We Are Cyborgs
We Are Cyborgs
Long before I thought of myself as a cyborg, I was immersed in stories about robots, artificial intelligence, and technologically enhanced humans. Science fiction trained me early to take the future existence of robots and AI for granted. My first robot was probably Robbie, in “Forbidden Planet,” which was one of the earliest films I remember seeing - I would’ve been 7 or 8 years old at the time. From then on, I took the likely future existence of robots and AI for granted. And I had plenty of exposure after that - robots and AIs were common in science fiction and also in speculative nonfiction.
And then there was the cyborg.
Through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, cyborgs kept appearing in popular culture—from comic books to The Six Million Dollar Man, Robocop, the Borg, and the cyberpunk worlds of William Gibson.
Robots and their cousins, androids, are machines. Cyborgs, on the other hand, are living organisms integrated with technology.
A cyborg is a cybernetic organism. At its core, cybernetics is about feedback: systems that sense, respond, and adjust based on the results of their actions. Computers, biological organisms, and many networked systems rely heavily on such feedback loops. So when you move a mouse, the computer takes the input, updates the screen, and uses that new state to wait for your next action. Feedback loops in computers are fundamental for memory, stability, and computation.
In a cyborg, a biological organism combines with technological components linked through cybernetic feedback loops. This sort of thing is common in the 21st century, considering pacemakers, cochlear implants, neural prosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and robotic limbs with sensory feedback. In these systems, sensors detect conditions, information is processed, responses are adjusted dynamically, and the human-machine system becomes partly self-regulating.
In the early 1990s, as we were percolating FringeWare, Paco Nathan and I realized in conversation that we were cyborgs - we were enhanced by, or integrated with, technology. The technologies we were considering, our computers, were external but essential. We were using our computers to process information, and we adjusted our responses according to feedback from or through our computers. We had significant interactions that were mediated by digital technology: more and more of our conversations and our relationships were forming online. Our computers weren’t just tools; they became extensions of our memory, communication, and imagination.
Our world expanded. We could be anywhere and everywhere at once.
Maybe it was a stretch to think of ourselves as cyborgs at that point, but we weren’t alone. Around that time in cyberpunk science fiction, media theory, hacker culture and posthuman discourse the term “cyborg” was extended to include humans cognitively enhanced by computers and computer networks. (Some might argue that this is a case of using tools, which is below the bar for “cyborgization” - but regardless, we thought of ourselves as cyborgs.)
This was at a time when cyberpunk was being seen as, not just a subgenre of science fiction, but a potential way of life going forward, as more and more people were using computers and connecting to the Internet.
What felt like a provocative cyberpunk idea in the early 1990s has become ordinary life. From fictional cyborgs, we progressed to cognitive cyborgs - cognition enhanced by computers and networks. Then we added mobility: smartphones and wearables - it’s common to have sophisticated computers in our pockets and on our wrists, all networked globally through Internet access. And now we’re entering the era of AI-augmented cyborgs. Conversational AI and large language models are becoming another “voice in our heads,” a new cognitive partner that can advise, explain, challenge, and sometimes mislead us. Cyberpunk and other forms of science fiction or speculative fiction suggested potential futures that could align well with our present. So now what?
AI systems are emerging quickly, and I would argue that our technologies are outrunning our understanding by miles. We have yet to understand how to be cyborgs, what that means for humans as humans.
The question is no longer whether we will become cyborgs. In many ways, we already are. The challenge now is deciding what kind of cyborgs we want to be, and what kind of humanity we want to preserve, as our technologies become ever more deeply entwined with our lives.