On Low-Tech Cyborgs Review

On Low-Tech Cyborgs, by David J. Hess, is an imaginative non-fiction essay about how the definition of the cyborg has changed throughout the past, the media's interpretation of a cyborg, as well as cultural interpretations of the cyborg phenomenon. The author pays close to attention to the difference between what he calls a "low-tech" cyborg and a "hi-tech" cyborg. An example of a low-tech cyborg given in the book is a South American Indian wearing a lip plug and body paint, while the Terminator is a classic example of a hi-tech cyborg. Hess, who calls himself a "low-tech cyborg anthropologist," also relates his experiences talking to a white shaman, whom he calls another example of a low-tech cyborg.
However, the essay soon takes on the form of a kind of dream, in which the author switches from one real or imaginary experience to another without any obvious connection. The author also starts to compare the media's interpretation of the cyborg to a new-age Tonto, the sidekick of the standard Lone Ranger character type, without giving any reason for this assumption apart from the claim that like Tonto, cyborgs are being depended upon to assist the Lone Ranger, i.e. the majority group of the population.

Socializing the Cyborg Self Review

Socializing the Cyborg Self talks about modern technologies used in the Gulf War, and how they have desensitized the soldiers (and even the civilians) to killing. Because the modern soldier only sees the enemy on a computer screen and can kill them with the push of a button, warfare is becoming more and more impersonal. When in the past you looked your enemy in the eye as you gutted him with your sword or shoot him with your flint-lock rifle from a few meters away, it is now possible to kill someone without them even knowing it until it is too late. This becomes even more apparent when seen through the context of digital entertainment, especially through video and computer games. Not only do today's soldiers deliver death with a joystick at home, they do the same at work, albeit with more permanent results. The similarity between actual warfare and entertainment warfare on the computer becomes especially apparent in the best selling shooter game Modern Warfare, specifically the mission "Death from Above." In this particular assignment, you play the gunner of an AC-130 gunship, a large jet airplane equipped with long range cannons. The player sees the world below through a grainy black and white heat filter, where all targets stand out as white silhouettes from a darker background,visually indistinguishable from an actual airplane targeting screen. Your only objective in this mission is to quite literally deliver "death from above." As you blow up house after house and see the little silhouettes flying through the air, you hear the other occupants of the plane remarking on your shooting with comments along the lines of "Nice shot!", "You got five on one hit," and "Did you see that car get blown up?" When I played this mission, I could almost hear real soldiers flying above a real battlefield say those exact same things as they indiscriminately kill dozens of people by pushing a button thousands of meters away. Killing is no longer a humanizing business. Everyone can do it these days without even knowing the difference between shooting at an AI in a game and shooting a human being in a real conflict.

Ray Bradbury's The Veldt Review

The Veldt is a science fiction short-story about a wealthy futuristic couple, the Hadleys, who have spoiled their two children with all the technological marvels that money can buy. Among these extravagances is "The Nursery," a holographic room which displays whatever the user wants it to, complete with realistic sounds and smells. The children have become addicted to their nursery. According to a psychiatrist friend of the Hadley's, the room and the house itself (which even ties the children's shoes for them) have replaced the Hadleys in their children's lives. However, the couple only finds out how serious this has become when George wants to lock the nursery and take his family for a vacation in the real world; his children become hysterical and end up trapping George and his wife in the nursery, where a pack of holographic African lions kills them.
This is eerily similar to another short story, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon in which a man is in faulty cryogenic stasis and at his ship's computer's mercy. In both stories, the machines have become more than they were designed to be, and have somehow evolved an artificial intelligence that is concerned with self preservation. In The Veldt, the nursery has become able to create things that are real and not just illusions of real things, and uses its new ability to defend itself from its potential destroyers. Even though the children ordered the room to kill their real parents, it should not have been able to comply to this homicidal request. In I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, the ship stopped following its programming, which stated that anyone who is conscious during a cryogenic journey has to be fed sensory information to keep the brain from degrading by feeding sensations from the subject's subconscious memory; instead it started to loop the same fictional scene to the main character over and over again, until he became unable to distinguish between what was real and what was simply a digital illusion.
In both short-stories, something that was supposed to be an illusion became corporeal: Whether it became such a perfect copy that it was impossible to discern any difference or because the machine was able to give life to its output is unimportant, since both have come to replace reality for those involved.