The Evolution of Cyborg Consciousness

Abstract

Inspired by Donna Haraway's essay, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," numerous "cyborg" studies in anthropology, sociology, history and literary criticism have looked at the relationship between humans and technology. A problem with many of these studies is that they use the term "cyborg" metaphorically and fuzzily without an appreciation of the history of cybernetics. This paper will critique both the profound insights and non‐trivial distortions engendered by the cyborg polemic. A neuroanthropological model of human technics is presented that allows a scientifically useful discrimination to be made between cyborg and non‐cyborg (i.e., robot, android, AI, etc.) technologies. Technology is seen as a nonlinear, bidirectional process of penetration in which the body is physically extended outward into the world and the world is physically interjected inward into the body. Four stages of the evolution of the cyborg are defined. Grounded extrapolations are made about the future development of cyborg consciousness and its implications for culture and extraterrestrial anthropology.