The Reading Room #5: Natural Born Cyborgs

The Reading Room – een kunstenaarsproject van Platform for Thoughts in Motion - is een serie gesprekken in de FLEX-ruimte van GEMAK over thema’s uit de wereld van hedendaagse cultuur, kunst en filosofie.

Gastlezer tijdens deze bijeenkomst is Wybo Houkes. Hij zal een tekst voorlezen uit het boek Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence van Andy Clark. Geinteresseerden kunnen een plek reserveren door een e-mail te sturen naar platformtm@gmail.com. Zij zullen dan ook de tekst toegezonden krijgen.

Biografie Wybo Houkes (ENG):
Wybo Houkes is associate professor in philosophy of science and technology at the School of Innovation Sciences of Eindhoven University of Technology. He led an NWO-Vidi project titled “Darwinism in the Human-Made World” (2008-2013) and was a post-doc in the NWO Programme “The Dual Nature of Technical Artefacts” (Delft, 2000-2004). His research interests include technical artefacts and their functions, the role of intentions in design and use, technological knowledge, and cultural-evolutionary models of technology.

About the text:
Recent advances in technology – social media, synthetic biology, brain implants – offer unlimited possibilities for exploring and enhancing ourselves, our interactions with others and our relation to the ‘natural’ world. We are witnesses, perhaps even participants, in a ‘cyborg’ revolution or a transition to a ‘Post-Human Era’ – or are we? According to Andy Clark, the merging of humans and machines is perfectly natural: it is what human brains and bodies have been doing for ages. Using examples such as Stelarc’s Third Hand and artificial vision, Clark builds a powerful argument for his claim that we are ‘natural-born cyborgs’. He gets additional support from archaeology and anthropology. Dietrich Stout’s work on the making of stone tools shows that even seemingly rudimentary technologies require an interplay of environmental scaffolding, sophisticated brains, embodied skills and social traditions. The cyborg revolution may be speeding up, but it has been gathering steam for millions of years.