The Age of the Cyborg

Following the historical and philosophical grounding, this chapter draws our attention to the question of what it means to be living in a cyborg era, presents the existential and ontological significance of cybernetics, and describes in detail the known forms of cyborgization. This chapter covers the key considerations including conceptualizations of cyborgs, replacement procedures, normalization procedures, improvement procedures, reshaping procedure, and types of cyborgs (animo cyborgs, homo cyborgs, cyber cyborg, and robo cyborgs). It also deals with targeted areas of human-cyborg enhancement, including bionic arms, bionic fingers, bionic legs, bionic ear, bionic eyes, bionic hearts, bionic skin, bionic tongues, bionic brains, and bionic clothes. The importance of computer interfaces and key applications of cyborg research are described throughout the subsection of this chapter, such as Kevin Warwick's and Stelarc cyborg projects, the popularisation of cyborgs in art, Steve Mann's wearable computers, augmented reality goggles, and robo-cyborgs.