Ethical issues of human enhancement technologies. Cyborg technology as the extension of human biology
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-10-2013-0040 |
| Published date | 06 May 2014 |
| Date | 06 May 2014 |
| Pages | 133-148 |
| Author | Ivana Greguric |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance |
Ethical issues of human
enhancement technologies
Cyborg technology as the extension
of human biology
Ivana Greguric
Visoka poslovna s
ˇkola Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to focus on the modern development of bionics and linking new
technologies with the human nervous system or other biological systems that cause changes of the
human biological structure.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a discursive evaluation of technological progress
and new systems where computers and machines integrate, making a single matrix entity – the
cyborg. Here fundamental questions arise, such as what it means to be human and what is (descriptive
aspect) and what should be (normative aspect) a human being?
Findings – The paper argues for the value of twenty-first century human enhancement techniques
and other emerging technologies that promised to “help” humans become “more than human”, trying
to create human beings with greatly enhanced abilities, to improve human mental and physical
characteristics and capacities. Modern man is gradually disappearing as a natural being and
increasingly turning into an artificial creature “cyborg” that leads into the question, what will
ultimately remain human in a human body?
Originality/value – The paper contributes to the existing debates about further development of
cyborgisation and examines boundaries that will strictly divide man from a cyborg in the near future.
In order to protect man from the omnipotence of technology and its unethical application is necessary
to establish cyborgoethics that would determine the implementation of an artificial boundary in the
natural body.
Keywords Computer-mediatedcommunication, Cyberethics,Cyberspace
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The human enhancement technologies of the twenty-first century promise make
humans immortal by already giving them enhanced physical and mental abilities
and capacities. The usage of bioelectronics enables us to connect new technologies
with human nervous system on a higher-functioning level, nanotechnologies and
nanomachines coupled with genetic engineering can affect biological changes within the
cells, bringing further changes in the human biological structure. There are two
dominant courses of improving and reshaping the human body. On one hand, the human
body is “dematerialised” in the infinite space-time of the virtual world, using digital
information, and on the other hand, the technical implants and artificial additions turn a
man into a partially artificial being – cybo rg, with a tendency for replacing all organic
bodily parts and their functions, and creating a robot.
We are at a crossroads of our decisions. Do we want to fully accept all the
possibilities offered by the techno-scientific mind, including the disappearance of man
as a self-conscious living being, or do we advocate for a different way of thinking
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-996X.htm
Received 21 October 2013
Revised 7 January 2014
Accepted 8 January 2014
Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society
Vol. 12 No. 2, 2014
pp. 133-148
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/JICES-10-2013-0040
Human
enhancement
technologies
133
and existence. In the inexhaustibility of man’s life and the ethos of his self-
preservation, we see a chance that, on the possible end of human history, we may find
solicitous sources of the true history that are out of sight for the metaphysical mind
and its version of being and essence of man. The discussion on the cyborgoethic issues
and principles is a small but an inevitable step on this path.
2. Technologic existence and the end of human beings
Man is an invention of date.
And one perhaps nearing its end [...]
One can certainly wager that man would be erased,
like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea (Foucault, 1966/1971, p. 387).
These are the final thoughts of Foucalt’s book The Order of Things: An Archaeology of
the Human Sciences, in which he prophetically announces the death of mankind:
If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at
the moment do no more than sense the possibility – without knowing either what its form
will be or what it promises – were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical
thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that
man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea (Foucault, 1966/1971,
p. 387).
The techno-scientific progress in the human evolution is dictated by the ubiquitous
cybernetics, which organizes the integration of the man and the machine, giving
rise to a new ontologic situation in which the homo sapiens is replaced with homo
cyborg.
The term cyborg has come into existence by courtesy of scientists Manfred Clynes
and Nathan Kline, who in 1960 published an article under the title “Cyborgs and
space”. The article dealt with the ways of adapting humans to survive in space and the
possible future of space flights with human crew, claiming that “altering man’s bodily
functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more
logical than providing an earthy environment for him in space” (Clynes an d Kline,
1995, pp. 29-34). For this particular reason, Clynes and Kline (1995, pp. 30-31)
suggested that the term cyborg be used to name any kind of “exogeneously extended
organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system”.
The development of cyborgs stems from the field of cybernetics, the science dealing
with ways of receiving and using the information in organized systems – machines,
living organisms, and their relations. The founder of cybernetics, Wiener (1964,
pp. 15-19), put forward the basic tenets of cybernetics in 1948, but also pointed out the
dangers of selfish exploitations that could lead to dehumanization of human beings.
The connection between the human nature and the machines dates way back to
forming mechanic metaphors. Indian national epic “The Mahabharata”, written around
300 BC, depicts a machine in the form of a lion. In the “Discourse of the Method”,
Descartes (1988) states that the animals were machines used to make comparisons
between their bodies and the movements of the clock mechanism. In the eighteenth
century, De La Mettrie (1748/1912, p. 141) compared the man with a machine, “Human
body is a clock”. But one thing makes the cyborg of today different from his mechanical
ancestor – built-in information system. As Haraway explains:
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