5
One reason for this greater sense of urgency is the seemingly profound effect that
technology is having on our notions of what it means to be a human being. Cyborgs have
evolved beyond reliance upon prosthetics and implants to the point where organic and inorganic
materials now are blended all the way down to the molecular level. “We are,” Rodney Brooks of
the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory claims, “on a path to changing our genome in
profound ways.”
7
We are, in other words, changing how we think of what it means to be a
human being. A new dualism consisting of our genetic code on one side and our contingent
bodies on the other, has replaced the older, Cartesian mind-body distinction, and represents a
serious rival to contemporary monistic metaphysics.
8
There is no simple one-to-one-to-one correspondence between this new metaphysical
dualism, democracy, and mass violence, anymore than there was between Cartesian dualism and
politics. For some commentators, the new generation of cyborgs represents the promise of a
more fluid, multi-cultural, and tolerant politics.
9
For others, it represents an unnatural eugenics
that invites authoritarianism.
10
Both sides miss the point. Whether the creation of deeply
blended cyborgs will lead to greater respect for diversity and cross-cultural solidarity or, on the
contrary, threaten individual autonomy and privacy remains to be seen. What already has
7
Rodney A. Brooks, Flesh and Machines: How Robots will Change Us (New York:
Pantheon, 2002), p.236.
8
N. Katherine Hayles, “The Condition of Virtuality” in The Digital Dialectic: New Essays
on New Media, ed. Peter Lunenfeld (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), p.73.
9
See Donna J. Haraway, Modest_Witness @ Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©
_Meets_OncoMouse
(New York: Routledge, 1997).
10
See Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology
Revolution (New York: Picador, 2003).
Convention