The Evolution of Cyborg Consciousness

Charles D. LaughlinInternational Consciousness Research Laboratories

and Carleton UniversityDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology

Ottawa K15 5B6 Canadaclaughli@ccs.carleton.ca

Space travel challenges mankindnot only technologically but also spiritually, in that it invites

man to take an active part in his own biological evolution.— Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline (1960)

In an era filled with wondrous and frightening things,the age of space for example, and the impending take-over

by the computer and other machines, another developmentis taking place with little or no notice by the average person,

unless he or she happens to be one of the new developments. In our midst,and growing steadily in numbers, is the latest evolutionary

step in man, sometimes called by the odd name of "cyborg."— D.S. Halacy(1965)

AbstractInspired by Donna Haraway's essay, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," numerous

"cyborg" studies in anthropology, sociology, history and literary criticism havelooked at the relationship between humans and technology. A problem with manyof these studies is that they use the term "cyborg" metaphorically and fuzzily withoutan appreciation of the history of cybernetics. This paper will critique both theprofound insights and non-trivial distortions engendered by the cyborg polemic. Aneuroanthropological model of human technics is presented that allows a scientificallyuseful discrimination to be made between cyborg and non-cyborg (i.e., robot,android, AI, etc.) technologies. Technology is seen as a nonlinear, bidirectionalprocess of penetration in which the body is physically extended outward into theworld and the world is physically interjected inward into the body. Four stages of theevolution of the cyborg are defined. Grounded extrapolations are made about thefuture development of cyborg consciousness and its implications for culture andextraterrestrial anthropology.

IntroductionOver a decade ago, Do ina Haraway published a qerminal paper entitled "A

Manifesto for Cyborgs" in the Socialist Review (H.iraway 1985; reproduced inHaraway 1991). Hers was a social feminist essay that used the concept of the cyborg(short for "cybernetic organism," or integration of living organism with machine) ina metaphorical way which was theoretically insightful and which inspired a number

Anthropology of Consciousness 8(4):144-159. Gipyright © 1997 American Anthropological Association144

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of critical writings that have become known collectively as "cyborg anthropology."Whereas the Haraway piece is brilliant and thoughtful, many of the papers

written subsequently are undisciplined and distorted applications of the cyborgconcept in the interests of so-called postmodern criticism. For instance, in an essaypresented by Gary Downey, Joseph Dumit and Sarah Williams at the 1992 meetingsof the American Anthropological Association, cyborg anthropology is linked tocultural studies, eco-feminism and postmodernism, all of which are essentially anti-empirical and anti-structuralist polemics, and are driven by various political ideologiesand social concerns (Downey, Dumit and Williams 1995). As a consequence, andunlike the work of Haraway herself, many of these authors use these various politicalagendas as an excuse for not "doing their homework" in terms of the logicaldevelopment of cyborg theory and any accurate reflection of the history of ideas fromwhich the notion of the cyborg originally gained its descriptive and explanatorypower (see Alaimo 1994, Mason 1995, Pickering 1995, Schroeder 1994).

The present paper is intended as a corrective to this overly metaphorical use ofthe notion of cyborg. The paper will present a model of the nature of the cyborgprocess from a biogenetic structural point of view which will allow us better tounderstand future developments in the ongoing evolution of cyborg consciousness.

Cyborg as MetaphorThe current cyborg fad in anthropology and related disciplines was foreshadowed

by Haraway when she combined the concept of cyborg with cultural criticism inorder to produce an amalgamation of metaphor and analysis in the service of a betterunderstanding of life in technocratic society. For example, she sees the cyborg as "akind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self inwhich we are all implicated (Haraway 1985). The cyborg is our nature, as well asbeing the origin and sustenance of our politics (ibid:66). Haraway's cyborg thusstands for the entire course of human technics throughout the ages, and implies itspossibilities for the future. And I believe that from a certain point of view, she is right.Genus Homo has been relying upon at least partially technical patterns of adaptationfor at least the last 3-plus million years, so it really is no news that it is indeed ournature to be technological.

But in applying the cyborg concept in this way, Haraway alienated the conceptfrom its more precise logical, contextual and theoretical moorings, and cast it adriftinto the sea of contemporary ethnological rhetoric in which the logic of explanationis weak at best, and in which the thirst for exciting and controversial fads isapparently unquenchable. The cyborg is rapidly coming to represent virtually everytechno-cultural phenomenon no matter how distant from the original meaning ofthe concept: e.g., people on Prozac are cyborgs, people wearing eyeglasses are cyborgs,people viewing other people on television destroying buildings with smart bombs arecyborgs. The term is now being used to characterize modern reproductive technologies(by extension, perhaps men practicing safe-sex become condom cyborgs), thesociopolitical implications of the Internet, the entire course of techno-economicdevelopment since the Second World War, and so on.

Please do not misunderstand me. Metaphors are inherent in human experience,and fundamental to all systems of knowledge. And it is true that metaphors are

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indispensable in the unfolding of scientific understanding. When we speak of societyhaving a "structure," we are borrowing a concept derived from physiology andapplying it by analogy to patterns we perceive in social organization. Or when wespeak of "black holes," we are projecting a visual phenomenon onto a theoreticalentity that we could not possibly see with our naked eyes.

But by its very nature, metaphorical thinking depends upon fuzzifying themeaning of concepts and images so that associations may flow "laterally" amongpatterns of similarity, and bring together in our thought previously unrelatedphenomena. This is the up-side of the use of metaphors, for without the fuzziness ofmetaphor, poetical comprehension would be incapable of encoding andcommunicating our deepest intuitive insights.

The down-side of metaphorical thinking is there is a concomitant loss ofexplanatory power. The process of explaining requires logical focus and precision ofidentification, and cannot work in a field of fuzzy conceptual boundaries. Forexample, as Bargatzky (1984) has amply demonstrated, the anthropological use ofthe concept of "adaptation" is usually weak when used as explanation because it isused outside the appropriate context of explicit biological theory, and because themeanings associated with the term are frequently implicit, imprecise and fuzzy.

And so it is with the concept of cyborg as it is generally used by the "cyborganthropology" cohort (e.g., see Gray's 1993 confounding of the terms automaton,robot, android, waldo and the like with cyborg). The notion has been uncriticallylifted from its original theoretical frame and applied as a symbol for certain aspectsof culture. Of course there is nothing new in the use of machine metaphors for humannature, or of human metaphors applied to machines, come to that. Theanthropomorphizing of machines has been with us for centuries (Rollin 1979,Warrick 1980:113), while the man-as-machine association has been with us at leastsince the dawn of the industrial revolution (see e.g., Halacy 1965:57-59). In fact thetendency to apply the most cybernetically complex system of the day as a metaphorfor the human brain and consciousness seems all but irresistible. When the clock wasthe most complex information processing system available, the human brain wasthought "to work something like a clock." With the development of the telephone,the brain was seen as working more or less like a switchboard. And when computerscame along—well, we are all familiar with contemporary computer-related metaphorsfor the brain and its functions. It therefore comes as no surprise to find machinemetaphors used in fiction to represent either Utopian (Commander Data with his"positronic" brain in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation) or dystopian("Terminator") visions of the jinn of technology.

Mind you, such metaphors can be very revealing, especially when they areuncritically applied. They can expose unconscious operations in the minds andcultures of the writers. For instance, most of the people writing about cyborg matterstoday are products of Euroamerican culture which is imbued with a tenacious mind-body dualism. There are things physical and other things mental, and the relationsbetween the two categories of things are problematic. Our sciences reflect thisontological and epistemological distinction as they are split into the physical (or"hard") sciences and the life ("soft," social and behavioral) sciences. As we all know,even anthropology is divided into physical anthropology and sociocultural

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anthropology.The cyborg polemic reflects this cultural distinction as well. We find the naive

notion that the mind (or consciousness) can somehow be removed from the bodywhile leaving the mind intact. For example, we find people suggesting in allseriousness that human consciousness may eventually be "downloaded" (as if it weresoftware) into a computer.1 During most of the history of cyborg imagery in sciencefiction, the brain-nvmetal-body motif predominates, as though the nervous systemwere limited to the brain, and the brain is distinct from the body, when in fact thenervous system permeates our entire body.2

The History of the Cyborg ConceptThe concept of the cyborg was derived from the field of cybernetics. Cybernetics,

a field of research and theory first defined by Norbert Wiener in 1948 (1962:11-12[1948]), is the study of the control and regulatory properties of complex systems (seealso Rose 1969,1974). Wiener was clear from the beginning that cybernetics appliedequally to both machines and living beings. Although he did address the socialimplications of cybernetics in his early work (Wiener 1950), he did not discuss theactual physical merger of machines and organisms. It took another decade before twoNASA scientists, Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline (1960, reprinted in Gray1995), to coin the term "cyborg," and to suggest some of the advantages for spaceexploration of altering the human body with machines.

For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as anintegrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term "cyborg."The cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending theself-regulatory control function of the organism in order to adapt it to newenvironments. (Clynes and Kline 1960:27)

Clynes and Kline's major emphasis was upon the automatic, self-regulatory andunconscious activity of the mechanical components integrated as life supportsystems with the living organism. Clynes (1977) later extended their thinking to thealteration and control of emotions during long space flights.

Cyborg in FictionThe use of the cyborg concept is very recent in anthropology, so we do not have

any clear benchmarks in our own literature from which to appreciate the extent towhich cyborg anthropology has distorted the notion from its original formulation.The use of the cyborg in fiction, however, can provide us some indication at anyparticular time in history of the extent to which people generally have understoodthe implications of the organism-machine merger (see Porush 1985:2-3 on"cybernauts" and "soft machines;" see also Zebrowski and Warrick 1978, and theessays by Andrew Gordon, Anne Hudson Jones and Gary K. Wolfe in Dun and Erlich1982). Therefore a brief history of the notion in fiction may be of some use for thoseanthropologists not versed in science fiction in orienting themselves to thedevelopment of the idea.

Although the term cyborg had yet to be coined, in his 1923 novel, TheClockworkMan, E. V. Odle depicted a person with a mechanical device in his head that allowedhim to flip into alternate realities. However, most treatments of the cyborg idea have

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followed the brain-in-metal-body motif (e.g., L. A. Eshbach's "The Time Conqueror"in 1932, Curt Siodmak's Donovan's Brain in 1943 and Damon Knight's horrifyingshort story "Masks" in 1968). A more developed theme began to emerge whenCordwainer Smith wrote about cyborgs designed for space travel in "Scanners Livein Vain" in 1950. Frederik Pohl's Man Plus in 1976 and Barrington J. Bayley's TheGarments ofCaean in 1976 continue this theme, as does Anne McCaffrey's The ShipWho Sang from 1961 in which a human brain is incorporated in the structure of aspace ship.

Martin Caiden's novel Cyborg, published in 1972, led to the popular "SixMillion Dollar Man" TV series which brought the cyborg, or "bionic man" conceptto the awareness of the general public. The novel and series followed a more moderntrend in cyborgian thinking, that being the awareness that parts of the human bodycan be replaced and even augmented by machines. William Gibson's 1980scyberpunk novels (Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, etc.) paint a near future era inwhich people have microchips implanted in their brains and can access the WorldWide Web by an act of will.1

Cyborg in Comic BooksThe cyborg motif has received a lot of play in comic book art ever since the first

cyborg villain named Metallo appeared in issue 252 of Action Comics in 1959.Perhaps the best developed cyborg character is Cliff Steele, A.K.A. the Robotman,of the Doom Patrol (first appearing in My Greatest Adventure comics, issue 80 in1963), who was saved from almost certain death in a racing car accident by The Chiefwho surgically removed his central nervous system from his damaged body and placedit in a metal "robotic" body.

Deathlok (first appearing in Astonishing Tales, issue 25 in 1974) is a moreadvanced cyborg who unwillingly gave up his organic body to inhabit a machinebody, and spends much of his time trying to locate where the bad guys hid his realbody. His machine body includes an onboard computer with which (with whom?)he carries on a continuous dialogue. The 1990s have seen the publication of evenmore complex cyborgs, including Valiant Comics' Bloodshot and Rai who are humanbeings whose natural blood has been replaced by the "Blood of Heros" whichcontains nanites instead of haemoglobin. The nanites are microscopic computersthat instantly repair tissue damage and allow the heros to communicate with andcontrol machines.4

Cyborg in the CinemaMovies have done their fair part in depicting the cyborg as well (Rushing 1995).

The Frankenstein movies presented certain cyborg features, complete with boltssticking out of the creature's neck — a feature not included by Mary Shelley in herclassic novel. Perhaps the most famous cinema cyborg to date is Darth Vader, thearchetypal villain of the Star Wars series. But the most interesting cyborg characterto me is Alex Murphy, the police officer who is shot Jown in the line of duty andwakes up to find himself installed in a high-tech robot body and known as Robocop.s

The point to emphasize in these fictional developments of the cyborg is that atfirst the notion was simply one of replacing of the organic body with a mechanicalbody which somehow magically supports and allows interaction with a living,

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ourselves as "alloplastic" (Douglas 1978:116)—that we change our environment tosuit ourselves. But actually, to the extent that we develop cybernetic technologiesto control the world (e.g., computer systems to control power plants, life supportsystems to fly us to the moon, or to explore the bottom of the oceans, etc.), we alsoproduce technologies to control our physical and mental beings (e.g., electronicsensors, pacemakers, prostheses, etc.). Whereas it is easy for us to see that theindustrial revolution replaced human labor with technologies (i.e., muscle and bonereplaced by machines) and the cybernetic revolution replaced human controllerswith technologies (i.e., brains replaced by computers; e.g., a "smart house" replacesa traditional "housekeeper"), it is not so easy for us to see that the same processesreciprocally penetrate into the body and consciousness (servomotors, biochemicaltaps, artificial limbs, voice boxes and virtual senses, and, in the near future,microchips in the brain)—that indeed the cyborg is an inevitable consequence ofhuman technics.

Activity and Experience in "Nonlinear Context

The concept of the cyborg was to allow man to optimizehis internal regulation to suit the environment he may seek.

— Manfred Clynes (1970)

The law of bidirectional penetration is so pivotal to my argument that I want tospend time fleshing it out. The law implies the nonlinear role of behavior inproducing experience (also see Powers 1973). We act—that is, we move our bodieswith intention, but often unconsciously—in order to produce, maintain or modifyour experience. If we desire the experience we are having, then we act to continuethat experience. If we desire another experience than the one we are having, we actto transform our experience to the one desired. These may be simple acts, as whenI close my eyes to shut out something I do not want to see, or turn my head to seesomething I want to see. These are non-technical, behavioral acts of consciousness.

Our acts become technical when the process of producing the desired experiencerequires an intermediary and enduring transformation of the material world. If I wantto see an episode of The X-Files, I have to turn on the TV, and that is a simple technicalact. The point being that I cannot have The X-Files experience without theintervention of a technical phase in my activity. Technics opens up new experiences,and broadens my range of experiences by essentially replicating first skeletal, thenmuscular, and finally neural processes in the world. This replication changes theworld which in turn impresses itself upon our senses in the form of experiences. Thisunderstanding of the nonlinear relations among consciousness, activity and externalworld is fundamental to the phenomenology of technology. As Ihde put it:

The essence of technology allows us to see, to order, to relate to the world ina particular way. Nature becomes [a] standing-reserve, a source of energy forhuman use, and this mode of relating to the world becomes, in a technologicalera, the dominant and primary way in which we understand [the] world.(Ihde 1983:33)

But a biogenetic structural account of the cyborg carries this view much further.

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I suggest that the cyborg process results in a transformation of the human body itself,and hence the internal organization of the body's consciousness. Eventually, in orderfor me to have access to a broader range of experiences than the limits provided bymy natural body, I may have to technically alter my nervous system. In a sense, theendogenous systems come to replicate the exogenous, technologically alteredpatterns in the world.

We continue to be aware of the body-machine distinction because we stillinteract with machines by way of our limbs and our senses. Yet the phenomenologyof tool-use shows us that the better the tool, the more we lose track of the tool as wefocus on the task at hand (Martin Heidegger noted that technology tends to"withdraw" from our awareness when it works well; see Ihde 1990:33).

Meanwhile, the law of bidirectional penetration is inexorably leading humanityto the development of a direct brain-machine interface technology that will botheliminate the necessity of behavior-sensory interaction with machines in manycases, and dissolve the phenomenological distinction between body and machineeven more than normal "withdrawal" experienced with machines today.1* Themachine will be experienced as part of me, just as my arm is now part of me. Peopleare aware these days of the human chess master vs. chess software competitions(indeed, the "Deep Blue" software has just recently beaten Kasparov), and thatcomputer software will one day soon routinely best the brightest chess masters. Butfew of us are aware of the inevitable development of the cyborg chess master—humanand machine directly interfaced to produce a being capable of beating any pre-cyborgchess master. The cyborg process may mean that eventually if I wish to be the bestpossible chess player, I must technically transform my own internal neural processesin order to optimize certain computational abilities.

The Evolution of the Cyborg

I have suggested that the evolution of exogenous technics reciprocally penetratesthe body, and eventually will penetrate the very organization of consciousness. Thisprocess of technical penetration is inseparable from the development of the cyborg,and involves the replacement, augmentation and integration of parts of the humanbody with machines. And this process has obvious evolutionary significance (seee.g., Clarke 1973, and Haas and Voigt 1977), and may be schematized in a model offour stages, as follows:9

Stage I: Replacement or augmentation of the human skeleton. Examples:wooden leg, hook for lost hand, armor, false teeth, etc.

Stage 11: Replacement or augmentation of muscle. Examples: mechanicalhand for lost hand, other prosthetic devices, mechanical heart valve,replacement of lens in eye, etc.

Stage III: Replacement or augmentation of parts of the peripheral nervoussystem, autonomic nervous system and the neun (endocrine system. Examples:bionic arms and legs, pacemakers, automatic biochemical pumps, etc.

Stage IV Replacement or augmentation of parts of the central nervous system.Examples: video "eyes" for blind, Air Force cyborg fighter plane control.

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Of course, this model is an over-simplification of the unfolding of the cyborgprocess, but it has the advantage of letting us see the progressive complexityinvolved. Stage I cyborg is equivalent to the external extension of the hands witha hammer, knife or other primitive tool. It essentially replaces or augments theskeletal physiology of the limbs (see Halacy 1965:63-71). Thus the wooden leg andhook as prosthetic devices represent the more primitive innovations leading to theprocess of cyborg transformation. Portions of the nervous system have beeneliminated with the loss of the amputated appendage.

Stage II cyborg sees the technical replacement or augmentation of both skeletaland muscle systems in the body. This stage is equivalent to the external replacementof muscles with engines. The hand is replaced with a movable machine, perhapsmanipulated by servomechanisms that are triggered by movements of particularmuscle groups. The diseased heart valve is replaced by a mechanical valve. The lensof the eye is replaced by a synthetic lens, and so on. Such mechanisms depend uponintact neuro-muscular systems for their control.

At Stage III cyborg, technical penetration reaches the nervous system andreplaces or augments neural structures in the peripheral, autonomic or endocrinesystems involved in the regulation of internal states. This stage is equivalent tosimple regulatory systems in the external world, such as the thermostat controllingthe temperature of a heater. Clynes and Kline addressed their original cyborg paperto problems in space exploration that might be solved by Stage III cyborg measures.The "bionic" arms and legs of the Six Million Dollar Man are fictional examples ofStage III developments, as is the more realistic contemporary heart pacemaker.

Finally, Stage IV cyborg produces the replacement or augmentation of structuresin the central nervous system. This stage is equivalent to the supplementation orreplacement of human brain power with computers in industry. This stage mayinvolve modification of structures mediating the cognitive aspects of emotion(Clynes' "sentics" ideas are cyborgian at this level; see Clynes 1977), as well asimagination, intuition, perception, rational thought, intentionality, language, etc.—all of which require higher cortical processing. Examples of developments at thisstage are technologies such as the miniature video camera "eyes" wired to anelectrode array implanted in the visual cortex of certain blind people. And rumorhas it that the United States Air Force underwrites research on technologies thatwould allow direct brain to aircraft interfacing for fighter pilots. Heavily fundedscientists at Tokyo University have recently fitted microprocessors to the nervoussystems of cockroaches using electrodes, and are able to control the roaches' behaviorvia computer link (Anonymous 1997). Also, over 17 years of research generated atthe Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratories (PEAR Labs) haveshown a low but consistent telekinetic effect of conscious intention on the behaviorof random event generating machines (Jahn and Dunne 1987). This researchsuggests that there may exist levels of very subtle energy interactions betweenconscious brain activity and machines, that may in the future be technologicallyamplified to have greater effects in brain-machine interfacing.

The point to emphasize in all of this is that the emergence of the cyborg is aprocess of progressive technological penetration into the body, eventually replacingor augmenting the structures that mediate the various physical and mental attributes

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that we normally consider natural to human beings, including emotion, naturalsensory modes, properties of imagination and rational thought, the organization ofintentional acts, etc. Clearly then, progressive penetration into the cortex of thebrain will inevitably result in the technical alteration of human consciousness.

Discussion

If the reader has followed my line of reasoning so far, then there are a numberof implications and applications of this model for cyborg evolution.

Recognition of Cyborg PossibilitiesIt is interesting that it has taken many years for the picture of the cyborg to

become articulated to the extent that it has been to date. Cyborg possibilities beganwith, and for years was limited to, the brain-in-metal-body motif. The idea that thebody could be functionally augmented for new purposes emerged only gradually inthe post-World War II era in scientific theory and in science fiction. Likewise, it hastaken a long time for cyborg-related medical attitudes ("we can fix it with thiswidget") to evolve into a perfectibility attitude ("we can make it even better with thiswidget"). And the impact of Clynes and Kline's original thinking in transformingthese possibilities cannot be over-emphasized. At the very least they planted a seedthat has yet to reach its fruition.

Cyborg Consciousness and the "Quru Program"If one accepts the tenets of biogenetic structuralism in regard to the nature and

evolution of the cyborg, one is forced to acknowledge the likelihood of certainconsequent developments. For one thing, when cyborg technologies eventuallyresult in the internal reorganization of the central nervous system, this will necessarilyproduce a reorganization of human consciousness. Of course, cyborg developmentsat every stage affect consciousness to some extent. If my leg should be replaced bya prosthesis, it will change my experience of my body and its activities. Butdevelopments at cyborg Stages III and IV do so by direct alteration of neuralstructures and may eventually so radically change human mental processes that wewill be forced to recognize new species of life and consciousness; i.e., cyborgconsciousness.

For another thing, the complexity of neurocognitive processing will likely beaugmented. In a Piagetian sense, the complexity of each individual's cognitiveprocessing is limited by the extent of that individual's neurobiological development(see Piaget 1977, 1980). Obviously, cyborg augmentation may well increase thelimits of maximal complexity of cognition of which the amalgamated brain-machinesystem may be capable. This complexity may increase the number of parallelprocesses integrated within any intentional act (see McClelland and Rumelhart1986) and may result in an increase in the information being processed. Enhancedcomplexity may well be beyond what even the most developed natural human brainis now capable.

In any case, the organization of the self-concept or "ego" of the cyborg may besubstantially different than the natural human's self-concept. Indeed, the Stage IVcyborg may be routinely capable of the kind of ego-transcendence that seems to becharacteristic only of those with the most advanced consciousness today (Laughlin

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and Richardson 1986).10 Moreover, the merger of brain and machine opens thepossibility of what may be called a "guru program," a software that brings theneurobiological portions of the cyborg system to optimal cognitive developmentthrough a series of alternating experiences and interpretive exercises.

Cyborgs and CultureFew people have thought through the cultural implications of the cyborg (but

see Gray 1993 for a refreshing exception). Yet the development of cyborg consciousnesshas important implications for our understanding of the nature and evolution ofculture. In the first place, and I think in keeping with Donna Haraway's position, Ido not wish to leave the impression that I am advocating either a Utopian (SixMillion Dollar Man as culture hero) or a dystopian (William Gibson's cyberpunkvision) cyborg scenario. We must be clear on this issue, for, as Leo Marx has shownin his seminal work, The Machine in the Garden (1990), there exists an inherenttension between humans and their machines. In fact, cyborg characters in sciencefiction usually have been objects of fear (e.g., the Borg in Star Trek: The NextGeneration, or Damon Knight's Jim in "Masks"), and are often the bad guys in the tale(Gordon 1982). This tension continues to be revealed in much of the current cyborganthropology (as well as cyborg history, cyborg sociology, cyborg gender studies,cyborg literary criticism, etc.) polemic, for, unlike Haraway, some of these folk use thecyborg to represent all that is wrong, evil and inhumane about modern technologicaldevelopment.

As I have taken some pains to argue, whatever the quality of the outcome, thedevelopment of the cyborg is as inevitable as our other technologies have been; thecyborg is lawfully entailed in our technical natures. And the cyborg is just as"multistable" in its value as any other technologicaldevelopment (see Ihde 1990:144-151). All technologies are ambiguous with respect to cultural value. Just as aPalaeolithic handax could be used either to feed the family or clobber an obnoxiousrelative, the value of the cyborg will depend upon the intentions and perceptions ofthe culture in which it emerges.

For another thing, it is typical of our Euroamerican culture that most of theattention paid to cyborgs has to do with military applications (see e.g., Levidow andRobins 1989). But the cultural implications are far greater than the production ofcyborg soldiers, sailors, airmen and astronauts. Culture is a word we use to label thesystem of meaning, communication and habitual activity shared by members of asociety. Now, we have already seen that the range and complexity of meaning forStage IV cyborgs may transcend that of which humans are now capable. Moreover,communication may well render traditional language obsolete because cyborgs willcertainly be capable of direct data links via cyberspace with other cyborgs, independentof natural language or physical proximity. Imagine if you will that by a mere act ofwill, a cyborg's brain may become linked through telemetry with an Internet-likecyberspace in which his thoughts, imaginations, intuitions, wishes, etc., can beelectronically shared with other cyborgs.

Cyborgs in SpaceIt is fitting to return to the context in which the notion of cyborg originally arose

in the thinking of Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline—that being life in space. As

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commonplace as it may seem, we must stress the fact that the human body, and manyof its neurological structures, are the products of millions of years of evolution inadaptation to the forces of gravity on this planet. Migration into space radicallychanges the environmental forces that people will face. As everybody knows,spacefarers already experience serious health problems due to the zero-g environment.So far, research has been directed at the more gross physical problems encounteredby astronauts (e.g., space sickness and skeletal decalcification). But as Clynes andKline note, there are mental health issues as well that must eventually be addressed.

I would suggest that at least some of the psychological and socioculturaladaptational problems that permanent spacefarers will face may be due to inherentbrain structures" that have evolved in adaptation to planetary survival. Thesestructures emerge during early pre- and perinatal neurogenesis and are the "seeds"upon which later neuropsychological development are patterned (see Laughlin1991). Some of these nascent structures determine the universal properties ofhuman consciousness, a consciousness that is primarily oriented toward Earth boundintentional activities.

Both genetic engineering and future cyborg technologies may well be utilized toreplace, alter or augment these inherent neural structures in favor of new structuresthat may prove to be more adaptive to the spacefaring life. Which approach—whether it be genetic engineering or cyborg technics—will contribute most to thesolution of these adaptational problems is still uncertain. My hunch is that cyborgtechnologies will develop before those of genetic engineering, but this is an empiricalquestion that only time can answer. In any event, these technologies will certainlyalter human consciousness at its most fundamental, structural level, presumably indirections leading to a kind of consciousness more auspicious for a spacefaringspecies.

ConclusionIn conclusion, I have argued that the fuzzy, metaphorical application of the

cyborg concept by some contemporary anthropologists has obscured the explanatorypower of the concept, as well as the very real implications of the cyborg process foran evolutionary account of human consciousness. I have tightened the concept sothat a biogenetic structural model may be constructed that allows us to focus on anessential process of human technics leading eventually to cyborg consciousness. Thecyborg is inevitable as a consequence of the law of bidirectional penetration; that is,the lawful interpenetrating of world and being. Insofar as we alter the worldtechnologically, we will also alter our being. Cyborg consciousness will lawfullyemerge, possibly (as envisioned by Clynes and Kline) in the context of theexploration and colonization of interplanetary space. Considering the inevitabilityand cultural multistability of the cyborg, it would behoove anthropologists to thinkdeeply about such a vital process that is evolving in our very midst as we speak.

Notes1 lam reminded of the wonderful CanadianTV series, "Max Headroom," in which the consciousness

of an investigative reporter finds itself existing in cyberspace and which communicates with normalpeople through their television sets.

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2 If all of the tissues in your body were to suddenly disappear, except for the nervous system, for abrief instant before you collapsed into a mess on the floor (no skeleton you see?), the entire form of yourbody, except your nails, hair and tooth enamel, would remain visible, so pervasive are the nerves in yourbody.

' Thomas N. Scortia and George Zebrowski edited an anthology of science fiction cyborg storiesentitled Human Machines (1975).

4 Another true cyborg in the comic book arena is Wolverine whose skeleton has been replaced bythe fictional substance adamantine, the hardest metal in the world, and whocan extend adamantine clawsout of the backs of his hands at will. Other cyborgs are the X-Men's Cable, and the New Teen Titans'Cyborg. Characters mentioned as cyborgs due to the fuzzy understanding of the concept in the literatureinclude the first Iron Man (really an android), Captain America (who was changed from a 90 poundweakling into a superhero by way of an injection of "super-soldier serum" that changed his DNA), DoctorDoom (who is really ugly and wears a metal suit and mask), and Valiant's X-O Man of War (who enjoysa symbiotic relationship with an alien, sentient set of body armor).

s Other film and TV cyborgs include Edward Scissorhands (the title says it all!), Terminator (who isreally a robot consciousness inside organic skin), Lawnmower Man (which explores the issue of virtualreality technology quite well), the famous Borg episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (in whichCaptain Picard is inducted into the ranks of the Borg), and Johnny Mnemonic (adapted from WilliamGibson's cyberpunk universe). The remarkable movie Blade Runner, frequently mentioned in referenceto cyborgs, really involves androids.

6 Biogenetic structuralism isabody of theory pertaining to the relations between brain.consciousness,culture and cosmos. Perhaps the best description of biogenetic structuralism may be found in Laughlin,McManus and d'Aquili 1990.

7 See Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili 1990:36, 196 on the biogenetic structural concept of"penetration."

" The term "withdrawal" refers to the tendency for people to lose awareness of tools and machinesto the extent that these work efficiently. The carpenter tends to lose awareness of the hammer during thetask of hammering.

g My stages have nothing to do with Clynes' (1995) typology.10 This is a fundamental error in William Gibson's fictional cyberpunk vision in that he has his

cyborg characters manifesting very human egos. Indeed, his characters manifest few of the more advancedpossibilities that a Stage IV cyborg must eventually manifest.

11 In biogenetic structuralism, inherent brain structures are called "neurognosis," or "neurognosticstructures;" see Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili 1990: Chapter 2.

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