrence of the meanings embedded in the term “cyborg” by science fiction, the next era in which to be a cyborg is “normal”.

At the Human by Design conference , organized by Deus Ex: Mankind Divided developers on August 3, Harbisson finally got a chance to get acquainted not only with the desire to equip cyborgs with a new ethic, but also with an attempt to change their perception through video games and media publications. Hopefully, the whole huge potential of “cyborgization” will finally become apparent to the world, thanks to the work of ardent adherents of science fiction and the creativity of people like Muna and Neil.