This may seem old fashioned, and certainly less academic
than Haraway, but my first recollection of a cyborg was Steve Austin, played by
Lee Majors, in the Six-Million Dollar Man.
The prezi video about the military research on prosthetic arms reminded
of the days when my buddies and I would rush home after school to watch on TV. Since then, and even earlier, we were all cyborgs, an integrated system of biology and technology, human and digital (analog). Our collective history is intertwined with physical
and technological selves.
Television, novels, automobiles, and telephones are just as
much a part of us, our everyday us, as blue jeans, ear-aches, fingernails, and
the common cold. I cannot remember biology without technology, and for today’s i-phone, Google, and Facebook generation, that symbiosis is not only more prevalent, but far more natural. One might conclude from Haraway that the cyborg is a manifestation of the underprivileged or underappreciated, but I might suggest otherwise. We are all
cyborgs, clearly some more than others, but our lives are fashioned by both a
biological and a technical determinism that is both essential and inseparable. Look down, where your fingers end, your cyborg-self continues.