Observe And Learn: I, Cyborg. Part Two (One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap For Machine)
Continued from Part 1.
Society has reached a stage where the technology it creates has surpassed the capacity of flesh to deal with it. Humanity is currently involved in a dangerous game that may destroy it. Ways must be found for flesh to cope with technology so that biological life on earth may continue to flourish without fear of being degraded down to degenerated monstrosity, if not perishing altogether.
Our options are simple. One is to disassemble modern society as we know it and go back to a pristine, organic way of life, where we will coexist with other organic life on a relatively non-technological, dis-industrialized framework.
This seems highly unlikely. Since society is heavily dependent on technology, with every facet of it wired in, a return to Walden’s nativism seems improbable in all practical terms. It may sound appealing and romantic, allusive to a cleansing of the human condition and the planet in general, but it is an ideology that doesn’t acknowledge basic axioms of life and reality.
Namely, it omits the fact that knowledge amassed never leaves; once inside it stays for keeps. Someone activates it somewhere down the line and brings it back to life. Whatever has been built and incorporated cannot be erased. Changed maybe, adjusted yes, even modified and recalibrated, but not deleted, decommissioned, and ousted. The human mind has expanded enough and seen too much of the world out there to settle back to living in caves, trees, farms or communities whose sole purpose is to be in harmony with the soil. These things are good in themselves and a perfectly sound choice for one to make. But they cannot contain and exemplify the whole of the human psyche. Not anymore, not after all we have seen.
Point is we can’t go back to non-technological life, not as a whole. The way forward seems to run in the other direction, via improving what we have, challenging what we know, and putting our insights to creative use.
At first look, taking into consideration the current situation, with technology being a giant part of the framework – and flesh so vulnerable to it – our course seems clear. It passes through a healthy and calibrated disentanglement-cum-reintegration of organic and technological life; the relation of these two paradigms needs to be reconfigured if damage is to be minimized if not eliminated altogether. Technology and biology may still interact, but they needn’t be in the same place at the same time. They’ll require two separate yet carefully interconnected habitats. The farther apart – in real or practical terms – the better.
It is hard to imagine this integrated division now. Humanity and technology are currently inseparable. Machines and gadgets of all sorts have found their way into our framework and are entrenching themselves deep. The organization and efficiency of the system depends on them. Knowledge is furthered by them. Health is addressed through them – even though they may be causing many of the problems in the first place. It’s a vicious dynamic – if it’s a circle it remains to be seen – where society and technology are meshed. Disentangling and reintegrating them seems unlikely – and as daunting as the obliteration of technology altogether, if not more. Destroying after all is easy. Reinventing is hard.
But reinvention is what we need to do if we are to survive our toxic trace. Society needs to reconfigure its relation to technology so that biology may survive it. It needs to reassess its standing so that it will promote technology’s advancement rather than cage it inside flesh’s limits.
Where does that leave the cyborg? How will technology be meshed with biology if such a barrier between the two exists? There seems to be no future for such an elaborately engineered entity.
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