September Is Cyborg Month 118
Snowmit writes "In May 1960, Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline presented a paper called 'Drugs, Space, and Cybernetics.' The proceedings of the symposium were published in 1961, but, before that, an excerpt of Clynes & Kline's paper appeared in the September issue of Astronautics magazine (issue 13), entitled Cyborgs and Space [PDF]. Aside from a mention in the New York Times, that's is the first time the word appears in print. This month is the 50th anniversary of that article. To commemorate, a group of writers and artists have gotten together to create 50 Post About Cyborgs. Over the course of the month, there will be essays, fiction, links to great older material, comics, and even a song. We're going to talk about Daleks, IEDs, Renaissance memory palaces, chess computers, prosthetic imagination, Videodrome, mutants, sports, and maybe the Bible. To kick things off, Kevin Kelly wrote this essay arguing that we've been cyborgs all along."
Sept 18 (Score:3, Funny)
September is Cyborg month, and the 18th is Talk Like a Pirate Day. What does that mean?
http://zenisstupid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/cyborg-pirate-ninja-jesus.jpg [zenisstupid.com]
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If you miss Cyborg September this go-around, don't worry, it'll be back.
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Ninjas won't have a chance against Cyborg Pirates!
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I'm a cyborg (I have a device implanted in my left eye), but I try not to infringe copyright unless absolutely necessary, and I've never commited mayhem on the high seas.
I do talk like a pirate sometimes. Shiver me timbers!
Zombie Jesus (Score:3, Funny)
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Oh yes my boy, tip of the cutlass, tip of the cutlass.
say what again? (Score:4, Informative)
Aside from a mention in the New York Times, that's is the first time the word appears in print.
So the point is to celebrate the second time that the term was used?
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We NEVER Celebrate anything the news media says.
Re:say what again? (Score:5, Informative)
The mention in the NYT is a reporter reporting on the talk that Clynes and Kline gave. So yeah, I figured the one where they actually publicly define the term would be the better anniversary.
Cybauorg! (Score:3, Funny)
If a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, that makes the likes of Terminators cyborgs. Daleks and Cybermen, and the Borg, are cybernetically augmented organisms, which I quoined "cybauorgs".
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What's the difference between a cybernetic organism and a cybernetically augmented organism?
Does not the one entail the other?
And,as an aside, what's "quoined"?
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Rhymes with coined, meaning to create a new word. A cybernetic organism is a life form constructed, like a Terminator, while an augmented one, in my opinion, is naturally born, but has later had something like a robot arm attached.
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Ah, whether the basic part is built or born.
I'm pretty sure that "to create a new word" is "to coin a phrase" and not "to qoin a phrase",
as in "minting a new coin". Unless of course "qoined" was in fact the new word you were creating ; ).
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Couldnt remember if it wasa spelling mistake I read once, or if there was some British spelling shenanigan going on.
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Late reply : ).
I am almost sure qoined is a spelling mistake.
As other posters have pointed out a cyborg is based on an organism, a born, living creature cybernetically enhanced. The Terminator would be a biobot or biochine, a biologically enhanced robot or machine.
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Qoined isn't English - it can't be as there is no U after the Q.
Quoined [thefreedictionary.com] is a word, though it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Re:Cybauorg! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, no.
A Terminator is NOT a cyborg. A cyborg is an ORGANISM which has been ENHANCED or even REPLACED by cybernetic machinery. The key is that the original entity was a living biologically based organism.
A Terminator is merely a ROBOT covered by an organic covering. The covering is no more significant than if the robot were just wearing clothes. It's just covering. The machine underneath is not a living organism and never was.
Just because James Cameron doesn't know his technology, the word cyborg has been debased beyond all recognition. It's probably a waste of time to try to correct it any more, but I like wasting my time.
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You might be pleased to know that there's a contribution in the pipeline that will argue along these lines.
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We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Except for Master of Transhuman. We gonna kick THAT bitches ass to the kerb.
A cyborg is an ORGANISM which has been ENHANCED or even REPLACED by cybernetic machinery.
Okay, so they took a human, and REPLACED all the squishy internals with machinery. How is that NOT a cyborg ???
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(sigh) Terminators were never organisms to begin with. Sam Worthington is not your classical Terminator.
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So you're saying that a cyborg is a path-based, rather than a state-based, definition?
So, no matter how many human parts you added to Data, he'd still be an android, but if you replaced Bareil Antos' whole brain with positronics he'd be a cyborg?
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*points*
Geeeeeek
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No, no, no.
A Terminator is NOT a cyborg. A cyborg is an ORGANISM which has been ENHANCED or even REPLACED by cybernetic machinery. The key is that the original entity was a living biologically based organism..
So... if you wear a wristwatch, and prescription lenses, or contacts... or even sunglasses, and... carry a cell phone, or wear a belt to hold up your trousers, or have a pin in the ankle you damaged as an adolescent, or are an amputee with a prosthetic, or any combination of these or similar enhancements, you are no longer merely human. You, sir, are a cyborg. Halo save us all.
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No, no, no.
A Terminator is NOT a cyborg. A cyborg is an ORGANISM which has been ENHANCED or even REPLACED by cybernetic machinery. The key is that the original entity was a living biologically based organism..
So... if you wear a wristwatch, and prescription lenses, or contacts... or even sunglasses, and... carry a cell phone, or wear a belt to hold up your trousers, or have a pin in the ankle you damaged as an adolescent, or are an amputee with a prosthetic, or any combination of these or similar enhancements, you are no longer merely human. You, sir, are a cyborg. Halo save us all.
Well I wouldn't go that far. Actually I always thought of it as having a not easily removable piece of technology that replaces or enhances a piece of your body. So I wouldn't say that wearing glasses makes you cyborg, that is more using a tool to enhance your vision. If you had implanted lenses so you could see then that is more along the lines of cyborg. amputee with prosthetic definitely counts. I would consider myself one having my insulin pump connected to me. It always gets a bit interesting on the fr
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A lot of people have argued that is true but I don't agree. A cyborg is an organism which has had an organic part completely or partially replaced by a mechanism. So the first items you suggest (watches, eyeglasses, etc.) wouldn't qualify, but, yes, a guy with a prosthetic arm is a cyborg. A guy with a pin in his ankle is a gray area - I'd say not so much because the modification is so minor and not so much a replacement of existing organics. If he had a fully prosthetic ankle, you could say he was a cyborg
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Add Josh Friedman since he screwed up the show and got it canceled.
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quoined
Isn't that the stuff that lets you claim that the only reason you drink all those gin and tonics is to stave off malaria?
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The dictionary definition of cyborg IS an organism whose bodily functions are augmented by an implanted device.
I have been assimilated. Resistance was not only futile, I was willingly implanted. Best $1,000 I ever spent.
Emotion Chip... (Score:1)
Cyborg #1: "All your base are belong to us biatches!!!1!11!!!"
Cyborg #2: "Duuuuude, that is so 1991, ugh..."
Cyborg #1: "Eat my shorts then!"
Cyborg #2: "..."
ummm... wha? (Score:2)
As a loyal slashdotter I have carefully read the summary and nothing else. If I understood TFS this isn't about the paper itself... and the New York Times and not this article was the first to use the word in print. What is this celebrating again? The second time cyborg appeared in print?
Interesting premise, but flawed arguments (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea is interesting, and it's certainly true that if all technology were removed, including stone and bone implements, humans would have a much tougher time surviving. But there are areas of the world where we could survive without handmade weapons or fire. We're not very well-equipped for such an existence, but we're not completely helpless.
One argument the author makes repeatedly which makes no sense to me is the notion that cooking provides an "external stomach" which pre-digests our food. There are some foods that are unsafe to eat without being cooked, because of disease that they could be carrying, but in general very little of what we eat MUST be cooked, or is even harder to digest without cooking. Raw meat is just as nutritious and as easily digestible as cooked meat, it just doesn't taste as good (with some exceptions). Raw vegetables are often more nutritious than cooked vegetables.
There's no argument that if we were to have all technology/tools removed and even lose our ability to create primitive tools the human carrying capacity of the earth would be at most a few million, maybe only a few hundred thousand. So I guess you could say that 99.99% of us are "cyborgs".
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We have to boil unprocessed water. That on its own makes fire essential.
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No we don't. At least, not as a species. Just because I can't drink the water in Mexico without getting horribly sick doesn't mean that 'homo sapiens' broadly construed as a species can't. Exhibit A being the indigenous population that survives just fine drinking the water there.
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You can't drink the water in the USA without getting horribly sick. Go out into the woods and drink some spring water. You're at risk of getting some nasty bacteria.
Oh, and once you're far enough south in Mexico, Mexicans don't drink the water [cancunsouth.com]. And the times they can it's only because MEXICO ALSO PURIFIES THEIR WATER! [articlesbase.com]
Most Homo Sapiens cannot safely drink water that hasn't been purified anymore. Especially standing water. Flowing water is lower risk, but still not a guarantee.
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So, your entire argument boils down to this: Thanks to the sanitation implications of high density settlements, we need fire (and by extension technology) to survive?
Never mind that those high density settlements were only ever possible because of technology?
Even with those links, the inability to drink the water has nothing to do with humans, and everything to do with sanitation in dense settlements--which would collapse anyway without technology. The OPs point was that humans can survive without technolo
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The OPs point was that humans can survive without technology
I think it would be wiser to say that "humans could, at one time survive without technology".
At least in the so-called "civilized world", we don't seem to be selecting for "hardiness" these days.
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Go out into the woods and drink some spring water.
Much rather drink the delicious organic water from the Cascade [wikipedia.org] brooks than the crap that flows out of metropolitan taps. Would you rather drink a few drops of deer piss, or do you enjoy putting pharmaceutical waste, fluoride, heavy metals, and who knows what else into your body?
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Have you ever wondered why the rates of things like allergies are skyrocketing? People don't expose themselves to nature. I grew up on a farm, and I can tell you with certainty that no farm child in had hay allergies. In fact, allergies of any kind were rare.
Isolating yourself in a city drinking nothing but treated water in a perfectly sterile setting is weakening you, slowly making you dependent on that environment for survival. That's just reality, and honestly it would almost certainly be healthier f
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Go out into the woods and drink some spring water. You're at risk of getting some nasty bacteria.
If it's actually spring water, come directly from being filtered through hundreds of feet of rock, you'll be just fine. If it's flowed on the surface for any distance at all, then you should purify it.
I often drink from mountain springs when backpacking. I carry a filter and/or purification tablets for drinking water from streams and rivers, but I don't bother to purify spring water.
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You can't drink the water in the USA without getting horribly sick. Go out into the woods and drink some spring water. You're at risk of getting some nasty bacteria.
The water where in USA, which is a rather large and diverse country? And at how big of a risk?
I'm not afraid to drink unpurified water from streams in the woods here in Sweden (and no, I don't include the stream in the wood next to the local petrochemical industry in that), and have managed to do it for over 30 years without getting noticeably sick from it, as have many others.
On the other hand, I can't breathe the air here in Sweden without getting nasty viruses, as my current common cold, and the many sim
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Most Homo Sapiens cannot safely drink water that hasn't been purified anymore.
Purification is needed isn't because Homo Sapiens can't survive without, but because we have to many people and to little natural grown resources. Some hundred thousand years ago you had far fewer humans and thus could simply go around and search for wild growing food and clean water, if you try that with thousands or millions of people in a rather small area, you quickly have exhausted all natural grown resources.
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Exhibit A being the indigenous population that survives just fine drinking the water there.
No, they don't. I lived in Mexico for two years, and except in locations where the water is purified (or from a spring), Mexicans do not drink their water without boiling or otherwise purifying it. That's the reason that Mexicans drink so much water with fruit juice in it -- the flavoring from the fruit covers the flat taste of water that has been boiled.
That said, that doesn't mean there is no naturally-occurring pure water in Mexico or elsewhere. There's quite a bit. Not enough to support our needs,
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Better to be "full of shit" than having it running out of you like a waterfall.
As someone who has had Amoebiasis (from tap water no less), and spent pretty much 3 weeks on antibiotics sat in the bathroom doubled up in pain and everything I either ate or drank passing right through my system and out the other end in 5 minutes, I can tell you it's no joke.
Still, you go one drinking your deer piss and whatnot ... I'll stick with my purified drinking water.
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Still, you go one drinking your deer piss and whatnot ... I'll stick with my purified drinking water.
Not all water sources in nature are the same. Just because you can drink the water from a spring, doesn't mean you can also drink the water from the a puddle where a dead dear is floating in.
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but if the dead deer corpse falls in the river and you drink from it at the wrong time...
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AFAIK, cooked meat actually is a lot easier to digest. Also, the argument that raw vegetables are more nutritious ignored the fact that the nutrients tend to be more bioavailable after cooking. So, while cooking may destroy some nutrients, it also unlocks a lot more so that your body generally winds up being better nourished by the "nutrient-poor" cooked version. See how long you can live on raw potato if you don't believe me. I imagine you'd give up pretty quick. (Even ignoring the taste.) OTOH, a hu
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AFAIK, cooked meat actually is a lot easier to digest.
Cite? I can't find any support for that idea, and can find some apparently-respectable arguments that say the opposite, that heating meat decreases digestibility.
See how long you can live on raw potato if you don't believe me. I imagine you'd give up pretty quick. (Even ignoring the taste.) OTOH, a human can live for a decent amount of time on cooked potatoes.
Again, do you have any reference for this? I can't find any sources that indicate that raw potatoes don't provide the same nutrients as cooked. Plenty that talk about how most of the nutrients are in the skin, of course.
Re:Interesting premise, but flawed arguments (Score:4, Informative)
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Thanks.
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When it comes to meat, however, the literature seems to support your contention that the tissues of raw meat are equally if not more digestible than cooked meats in most cases. However, raw meat is sometimes harder to chew, which can make a sizeable difference. (Sometimes it is not harder to chew; it depends on the meat. Organ meats are not as tough as muscle meat; chicken is not as tough as beef.) If the calories expended in chewing up the meat exceed the digestion benefits of the raw meat, then cooking t
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meant to say "by killing bacteria and parasites"
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Does it also explain why sushi is so tasty?
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Finally, cooking meat can render it safer by killing bacteria; the digestibility of the tissues is not of much concern to someone dying from trichinosis.
Certainly. I mentioned in my original post that some foods need to be cooked in order to be safe to eat.
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Cite?
The podcast episode Richard Wrangham - Rediscovering Fire [pointofinquiry.org] discusses the issue. As far as I remember basically cooking makes food easier to chew and increases its calories. Thus we get more energy, while at the same time saving a lot of time from the chewing.
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Interesting. Google turns up a lot of articles that indicate that Wrangham's hypothesis is not widely accepted by other anthropologists, but perhaps that's because it's a new idea. I'm not completely convinced, though it bears watching.
I should mention, because some of the responses to my posts seem to make some incorrect assumptions about me, that I'm not a "raw foodist", nor do I have any inclination that way. My argument wasn't that cooking is bad, or that raw foods are healthier, just that cooking
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There's no argument that if we were to have all technology/tools removed and even lose our ability to create primitive tools the human carrying capacity of the earth would be at most a few million, maybe only a few hundred thousand. So I guess you could say that 99.99% of us are "cyborgs".
If you make the definition of "cyborg" so broad as to include any basic tool use (as Kevin Kelly does) then the term loses it's usefulness, IMHO. It's actually pretty hard to define the word. I'd want to include active prosthetics such as myoelectric limbs and cochlear implants but not artificial limbs that aren't directly controlled by the nervous system or sensors that merely modify, filter or enhance stimulus for an existing sense organ (I don't think wearing night-vision goggles makes you a cyborg). I t
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So you'd limit "cyborg" to only those systems that include a direct machine-nerve interface? Seems pretty restrictive. You'd even exclude neuromancer-like mirrorshades, since they're essentially surgically implanted night vision goggles. You'd exclude most of the existing powered prostheses, which are controlled by shoulder or stump motion. No myoelectric limbs have a direct neural interface, but use EMG (if they use any biopotential signal at all), which is a neural signal amplified by residual muscle.
I wouldn't want to be that restrictive. By "directly controlled by the nervous system" I was trying to make the distinction between something operated by conventional means such as manual controls and something operated more directly but I don't think it should require a direct neural interface necessarily. So prostheses operated by stump motion would be included.
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To put it simply, it makes no sense to you because you hold false beliefs and it doesn't seem to have occurred to you that you just might be wrong.
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To put it simply, it makes no sense to you because you hold false beliefs and it doesn't seem to have occurred to you that you just might be wrong.
That's a very content-free rebuttal.
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I look around for some links, but to think that meat uncooked is as energy efficient as meat cooked is just wrong. Beyond that, there is no lower animal that prefers uncooked to cooked. I expect this last claim has not been exhaustively tested, but for apes it has been tested. Hah, this was trivial to find:http://pdfcast.org/pdf/cooking-and-grinding-reduces-the-cost-of-meat-digestion
There is a particular difficulty in your general "we do not quite need tech"..Last I heard "we" had fire 4 meg years ago, b
Some of us are (Score:5, Informative)
For all the sci-fi fantasy and the "we all are" cyborg nonsense, some of us living among you ARE cyborgs. Maybe not as exciting as a Borgified Picard, but without computer implants and mechanical augmentation we wouldn't be alive (and some have advantages as a result).
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Technology satisfies emotional needs as well as physical ones. Humans require both.
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No they don't.
Modern humans do. Arguably, 'healthy' humans do. But humans, as a species, have managed to do with far more traumatized lives on average than the typical iphone user does.
If you have time to worry about whether your facebook updates are up-to-date, you seriously do not represent the minimum requirement of survival for the human species.
You may argue that social interaction is enriching to people overall, but if your argument is that humans *need* such things, that they *require* it, then you'r
We're talking cyborgs, not pen pals (Score:2)
You have ignored the obvious: this thread is about cyborgs, which are part man part machine (implanted computer is implied). You're talking about 21st Century pen-pals.
This "cell phones and social networking make us cyborgs" stuff is just a childish attempt to jump on a fantasy's bandwagon. Cyborgs are cool, so you want to be one and proceed to extrapolate the notion to non-sequiturs to your satisfaction. No, you're not a cyborg because you have an iPhone and a Facebook account any more than having a telegr
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People keep bringing up the latest augmentations (mobile phones, apps et al) - but I still find the most compelling example, by virtue of lasting evidence, optical prosthetics (i.e.: eyeglasses).
For centuries we have been able to enable a large segment of the population to be functional and contribute to society while being fully dependent on technological prosthetics.
As a myopic, I'm acutely aware that my whole ancestral line has benefited from our ability to compensate physical disabilities through techni
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Oh, come on. Mastodons are huge!
Err... were huge.
Cyborg Theory (Score:1)
oh really? (Score:2)
I thought it was Android month. Could be "people who like to give fish weed" month for all cared
This is the only cyborg I care about (Score:4, Funny)
When they start looking like this, email me.
http://blog.hdscreencaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/summer_glau_0002.jpg/ [hdscreencaps.com]
http://usemycomputer.com/indeximages/2009/May/SummerGlauTerminatorSecondSeasonMay2009114.jpg/ [usemycomputer.com]
http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/babes/1920x1200/summer_glau_20090725_0161.jpg/ [wallpaperweb.org]
http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/babes/1280x800/summer_glau_20091211_2158_1280x800.jpg/ [wallpaperweb.org]
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Well, I screwed those goddamn links up!
Let's try again:
http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/3936/summerglau232tw3.jpg [imageshack.us]
http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/9497/summerglau1514gg2.jpg [imageshack.us]
http://img205.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=54834_summer-fire_230B78_122_111lo.jpg [imagevenue.com]
http://img45.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=39069_Summer-G001_122_72lo.jpg [imagevenue.com]
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Just out of curiosity, why is her age surprising? Did you think she was younger or older?
She's only been acting for eight years. She seems younger than 29 because she's so quiet and shy and a bit socially awkward because of her history of shyness. When she first came to Los Angeles, she had to take assertiveness courses. I find her amazing for being able to do what she does despite being so shy, as well as for her amazing physical abilities.
One interesting thing about her is her facial expressions. If you
Y'all are weird. (Score:1)
I'm a cyborg. Have been for years. (Score:1)
Yep. I have dental implants (titanium/ceramic composite teeth screwed into the skull) and a titanium plate with six screws in my arm. It may not be electronic, but I do have artificial replacement parts.
So there. Cyborg.
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Well, 'cyber' doesn't just mean artificial, it refers to computer-like components. So you just have to get a cochlear implant or a pacemaker and you'll be a literal cyborg just like in the movies.
I am *NOT* a toaster..... (Score:2)
...I'm a Skinjob. ;-)
*Yawn* (Score:2)
"Aside from a mention in the New York Times, that's is the first time the word appears in print. This month is the 50th anniversary of that article."
In other words, it's not the first time the word appears in print - but we're celebrating as if it were anyhow.
"To commemorate, a group of writers and artists have gotten together to create 50 Post About Cyborgs."
And why, exactly, am I supposed to care that a bunch of random bloggers I've never heard of are using a barely readable website to publish their opini
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And why, exactly, am I supposed to care that a bunch of random bloggers I've never heard of are using a barely readable website to publish their opinions on cyborgs?
I don't know, why did you come to Slashdot?
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Sorry, as I've matured, I find my tastes have become a bit more discerning. When you grow up, yours probably will too.
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I wasn't saying that this is the type of stuff that Slashdot is all about. I was more implying that Slashdot (or, more specifically, this article) is a collection of people writing on the internet (bloggers, if you will) publishing their opinions on cyborgs on a barely readable website (ok, Slashdot is fairly legible once Firefox recovers from the initial loading but it's a joke so a little artistic license is allowed). Then again you're mature enough to recognise a joke so it must be that I'm misinterpreti
Before there were Cyborgs there was Cybernetics (Score:2)
For another take, read Andrew Pickering's "The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future" ( http://bit.ly/bTFrqb [bit.ly] )
Am I a cyborg? (Score:2)
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Well, I wear contact lenses, but I'm still waiting for them to be equipped with infra-red nightsight, or even better, x-ray vision.
Cyborg = Extended Phenotype (Score:2)
Judging from the article and "50 Posts" web site, this group's definition of "Cyborg" is broad enough to be equivalent to Richard Dawkins' notion of the "Extended Phenotype" ( http://amzn.to/cbSmTo [amzn.to] or many online hits ). Or perhaps to a second order recursion of the EP. The reach of our genes extends outside our somatic selves to the mechanisms we build with our tool-wielding hands. These mechanisms (perhaps themselves crypto-biological) are then candidates for tinkering within our soma - a prosthetic ha
may 1961 subtracted from september 2010 is... (Score:1)
Drugs, Sex, and Rock n' Roll (Score:1)
I'm probably not the first to note the similarity of the paper's title to that cliché about rock stars and their groupies. One has to wonder how much the authors were influenced by the Zeitgeist [wikipedia.org] of the sixties, the so-called Flower Power era.
Still it makes for an interesting read that shows how much we already knew about space before Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn finally reached low earth orbit. Maybe a doped astronaut isn't such a bad idea, getting high in the high of space.
Life is based on cybernetics ... (Score:3, Informative)
Cybernetics is about mechanical/electronic devices just like astronomy is about telescopes.
Obligatory (Score:2)
I am, technically, a cyborg (Score:1)
I have a condition called otosclerosis - the membrane that the last ear-bone goes through to connect to the cochlea turns to bone. As a result, that last ear-bone stops moving = all three bones stop moving = you go deaf.
They drilled a hole in the membrane, and put a titanium-steel rod in place of the last bone.
The upshot? I can now hear again, but I have to fight the urge to find and kill Sarah Connor.
How to Celebrate (Score:1)
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How about Norbert Weiner? (Score:1)
This is absurd. Dr. Weiner published his seminal book "Cybernetics" in 1948...
6 Million Dollar Man (Score:2)
God how I loved that show when I was a kid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Million_Dollar_Man [wikipedia.org]