Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence 1st Edition

First book read by this author... It won't be the last. Oh, how I adore a scientific mind eloquently expressed via playful perceptions of interconnectedness. It's obviously not all fiction, and that's what I love most about this. I found myself learning about things I'd never thought about directly whilst enjoying his writing style that partially reads like a diary. Kind of reminds me how I always grew frustrated with my teachers who seemed to teach out of obligation rather than out of passion... This guy, wow. He'd be the most epic professor. You can feel how enthralled he is. And through that loud fascination, I'm now a lot more engrossed in transhumanism not just as a technological advancement, but a collective upgrade of tools as well. Love this. Absolutely love this.

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.

In his book Natural Born Cyborgs, Andy Clark supports a view of human-machine symbiosis that puts our recent integration with computer interfaces on a continuum of human evolutionary development along with "clothes, cooking, bricklaying, and writing." Through his writing the author makes the case to support this view in which he systematically lays out a foundation for readers to see things from his perspective. Overall the book is written very well. I would recommend it to anyone with an open mind, some background in technology/neuroscience and a general interest in thinking about how we, in effect, have developed as human beings throughout the course of history.After first introducing the book by playing off of our fear of the fictional cyborgs we all know from the movies ie Terminator, Eve 8, Cable - the book begins with a brief introduction of the author's background; Andy Clark claims that it was during his time directing a new interdisciplinary program in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology that he first realized this concept of "cyborg" that he details in this book. From here he introduces the idea of humans being intrinsically technology dependent beings. He states that his goal in writing such a book is "to hijack that image (our preconceived notion of cyborg) and to reshape it, revealing it as a disguised vision of our own biological nature." What really impressed me about his style of argument and writing was his use of examples from research in many different fields to illustrate his point. Where many times we see arguments like his fall into ambiguity and opinion, his use of concrete examples helps paint the picture of the story he tells.The book itself is very short, consisting of only 8 chapters, however every chapter has been thoroughly annotated so readers can dive deeper if they wish. For the sake of my synopsis I've divided the book into two halves.Chapters 1-3The first chapter of the book is spent educating the reader on where the term cyborg originally came from putting it in the context of the first early technologies which "sought to incorporate exogenous components extending the self-regulating control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments" Here Clark cites early osmotic pumps, auditory prosthetics, and peripheral nerve interfaces. The focus of this chapter is to draw out what Clark calls "an ancient western prejudice" which creates the illusionary belief that the mind is distinctly different from the rest of natural order. Instead of viewing technology as something distinct from our human nature he argues that technology is integrated and always has been integrated with our nature placing us in our current condition at a transition point between first wave (pen,paper,diagram, and digital media) and second wave (personalized, online, dynamic biotechnological unions) technologies. The cell phone is the technology he uses as an example of this transition.Moving from the concrete into more abstract realms Andy Clark then introduces the idea of transparent and opaque technologies before diving into his categorization of technologies, which he labels "ready-to-hand" and "present-at-hand." In categorizing the way people perceive and interact with technologies Clark attempts to bring some level of awareness to how we as lay people may simply generalize and interact with technologies and our environment taking what we have right in front of us for granted. The importance of understanding concepts such as these are again driven home using experimental example - in this case the ability of chimps who are trained to reason symbolically vs chimps who are not. Andy uses this example to make his point that only the chimps who were trained to reason symbolically were then able to understand higher order relationships - what he calls the relation between relations.Chapters 4-8Once laying out this abstract scaffold for his argument Andy Clark gets into his answers to bigger questions: Where are we? and What are we?. Here he takes the reader through reported experiments and experiences, which alter human perception through illusions and the use of technology based telepresence to play with the idea of embodied consciousness. From here he explores the application and ethics of such technologies for the future of mankind. Andy Clark takes a look at how this knowledge is already currently being used through computational application dipping into the darker areas of misuse of such information/technology. He ends this section making the point that it is not technology itself that is evil; it's how the technology is used. In conclusion Andy Clark argues that it's not the preconceived invasive and material tools themselves that make us cyborgs rather it's the extended thinking systems that are created as a result of these tools that make us who we are.I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I especially liked the importance he gives to interdisciplinary perspectives. Through the experience of working on constructing an interdisciplinary research program at Georgia Tech under Dr. Steve Potter I came to notice and support many of the ideas presented here. What impressed me most about the book was the amazing job the author does in translating ideas to the reader through examples while at the same time demonstrating the concept in the structure of his writing. For example in introducing the idea of the symbolically reasoning chimps he is setting up the scaffold to introduce his concept of scaffolded thinking.The biggest problem I can see readers having with this book is what can appear as Andy Clark's loose use of what he defines as a technology. Because he is speaking of technology in both a physical and metaphysical sense I can see many readers having a hard time accepting the case that he makes if they do not consider what he has to say carefully. If the reader does buy into Clark's definition, this book is an amazing source of perspective on how we as human beings have grown in an interlocked web of biology and technology. In my opinion what Andy Clark talks about in this book has incredible application in models of education and perspective regardless of opinion on the monistic, dualist, or pluralist nature of the world.

Book came on time, or possibly even a bit early. This was really an interesting read. I can say it did make me think about things I have not thought about before, and still impacts how I look at some things. Sometimes, it is a little trippy and possibly too far, but that is my own opinion

Magnífico libro para comprender la evolución humana unida a la tecnología

Great title, great content.Should read if you are interested in human-machine centering approach

Producto totalmente nuevo. Llegó en tiempo y forma.

Très bien

Andy Clark's works spread across many disciplines. This particular book will certainly make you think differently about how we interact 'transparently and opaquely' with technology. Will blow your mind.