Becoming Cyborg

22 July 2008

Bionics vs. Cybernetics

Posted by Andrew Garcia under: Body Modification; Cybernetics; Cyborg Culture; Evolution; Reality Augmentation; Technology .

So at some point we’ve all seen a movie or read a book in which a Cyborg is portrayed as half machine and half human. In the Cyborg 101 article I already established that this notion is a stereotype. In it, I also define classical cybernetics to be anything related to emergent world thinking or systems thinking (please keep this in mind when making the distinction between that, and the cybernetics in question).

So what then, is the difference between modern cybernetics and bionics?

I’ll use Britannica Online as my main resource, since it has the most detail out of any internet-based discussion on the topics.

Bionics is not a specialized science but an interscience discipline; it may be compared with cybernetics. Bionics and cybernetics have been called the two sides of the same coin. Both use models of living systems, bionics in order to find new ideas for useful artificial machines and systems, cybernetics to seek the explanation of living beings’ behaviour.

Bionics:

So obviously there’s a discrepancy between the pop-cultural portrayal of bionic technology, and the actual definition of modeling mechanical/electronic systems after biology.

Ironically, I have found a unique example of biological mimicry within the context of physical augmentation. I was watching Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto the other night and noticed that the Maya warriors use body art to mimic animals. Some use bones to extend their facial constructs and present themselves as more aggressive, larger animals. Some use tattoos to change the way they look. One warrior had a snake tattooed across his face, no doubt to instill fear in his enemies. Fangs, bones and large protruding piercings are common in this society.

Unlike a modern Cyborg, their augmentations come out of necessity in survival. As a civilization, humans have grown to the point where we can choose to alter ourselves for cosmetic or other-functional purposes. We no longer need to alter ourselves, but we choose to. A couple of examples of modern, popular augmentations:

• makeup
• fashion and clothing selection
• piercings and tattoos
• loose jewelry

So from this list one might gather that we are augmenting at a purely cosmetic level at this point. I’d make the argument that with advancing technologies, we can now choose to make functional upgrades to our bodies. Some piercings already serve functional purposes, and there are a few modern augmentations (magnetic implants, RFID chips, and other technologies) that I will be talking about in upcoming articles.

So what’s your point?

I seem to have disproved the modern notion of bionics and its connection to cybernetics. But I’d like to move toward a revised definition of Bionics entirely. We are now in an age where physical augmentation can be highly technological, mechanical and functional in nature. This is neither body art or bionic, and I feel it most appropriate to settle this by coming up with a modern definition of Bionics.

As we have seen in this post, bionics is the adaptation of technology to model biological functions. It is almost recursive in nature, then, that a newer definition would include biological functions augmented to model the efficiencies of technology itself.

I believe it inevitable for us to make these augmentations as soon as the technology makes it easy, safe, cheap and marketable. We already alter various internal systems through pharmacology and nootropics, why not alter the external?

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