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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 149
EAN: 9780195177510
ISBN: 0195177517
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: December 09, 2004
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
From Robocop to the Terminator to Eve 8, no image better captures our deepest fears about technology than the cyborg, the person who is both flesh and metal, brain and electronics. But philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark sees it differently. Cyborgs, he writes, are not something to be feared--we already are cyborgs. In Natural-Born Cyborgs, Clark argues that what makes humans so different from other species is our capacity to fully incorporate tools and supporting cultural practices into our existence. Technology as simple as writing on a sketchpad, as familiar as Google or a cellular phone, and as potentially revolutionary as mind-extending neural implants--all exploit our brains' astonishingly plastic nature. Our minds are primed to seek out and incorporate non-biological resources, so that we actually think and feel through our best technologies. Drawing on his expertise in cognitive science, Clark demonstrates that our sense of self and of physical presence can be expanded to a remarkable extent, placing the long-existing telephone and the emerging technology of telepresence on the same continuum. He explores ways in which we have adapted our lives to make use of technology (the measurement of time, for example, has wrought enormous changes in human existence), as well as ways in which increasingly fluid technologies can adapt to individual users during normal use. Bio-technological unions, Clark argues, are evolving with a speed never seen before in history. As we enter an age of wearable computers, sensory augmentation, wireless devices, intelligent environments, thought-controlled prosthetics, and rapid-fire information search and retrieval, the line between the user and her tools grows thinner day by day. "This double whammy of plastic brains and increasingly responsive and well-fitted tools creates an unprecedented opportunity for ever-closer kinds of human-machine merger," he writes, arguing that such a merger is entirely natural. A stunning new look at the human brain and the human self, Natural Born Cyborgs reveals how our technology is indeed inseparable from who we are and how we think.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Clark presents an argument that we do not need to implant microchips or electronic prostheses in our body to become Cyborgs, - We are already Cyborgs. The argument is based in our natural ability to use tools and technics to enhance our capabilities for movement, cognition and perception.
The book is easy to read and draws upon research from the fields of robotics, cognitive science, neuroscience, cybernetics, dynamic systems theory, feminist theory, cognitive anthropology and english litterature studies.
The fact that he draws upon such diverse fields of research does not reduce the logic or persuasiveness of his arguments, but rather show the interdisciplinary basis for the book. The breadth of the arguments' basis is a major plus with this book, showing that the interplay between humans and technology are not merely technical but also something which changes who we are and how we understand our selves.
Rating: -
Normally, we think about 'cyborgs' in terms of 'Star Trek'-like creatures, such as the Borg: a mixture of organic and inorganic stuff, quite unpleasant to look at and even more unpleasant if you encounter one. And here we have a cognitive scientist and philosopher who writes a book with an incredibly odd-sounding title: natural-born cyborg - isn't that a contradiction in terms?
No, it isn't. Read Andy Clark's book and be amazed. When I read it, I was completely converted. What Clark does is not simply write a book describing how modern cognitive science (especially the science of embodied and distributed cognition) is dealing with human action (that too!), but what Clark does here is rewrite a lot of Western anthropology: the way we think about human nature.
Clark's idea of humans as natural-born cyborgs is not that we are all in some sense Borg, but simply that humans have remarkable capabilities of dealing with the things that surround them. Especially, in using ... Read More
Rating:  -
In this accessible, provocative, and thought provoking text Andy Clark argues nothing less than what the title suggests: Human nature is predisposed and especially adapted to create and interact with technologies in a way which advances human cognition. Thus, "human-machine symbiosis" is not only a fact of our future; it is that of our present and our past. We are, in a phrase, "natural-born cyborgs". The arguments that Clark presents to establish this are in fact persuasive, and I encourage anyone interested in the relationship between human beings and technology to read this book. For, whether the reader has at anytime in the past considered this complicated relationship or not, they are not likely to look at it the same way after coming away from the text.
That is not to say that all is well in Professor Clark's analysis, for he tends to take what has been referred to as a techno-enthusiast approach to technology, blatantly negating any undesirable consequences that may ... Read More
Rating:  -
Irritatingly predictable, I might add. One might sum up the entire book by flipping to just one of the expected photographs of some idiot with gizmos attached to every limb. This is technology out of control. We should not be serving technology, it should be serving us. Just because it's a gizmo and hooked up to a computer doesn't mean any sane person will prefer a digital life over a biological life. I may just be biased because I found Portman's TECHNOPOLY before I found this book. If you think technology and gizmos attached to the human body are cool, go ahead and reinforce your geekhood by reading this book, but don't expect to be surprised by any of the cliche's found herein.
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What is the future of humanity? Is the next phase of human evolution the merging of humans and machines? Or perhaps, are we humans already merged with machines and have we been for centuries? These and other questions are ones that occupy Andy Clark, director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University and author of this thought-provoking book written for an informed but lay audience. Clark makes the case that long before cyborgs became the villains of so many popular films--the "Terminator" and "Matrix" series, "Blade Runner," and "2001: A Space Odyssey" come immediately to mind--humans had become inextricably linked to machines in a way that ensured that they could not survive without them. Accordingly, even without electronic implants Homo Sapiens are cyborgs, and have been as far back as the first time one of our ancestors picked up a tree limb and used it as club. Clark argues that the human-technology symbiosis is totally natural and has been for millennia. The speed with which ... Read More
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