Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cyborg'
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1
Seay, Laina. "Craft Cyborg." VCU Scholars Compass, 2011. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/2426.
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By merging the ancient associations that clay has with the human form and prosthetic science I question the relevancy and role of the human body in the future. As prosthetics heighten the awareness of the body through absence these additive limbs further this relevancy by presence. With greater advances in genetic engineering and plastic surgery biology will no longer dominate and these ridged clay extensions could become flesh.
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Filas, Michael Joseph. "Cyborg subjectivity /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9369.
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Castillo, Andrew T. "CYBORG GENESIS." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2014. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/110.
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We are currently living in an artificial, increasingly complex created system of discourse heavily base on socially constructed systems of language and digital technologies. How we use these technologies to advance the human condition in terms of our very existence makes us inherently cyborg in nature. With the increase in digital technologies in every aspect of day –to-day existence from your morning coffee to higher education, we have become increasingly dependent on our cyborg identities. This thesis, then, serves as a project that looks to understand how we have come to this point and to what extent our newly found cyborg identities can serve as the catalyst for progress particularly in education and the further production and transmission of human knowledge.
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Alvarez, Guido E. "AVATAR, CYBORG, ICEVORG: SIMULACRA’S SCION." VCU Scholars Compass, 2015. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4026.
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I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.”
The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop also known as Metalepsis ICEVORG find an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and naturalization.
The development of the framework that explains the concept of ICEVORG happens in the interstices between fiction and reality.
The ICEVORG transgresses boundaries to reach and transcend the concepts of the avatar and cyborg in order to generate meaning and pursue relevance in contemporary society.
By dissecting the ICEVORG under the light of metalepsis that I am able to elaborate a framework to explain the world of post-hyperrealism and how ICEVORGS have become agents of change. Finally, in order to construct my argument, I employ autoethnography, a research methodology that allows for a more personal voice to be included as part of the research process.
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Danylevich, Theodora. "Cyborg textuality / cyborg subjectivity a trans-medic re-visioning of enlightenment humanism for the cybernetic era /." CONNECT TO ELECTRONIC THESIS, 2008. http://dspace.wrlc.org/handle/1961/4558.
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Nusselder, André Cornelis. "Interface fantasy a Lacanian cyborg ontology /." [S.l : Rotterdam : s.n.] ; Erasmus University [Host], 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1765/8108.
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Kollaja, Joshua. "Oneness the nature of a cyborg apocalypse /." Laramie, Wyo. : University of Wyoming, 2009. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1950196431&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=18949&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Ferguson, Christopher L. "Cyborg culture informing architecture, reinserting the human." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp05/MQ63514.pdf.
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Goolsby, Julie Malinda. "A Manifest Cyborg: Laurie Anderson and Technology." unrestricted, 2006. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07252006-204355/.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.Title from title cover. Mary Hocks, committee chair; Susan Richmond, Gregory Smith, Maria Gindhart, committee members. Electronic text (65 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 21, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65).
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Smith, Nicole R. "Wangechi Mutu: Feminist Collage and the Cyborg." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2009. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/art_design_theses/51.
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Wangechi Mutu is an internationally recognized Kenyan-born artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She creates collaged female figures composed of human, animal, object, and machine parts. Mutu’s constructions of the female body provide a transcultural critique on the female persona in Western culture. This paper contextualizes Mutu’s work and artistic strategies within feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial narratives on collage, while exploring whether collage strategies are particularly useful for feminist artists. In their fusion of machine and organism, Mutu’s characters are visual metaphors for feminist cyborgs, particularly those outlined by Donna Haraway. In this paper, I examine parallels between collage as an aesthetic strategy and the figure of the cyborg to suggest meaningful ways of approaching differences between women and how they experience life in contemporary Western culture.
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Short, Susan Eva. "Machine dreams : cyborg cinema and contemporary subjectivity." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.397045.
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Lewis, Sophie. "Cyborg labour : exploring surrogacy as gestational work." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/cyborg-labour-exploring-surrogacy-as-gestational-work(2a3f4b10-8a41-4ba9-a193-0a9067babf4a).html.
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Commercial gestational surrogacy, also called contract pregnancy, involves privately contracting a biogenetically curated pregnancy using IVF. It distinguishes itself from what is commonly considered 'natural' in procreation, in that the human fetuses it produces are formally entered into a legal unit other than the family of the gestator. My work here contends that this practice is best thought, not in isolation, but in the context of social reproduction more generally and as a central component of future geographies of fetal manufacture that would treat (all) pregnancy as work. This project demands, for me, a critical revisiting of theoretic texts like Mary O'Brien's The Politics of Reproduction (O'Brien 1981). But, in my reading, O'Brien's race-blind gynocentrism doomed her to miss the ensemble of practices - forms of surrogacy among them - that have already long been engaged in the sublation of reproductive labour she professes (yet defers until after the revolution). In geography as in O'Brien, the political horizon of reproductive justice theorised by Black and/or Marxist feminists since the 1970s (Davis 1981; Ross et al. 2016), has been neglected. In assembling materials for a future rewriting of "The Politics of Reproduction" in the context of geography -a trans-inclusive uterine geography- I draw on this canon of reproductive justice first. I question the assumption that there can ever be an absence of surrogacy (i.e. an absence of assistance, co-production, or "sym-poesis" (Haraway 2016)) in babymaking. Thus I explore the synthetic substance of surrogacy synthetically, using a lens I call 'gestational labour': a conceptual hybrid of the postwork perspective on care (Weeks 2011; Federici 1975), the Marxist-feminist concept 'clinical labour' (Cooper and Waldby 2014) and cyborgicity (Haraway 1991). Deploying 'gestational labour' together with a commitment to solidarity vis-à-vis surrogates, I analyse recent events, pro- and anti-surrogacy discourses (both clinical-capitalist and activist), and trends in critical literature that illuminate an immanent 'uterine geography' (or fail to). I aim to demonstrate that the technophobic anticommodification critique of surrogacy's detractors is ultimately as insufficient as the class-blind ('philanthrocapitalist') feminism of surrogacy's sales representatives. My point is that so-called natural forms of the family are themselves already 'technologies of reproductive assistance' differently mediated in the market. Our task is unfortunately neither a matter of simply saying 'stop', nor of pretending that the satisfaction people feel in "mutually advantageous exploitation" (Panitch 2013), on such an unequal playing-field, is somehow 'enough'.Surrogate gestators sometimes show us glimpses of 'mothering against motherhood'. They expose gestation as a cyborg form of labour-power, which is to say, collective human activity always already mixed up with 'technologies' on the one hand and strange more-than-human organisms on the other. Pitting surrogacy against surrogacy, I propose keeping our understanding of what surrogacy could mean radically open. On this basis, I point readers and potential future collaborators towards new kinds of sym-poetic geographical practice: surrogacies - or, engagements with reproductive politics in the broadest sense - which I think our historic moment urgently requires.
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Afanador, López Tatiana. "La metáfora cyborg: órganos artificiales y encrucijadas." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/673890.
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En esta investigación pretendo mostrar que los híbridos cyborg son un tipo de metáforas que son fruto de la experiencia de corporalización. Estas metáforas aparecen cuando el cyborg logra que sus órganos artificiales adquieran cierta clase de plasticidad biológica, cada vez que uno de sus órganos biológicos se extiende en una máquina e, incluso, cuando se le fabrican órganos a las máquinas para que sientan el mundo exterior. De acuerdo con esto, los órganos artificiales del cyborg no se diseñan como cosas, sino como metáforas/ encrucijadas, esto es, como un punto de colisión de los trayectos por donde circulan los órganos y las máquinas, las disciplinas que contribuyen a que exista esta circulación junto con los cuerpos y las mentes que experimentan estas mezclas biotecnológicas. La presente investigación está compuesta de cuatro metáforas/ encrucijadas: las metáforas de la hibridación cibernética, las metáforas del sentido del sí mismo, las metáforas computacionales y las metáforas del devenir. Por último, se incluye la creación de un prototipo de un órgano cyborg.In this study I set out to show that cyborg hybrids are a type of metaphor resulting from the experience of embodiment. These metaphors appear when a cyborg succeeds in making its artificial organs acquire a certain biological plasticity, whenever one of its biological organs is extended into a machine, or even when organs are made to enable machines to sense the outside world. Thus, a cyborg’s artificial organs are not designed as things, but as metaphors/crossroads; that is, as intersections among the channels of circulation of organs and machines, disciplines contributing to this circulation, and bodies and minds experiencing these biotechnological amalgams. The present study is articulated around four metaphors/crossroads: metaphors of cybernetic hybridisation, metaphors of the sense of self, computer metaphors, and metaphors of becoming. Lastly, the design of an original cyborg organ prototype is included.
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Proietti, Salvatore. "The cyborg, cyberspace, and North American science fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0021/NQ44558.pdf.
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Hamilton, Sheryl N. (Sheryl Noreen) Carleton University Dissertation Journalism and Communication. "Intimate couplings: a feminist interrogation of the Cyborg." Ottawa, 1995.
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Fancher, Patricia Jean. "Life through the lens cyborg subjectivity in cinema /." Connect to Electronic Thesis (CONTENTdm), 2009. http://worldcat.org/oclc/457040064/viewonline.
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FASOLI, ANNACHIARA. "TECNOLOGIE DI SMATERIALIZZAZIONE DAL CYBORG AL MIND UPLOADING." Doctoral thesis, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10280/119447.
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All’alba del XXI secolo, alcuni studiosi affermano il congedo dall’umano, la comparsa del cyborg e del c.d. ‘post-umano’.
Indubbiamente, la relazione tra uomo e tecnologia costituisce un elemento centrale della contemporaneità: il progresso tecno-scientifico consente di intervenire su quasi ogni evento della vita umana, dalla nascita alla morte.
La “fine dell’uomo”, tuttavia, è accettata come un dato di fatto, privo di evidenze e di dimostrazioni stringenti.
Scopo della tesi, afferente idealmente alla bioetica e alla filosofia della persona, è mostrare che la trasformazione dell’uomo in cyborg e in “post-uomo” non solo è lontana da essere realtà, ma poggia su premesse filosofiche discutibili e in ultima istanza alienanti. Muovendo dal progetto cyborg degli anni ’60, quale caso studio, sono esaminate le posizioni dei pensatori della “cyborgizzazione”, da Manfred Clynes e Nathan Kline a Donna Haraway, fino a Nick Bostrom, tenendo sullo sfondo la cibernetica di Norbert Wiener, delineando in questo modo una significativa comprensione del nostro tempo.
Il fil rouge delle riflessioni è la smaterializzazione della soggettività che caratterizza, secondo andamenti paradossali, i discorsi sul cyborg sino alle odierne teorie sul postumano.
Per come è esaminato il cyborg, l’ambivalenza del rapporto uomo-macchina si palesa nel fatto che la tecnologia, pensata come promessa di indipendenza, comporta l’asservimento, infine, persino, la scomparsa del corpo, ossia una logica di alienazione.In 21st century, some scholars claim the “end of man” and the coming of the cyborg and the so-called 'post-human'. Certainly, today, the relationship between man and technology is a central element: techno-science has made it possible to intervene on almost every event in human life, from birth to death. The "end of man," however, is accepted as a fact, devoid of evidence and stringent demonstration. In this thesis, ideally afferent to bioethics and philosophy of the person, it is argued that the transformation of man into cyborg and "post-human" is far from becoming reality. Moreover, it rests on questionable and ultimately alienating philosophical premises. Starting from the cyborg project of the '60s, as a case study, the positions of the thinkers of "cyborgization" are examined: from Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline to Donna Haraway and Nick Bostrom, also considering Norbert Wiener's cybernetics and, in general, today's culture. The fil rouge is the dematerialization of subjectivity that characterizes, according to paradoxical trends, the discourse on the cyborg until today's theories on the posthuman. Focusing on the cyborg, the ambivalence of the relationship between man and machine is evident: technology, thought of as a promise of independence, involves the enslavement, finally, even the disappearance of the body, i.e. a logic of alienation.
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Guilet, Anaïs. "Pour une littérature cyborg : l'hybridation médiatique du texte littéraire." Thesis, Poitiers, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013POIT5001.
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Notre thèse aborde sous l'angle métaphorique du cyborg, ce pan de la production littéraire contemporaine qui propose des textes dont le statut médiatique procède d'une hybridation spécifique entre l'hypermédia et le livre. Le cyborg permet de créer un parallèle entre la relation qui s'instaure actuellement entre le livre et l'hypermédia et la relation, faite de fantasmes et de craintes, que les hommes entretiennent avec les technologies qu'ils créent. La littérature cyborg ne propose pas des oeuvres au sein desquelles le livre et l'hypermédia s'opposeraient, mais des oeuvres offrant une hybridation médiatique du texte littéraire, fruit d'une rencontre matérielle tensionnelle. Les nouveaux médias doivent être perçus comme un moteur d'évolution plutôt que comme une menace. Il s'agit, en effet, pour la littérature contemporaine et le livre de relever le défi qui leur est posé. Le livre est au coeur de notre problématique. Il importe de le considérer comme un support du texte qui n'est pas neutre et qui possède ses caractéristiques et ses potentialités propres. L'apparition de nouveaux médias offre une occasion de réévaluer le livre dans sa dimension matérielle. Celui-ci n'est plus l'unique support du texte, nos pratiques quotidiennes de lecture, entre livre et écran, le prouventOur thesis aims at exploring, through the cyborg metaphor, the part of the contemporary literature which produces texts that are the fruit of a hybridization between books and hypermedia. The cyborg enables us to draw a parallel between the connections that exist today between books and hypermedia, and the relationships - made up of fears and fantasies - that people have with the technologies they create. Cyborg literature does not propose works within which books and hypermedia are opposed, but works born from the reunion of two material supports, thus offering a media hybridization of the literary text. New media have to be appreciated as a motor of evolution rather than as a threat. Indeed, contemporary literary and books have to take up the challenge imposed by new media. The book is at the core of our problematic. We have to consider it as a medium for text, a medium that is not neutral and that holds its own characteristics and potential. New media offer an opportunity to reevaluate the book in its material dimension which is no longer the only medium for text: our daily reading practices, between books and screens, prove it
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Craveiro, António Manuel Balazeiro Cascão. "O hipercorpo-tecnologias da carne : do culturista ao cyborg." Master's thesis, Instituições portuguesas -- UP-Universidade do Porto -- -Faculdade de Ciências do Desporto e de Educação Física, 2000. http://dited.bn.pt:80/29212.
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Sareen, Harpreet. "Cyborg botany : augmented plants as sensors, displays and actuators." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114063.
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Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 94-98).
Plants are photosynthetic eukaryotes with a billion years of evolutionary history. While primarily sessile, they have developed distinctive abilities to adapt to the environment. They are self-powered, self-fabricating, self-regenerating and active signal networks. They carry highly advanced systems to sense and respond to the environment. We strive for such sensing and responses in our electronics; self growing or self repairing abilities in our architecture; and being sustainable at scale in general. The industrial and technological thought process has mostly been devising artificial means or replicating natural systems synthetically. However, I propose a convergent view of technological evolution with our ecology where techno-plant hybrids are created. The approach is to formulate symbiotic associations and to place the technology in conjunction with the plant function(s). In this thesis, I go from the outside to inside the plants in conceiving such synergetic processes and present case studies of their implementation and analysis. I begin with a robot-plant hybrid where the robotic device adds mobility and is triggered with the plant's own signals. Next, lead (II) detection nanosensors are presented which reside inside the leaf of a plant and continuously sample through plant hydraulics. This is followed with a design study for plants with new conductive channels grown inside them and their subsequent use as inconspicuous motion sensors. I conclude with a symbiotic robot that lives on a sunflower plant and automatically trains or directs its growth with onboard lighting. The end result is an augmented-plant society where technology adds non-native functions or redirects the natural processes..
by Harpreet Sareen.
S.M.
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Crandell, Allison S. "Cyborg Butterflies, Liminal Medicine: Thyroid Hormone Treatment, 1890-1970." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/42683.
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In this thesis, I develop a history of thyroid hormone treatment (THT) that centers on the bodies of animals and women between 1890 and 1970. This history contextualizes the current debate between two forms of THT, desiccated and synthetic. Drawing on the discourses present in biomedical journals, I trace how medical practitioners used the animals and women to demonstrate and make sense of THTâ s effectiveness over time. As such, I study what Catherine Waldby terms the â biomedical imaginary,â or the speculative fabric of scientific thought, to demonstrate how an â ordinaryâ medical technology crosses and reinforces the conceptions of gender and animality.
THT emerged in the 1890s as an organotherapy, or a medicine made from animal organs. Like other organotherapies, general physicians used THT for a wide variety of ailments that had not been scientifically proven through the practices of vivisection or animal experimentation. From its emergence, THT served as a site of tension between scientific researchers and general practitioners. This tension only increased when a synthetic form of THT was invented in the 1920s, when scientific researchers embraced synthetic THT and general practitioners continued using desiccated THT. At the center of the controversy were the productive and subversive relationships of animals and women to biomedical meaning-making. Over the twentieth century, methods of defining THTâ s effectiveness and purity were defined in opposition to these bodies. These chemical measures combined the specialist and physicianâ s measurement of THTâ s clinical effectiveness, which led to a preference for synthetic THT.
Master of Science
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Jones, Cassandra L. "FutureBodies: Octavia Butler as a Post-Colonial Cyborg Theorist." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1368927282.
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Bouleau, Jonas. "Måleri som cyborg : Ett regenererat väsen i zombiens tidsålder." Thesis, Kungl. Konsthögskolan, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kkh:diva-17.
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Texten är ett försök att hitta relevanta sätt att tala om måleri idag. Den presenterar personliga tankar och reflektioner om måleriets samtidshistoria och hur man skulle kunna definiera dess väsen och roll i konsten och samhället.[I examensarbetet ingår utställningen "Slow Down Vision":] Utställningen består av målningar hängda på väggarna. En grupp målningar som föreställer digitala fotofilter hänger tillsammans på ena lång sidan. På de andra väggarna hänger målningar föreställande in scannade vardagliga objekt och två abstrakta målningar gjorda med hjälp av bubbelplast. I mitten av rummet står en bänk som man kan sitta på. Material: Måleri Teknik: Olja på duk
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Brunel, de Montméjan Thomas. "Esthétique et politique du cyborg : le syndrome de l'alchimiste." Thesis, Bordeaux 3, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018BOR30015/document.
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À en croire Chris Hables Gray nous sommes tous devenus des cyborg citizen. La science-fiction regorge de ces corps fantasmés de cyborgs aux allures de dieux antiques parcourant les espaces intersidéraux ou bien voyageant dans le temps. Toujours plus beaux, performants, rapides et intelligents que l'homo sapiens sapiens, les êtres humains du futur sont généralement divisés en deux catégories : ceux qui ont évolué et ceux qui sont toujours aussi limités que l'homme actuel, « obsolètes » pour employer le mot de néo-mutants comme Lukas Zpira ou Stélarc. Tantôt machine anthropomorphe aux airs de dieu omnipotent, tantôt cerveau synthétique omniscient, l'I.A. renvoie en partie à « la fin », au double sens du terme, de l'humanité. Le cyborg, la fin de l’homme ou un homme meilleur ? Ces « intentions mélioristes » qui laissent sceptique un David Le Breton sont perceptibles dans le cinéma, la littérature ou le jeu vidéo. Le corps s’altère. Humain, trop humain, surhumain, posthumain ? Au travers des progrès scientifiques, tant de la génétique que des technologies de l'information, le corps humain lambda se retrouve trié sur le volet à la naissance par des politiques eugénistes dissimulées sous des propos de luttes contre les maladies à la manière d'un Bienvenue à Gattaca, puis propulsé dans les mondes virtuels, pénétrant des royaumes, jusqu'à présent fictifs, sur une base quotidienne par le biais des technologies qui l'entourent. Le rêve des body hacktivistes est une hétérotopie futuriste, où chacun est libre de choisir sa mutation et où La Mouche de David Cronenberg pourrait côtoyer un Na'vi d'Avatar sans que personne ne s’étonne de ces corps de freaks qui ne sont plus simplement des corps de cyborgs à l'aspect humain mais des corps de monstres à l'esprit humain. Ces biocyborgs sont paradoxalement plus humains que nous. Quelle part restera-t-il de notre corps charnel dans le corps futur ? Y-a-t-il encore une place pour l'homo sapiens sapiens dans le futur ou bien sera-t-il forcé d'abandonner son corps ? À en croire Paul Virilio ou Jean Baudrillard, la disparition du corps est inévitable. Après avoir mis en évidence l’histoire et la généalogie du cyborg, du mythe fictionnel à sa réalisation actuelle, cette thèse se demandera « qu’est-ce que vivre en cyborgs aujourd’hui ? »According to Chris Hable Gray we all are cyborg citizen now. Science-fiction is full of fantasy bodies looking like ancient gods wandering through space and time, always more beautiful, capable of more performances, faster and smarter than homo sapiens sapiens, generally beings of the future belong to two types: those who evolved and those that remained as limited as present humans, « obsolete » to quote the word of neo-mutants like Lukas Zpira or Stélarc. Some are anthropomorphic almighty god-like machines, others all-knowing synthetic brains, A.I. partly refers to « the end » of Humankind in its double meaning. Is the cyborg the end of man or a better human? Those intended enhancements which puzzled David Le Breton are seen in films, literature or video games. The body alters itself. Human, too human, superhuman, posthuman? Through scientific progress both in genetic and in mass media, the everyday human body finds himself screened at birth by eugenic policies hidden under motives like fight against diseases, as depicted in Gattaca and then thrown into virtual worlds on a daily base, entering kingdoms, fictive so far, using the surrounding technologies. The Body Hacktivist's dream is a futuristic heterotopia, where everyone is free to choose his mutation and where the David Cronenberg's Fly could walk alongside a Na'vi from Avatars surprising no one by their freaks bodies, ultimately: not cyborg bodies looking like humans but freak bodies implanted with human souls. Those biocyborgs are paradoxically more human than we are. What part of our carnal body will remain? Does homo sapiens sapiens have a future or will he need to shed away his body ? If we follow Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard, the vanishing of the body is inescapable. After bringing out the history and genealogy of the cyborg, from fictional myth to actual realisation, this thesis will endeavour to show “what is living as a cyborg nowadays?”
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Mangelsdorf, Marion. "Wolfsprojektionen: Wer säugt wen? : von der Ankunft der Wölfe in der Technoscience." Bielefeld Transcript, 2007. http://deposit.d-nb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2960340&prov=M&dokv̲ar=1&doke̲xt=htm.
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Williams, Tammi Lynn. "Cyborg visions : Mitchell, Ishiguro, Winterson and the negotiation of modernity." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/192959.
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The objective of this paper was to examine a selection of contemporary utopian texts by David Mitchell, Jeanette Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro in an effort to understand how their alternative realities might address man’s amalgamation of postmodern identities. In the texts, the human protagonists attempted to cast the pastoral landscapes of their youth as sites of safety and sanctity in order to sustain their modern reality, yet their attempts to return to or embrace the pastoral were a failure in part because of the intrusion of modernity into the spaces and in part because they themselves had become modern entities. The posthumans in these texts, including cyborgs, clones and robo sapiens, were emblematic creatures that served a dual role. They were both the subservient foundation of the utopias in these stories, as well as reflections of the postmodern human condition, which was artificially reliant on religion and consumerism for its modes of identity. Each of these texts yielded one particular voice that embodied and celebrated the postmodern experience and the hybridity that is an innate part of it. These characters functioned as important models of negotiation, providing a constructive bridge to the postmodern future for humanity, whether they worked within the societal systems of their eras in order to seek change or rebelled from society, fighting the classifications that defined their identities.published_or_final_version
English Studies
Master
Master of Arts
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Jasper, S. "Cyborg imaginations : nature, technology, and urban space in West Berlin." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2015. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1468959/.
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This thesis examines the cultural and material transformation of West Berlin by concentrating on its unique history as island city from 1961 to 1989. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 radically transformed the urban fabric for a second time after wartime destruction and consolidated West Berlin as an urban enclave. Land banking, protracted geopolitical negotiations, slow economic recovery, and zoning plans that kept the possibility of reconnecting the city open, held up post-war reconstruction. With the need to heavily subsidize the city’s economic sectors, and other aspects of urban life, the enclave was kept on geopolitical life-support for three decades, allowing a diverse range of alternative spaces and intellectual ideas to evolve. This thesis investigates West Berlin’s role as an experimental city by extending previous geographical work on the intersections of the human body, nature, and urban space. A series of four empirically centred case studies illuminates distinctive aspects of the cultural and material particularities of the enclave. We explore the continuities and discontinuities of Weimar Berlin’s legacy through attempts to build a modernist nature-culture synthesis in the early postwar years, and discuss sonic experimentation in the moulding of urban space into a state-of-the-art concert hall. Anomalous spaces or terrains vagues emerged as accidental by-products of the city’s geopolitical division, and were appropriated as ecological refugia and islands of autonomous social and cultural life. Scientific and cultural experiments enchanted these indeterminate spaces, and culminated in a progressive planning proposal envisioning an alternative city. In the 1970s, the experimental enclave partly echoed the cultural ebullience of the Weimar years, and served as the pivotal terrain for a vibrant cultural life to emerge. Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, West Berlin emerged as a “radical intellectual island” through the strong presence of feminist theory, and a multifaceted progressive local politics. This thesis draws on oral history, archives, and ethnographic observations to revisit the forgotten history of West Berlin as an alternative space.
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Rogerson, Charles W. "Clockwork oranges : the development of the cyborg as fictional character /." The Ohio State University, 1991. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487757723996083.
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Thoisy, Eric de. "La maison du cyborg : apprendre, transmettre, habiter un monde numérique." Thesis, Paris 8, 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019PA080019.
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Le contexte numérique, à comprendre dans sa double dimension technique et culturelle, produit des nouvelles relations au savoir ; la tradition « livresque » de transmission d’un contenu explicite laisse place à un régime documentaire revalorisant la capacité de l’usager à se saisir d’un système inachevé. Les architectures conçues pour l’apprentissage sont, dans ce contexte, remises en question.Une analyse des relations entre architecture et informatique dans les dernières décennies apporte des éléments de compréhension : l’architecture a été prise comme modèle pour construire l’environnement informatique et, au-delà des emprunts sémantiques, c’est sa responsabilité – la prise en charge de la mémoire – qui semble avoir été déplacée vers l’(architecture) informatique. Le modèle du « théâtre de la mémoire », immobilisant son occupant pour lui donner à voir une signification prédéterminée du monde, s’est alors vu concurrencé par d’autres pensées organisant le déplacement et l’apprentissage.Mais cette grille de lecture est insuffisante, et la problématique est à reformuler dans le cadre proposé par Alan Turing. Le modèle computationnel, mis en relation avec le système logique de Ludwig Wittgenstein, produit des relations renégociées entre calcul et pensée, entre humain et machine. Dans un monde co-occupé par des machines apprenantes, les pratiques de l'apprentissage sont reformulées dans un rapport renouvelé entre un modèle et son usage. Surtout, le déplacement numérique de la notion de signification – de l’explicite vers l’implicite – pourrait constituer alors une fondation pour proposer quelques hypothèses constitutives d’une pensée numérique de l’architectureThe digital context, understood as both a technical and a cultural phenomenon, produces new relationships to knowledge. The “bookish” paradigm of transmission is being challenged by documentary practices enabling the user to take hold of an uncompleted knowledge structure. Within this framework, there is a strong need for reevaluating physical buildings conceived for learning.The situation can be apprehended by looking at the interactions between architecture and computer sciences during the last decades. Architecture was taken as a model to build the virtual environment and, most importantly, we believe that the historical responsibility of architecture – taking charge of memory – was displaced towards (computer) architecture. But this shift does not replicate the pattern of « the theater of memory » that organizes the transfer of a set of predetermined meanings into the mind of a sedentary inhabitant. Instead, incoming models foster movement and learning.The hypothesis of a « digital caesurae » requires then a further reading : the problematic needs to be rephrased within the computational framework built by Alan Turing. We have chosen to embed our argument into Ludwig Wittgenstein’s logical system in order to disclose the main features of the computational thinking : renewed relations between thinking and calculating, between human and machine. Learning relies on a new kind of balance between the logical model and the use we make of it. Most of all, we will focus on the shift of the concept of meaning, from an explicit existence to an implicit one : this may constitute a relevant « foundation » to build hypotheses for a digital thinking of architecture
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Burke, Alexander. ""Dae Scotsmen Dream o 'lectric Leids?" Robert Crawford's Cyborg Scotland." VCU Scholars Compass, 2013. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/3272.
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This thesis applies a Cybernetic interpretation to a selection of poetry by the Scottish Informationist poet Robert Crawford, drawn mostly from two collections: A Scottish Assembly (1990) and Sharawaggi: Poems in Scots (1990). Crawford is contextualized by observing the poetic influences of Robert Burns, John Davidson, and Hugh MacDiarmid, as well as the philosophical influence of George Elder Davie’s The Democratic Intellect. This paper argues that, in response to the Two Cultures hypothesis put forth by C. P. Snow and the widely-held belief that Scotland is irrevocably fractured, the shifting boundaries of the many disparate Scottish cultures are mediated by technologies of communication within A Scottish Assembly, updating both Scotland’s identity and its cultural canon not by merging these cultures into a single Universal Scot, but by holding them in tension—and Sharawaggi is observed as a means of grounding the languages and peoples of Scotland within the landscape.
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Milesi, Floriano <1983>. "La giungla di Amazon: un'etnografia tra automi, lavoratori e cyborg." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2019. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/9121/1/TESI%20def.pdf.
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Amazon non può essere considerata né una azienda retail né solamente una piattaforma. Semplificando, dal modello della fabbrica fordista si passa alla fabbrica mondo del modello logistico per arrivare, infine, al modello API (application programming interface) riconfigurando e centralizzando le connessioni tra capitale e lavoro.
Il concetto base per comprendere questa azienda e la sua “cultura” è human as a service (mutuato dal linguaggio tecnico informatico), ossia l'idea che l'azienda stessa sia una interfaccia tra capitale e lavoro e il lavoro umano come parte integrata ai mezzi di produzione che orchestra l'intero ciclo produttivo. Il modello è quello del turco meccanico.
Il passaggio tra umano come lavoratore a umano come servizio non è, o almeno non in quel senso, un ritorno al passato, verso una proletarizzazione ma piuttosto spinge gli uomini a ridefinire in maniera radicale la propria identità, rompendo il confine tra lavoratore e non lavoratore.
Il concetto di cyborg permette di comprendere in maniera più estesa sia le corporation che il lavoratore: sia perchè rompe il confine tra i due stati (lavoro-vita) sia perchè rompe e riconfigura la tensione tra individuo e collettivo. L'uomo, inoltre, è un lavoratore non solo incompleto ma incompletabile all'interno del luogo di lavoro (ma non solo), avendo necessariamente bisogno
di device che permettono di agire senza necessariamente comprendere dato che la logica che governa non è intelligibile. Tuttavia, questa interazione, non solo modifica la logica stessa con cui è organizzata la produzione (creando tensioni e conflitti) ma viene anche incorporata dai lavoratori.
Come metodo di ricerca per studiare il lavoratore cyborg propongo il concetto di ricerca trans-situata, ossia una ricerca che partendo da un contesto specifico analizzi l'interpretazione, le pratiche e le relazioni in contesti separati da spazio e tempo tenendo in un ruolo centrale le interdipendenze tra di esse.Amazon cannot be considered a retail company or just a platform. Simplifying, from the Fordist factory model, we move on to the world of the logistics model factory and finally arrive at the API (application programming interface) model, reconfiguring and centralizing the connections between capital and work. The basic concept to understand this company and its "culture" is human as a service , that is the idea that the company itself is an interface between capital and work and human work as an integrated part of the means of production that orchestrates the entire production cycle. The model is that of the Turkish mechanic. The passage from human as a worker to human as a service is not, or at least not in that sense, a return to the past, towards a proletarization but rather pushes men to radically redefine their identity, breaking the boundary between worker and non-worker. The concept of cyborg allows us to understand more extensively both the corporations and the worker: both because it breaks the border between the two states (work-life) and because it breaks and reconfigures the tension between individual and collective. Moreover, man is a worker who is not only incomplete but also incomplete within the workplace (but not only), having necessarily the need to of devices that allow you to act without necessarily understanding since the logic that governs is not intelligible. However, this interaction not only changes the very logic with which production is organized but is also embodied by the workers. As a research method to study the cyborg worker I propose the concept of trans-situated research, that is a research that starting from a specific context analyzes the interpretation, practices and relationships in contexts separated by space and time, keeping in a central role the interdependencies between them.
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Casanova, Fátima Gomes. "O reconhecimento de si no cyborg: Uma análise cinematográfica das implicações sociais do surgimento do pós-humano." Master's thesis, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10362/7262.
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Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências da ComunicaçãoCarlos Lineu, biólogo e médico sueco, considerava que a única característica que distingue o humano do animal é a capacidade de o homem se reconhecer como homem. No contexto actual, em que se assiste à emergência de um novo homem, o cyborg, importa regressar à questão pensada por Lineu, para compreender se este novo homem pode ser entendido como tal. Hans Moravec, investigador dos nossos tempos, acredita que o cyborg será capaz de atingir o nível de raciocínio e conceptualização do homem. Assim, podemos entender o cyborg como semelhante do homem? Se o cyborg surge como uma máquina, um objecto desenvolvido para agir segundo ordens programadas, não estará longe da ideia que concebemos de homem? Ideia que, exacerbada pela tradição iluminista, centra o homem na autonomia da razão e na liberdade da vontade. Será o homem capaz de reconhecer o cyborg como seu semelhante? Esta é a questão que se encontra na base desta dissertação. Pretende-se discutir as diferenças antropológicas e sociológicas que separam o homem do cyborg, de modo a concluir que grau de semelhança podemos, apesar delas, considerar. Serão objectos de análise filmes que se debruçam sobre a problemática, como Blade Runner, de Ridley Scott; I, Robot, de Alex Proyas; Robocop, de Paul Verhoeven; A.I., Inteligência Artificial, de Steven Spielberg; Surrogates, de Jonathan Mostow; Exterminador Implacável, de James Cameron; Astro Boy, de David Bowers, inspirado na manga de Osamu Tesuka; Ghost in a shell, de Mamoru Oshii.
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Merrick, Katherine Anna. "The cyborg is the message a monstrous perspective for communication theory /." [Ames, Iowa : Iowa State University], 2007.
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Rheeder, Elle-Sandrah. "Pathologies of vision : representations of deviant women and the cyborg body." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020319.
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This thesis investigates the figure of the cyborg as conceptualised by Donna Haraway in The Cyborg Manifesto (1991). The figure of the cyborg, as a transgressive figure in the late twentieth century within socialist feminist discourse, is problematized with regard to its efficacy as a creature that challenges the constructed nature of gender and contests the boundary between human and machine through its ambiguous nature. Haraway’s notions of the cyborg, which she bases partly on cyborg characters from Science Fiction literature, deny the ocularcentric traditions that have structured gender and the body. Similarly, Haraway does not engage adequately with the figure of the cyborg with regard to situating it historically. This thesis unpacks both the visual and the historical aspects that have structured the cyborg body. By engaging with these concepts, the cyborg emerges as a figure that is identified through visual signifiers of female deviance and pathology. By reading female deviance and pathology on the body of the nineteenth-century hysteric, similarities can be drawn between the hysteric and the cyborg. Through a reading of Alien (1979); Blade Runner (1982); and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) key cyborg texts of the late twentieth century, the figure of the cyborg, and its relation to the deviant pathologised female can be understood when read against the body of the hysteric and how it was visually coded and communicated
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Dai, Xiaochuan. "Multifunctional Three-Dimensional Nanoelectronic Networks for Smart Materials and Cyborg Tissues." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845480.
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Nanomaterials provide unique opportunities at the interface between nanoelectronics and biology. “Bottom-up” synthesized nanowire(NW) with defined functionality can be assembled and enabled into three-dimensional(3D) flexible nanoelectronic networks. The micro- to nanoscale electronic units blur the distinction between electronics and cells/tissue in terms of length scale and mechanical stiffness. These unconventional 3D nanoelectronic networks can thus provide a path towards truly seamless integration of non-living electronics and living systems. In this thesis, I will introduce a general method for fabricating 3D macroporous NW nanoelectronic networks and their integration with hydrogel, elastomer and living tissues, with an emphasis on the realization of two-way communication between active nanoelectronics and the passive or living systems in which they are embedded.
First, fabrication of 3D macroporous NW nanoelectronic networks will be described. Examples showing hundreds of individually addressable, multifunctional nanodevices fully distributed and interconnected throughout 3D networks will be illustrated. Proof-of-concept studies of macroporous nanoelectronic networks embedded through hydrogels and polymers demonstrate the ability for dynamically mapping pH gradients and strain fields.
Second, a universal method to improve the long-term stability of semiconductor NWs in physiological environments using atomic layer deposition(ALD) of dielectric metal oxides shells on NW cores will be introduced. Long-term stability improvement by ALD of Al2O3 shells with different shell thickness and annealing conditions will be described and discussed. In addition, studies of semiconductor NW nanodevices with multilayer Al2O3/HfO2 shells indicates stability for up to two years in physiological solutions at 37◦C.
Third, 3D macroporous nanoelectronic networks were integrated with synthetic cardiac tissues to build “cyborg” cardiac tissues. Spatiotemporal mapping of action potential(AP) propagating throughout 3D cardiac tissue was carried out with sub-millisecond time resolution, allowing investigation of cardiac tissue development and responses to pharmacological agents. These results have promised the applications of cyborg tissues in the fields ranging from fundamental electrophysiology and regenerative medicine to pharmacological studies.
Finally, multifunctionallities of nanoelectronic devices for applications at the bio/nano interface will be discussed. Incorporation of NW field-effect-transistor(FET) and electrical stimulators in macroporous nanoelectronic networks demonstrates simultaneous recording and regulation of AP propagation in cyborg cardiac tissues. In addition, a convexed-NW FET bioprobe has been developed for simultaneous detection of AP and contraction force from individual cardiomyocyte. These explorations on the nanoelectronics functionalities highlight the capability to enable new communication modes between electronics and living tissues.Chemistry and Chemical Biology
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Mikkelä, Julius. "Should I Cyborg? - A study into public opinion on Human Enhancement Technologies." Thesis, Örebro universitet, Handelshögskolan vid Örebro Universitet, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-44369.
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Muri, Allison. "The Enlightenment cyborg, aspects and origins of the postmodern man-machine metaphor." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/NQ63903.pdf.
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Torsson, Michael. "Cyborg athletes : A European history of gender, technology and virtue in sports." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-95623.
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This essay takes its start in a discussion on gender, sports and cyborgs by Swedish philosopher Kutte Jönsson in his book Idrottsfilosofiska introduktioner. I argue that he is wrong in arguing for agnosticism as to what sport is. Instead I give an historic account of what sport is and what values is inherent in our modern conception of sport. According to my account there are at least four distinct European traditions of sport. These are the Greek, Roman, Nordic and British traditions and each have their own history and their own set of values. Based on these traditions and what they have in common I suggest the following definition: sport is a public display of mental and physical discipline corresponding to socially relevant values and includes an element of competition. I then discuss how this definition of sports and the many different, and sometimes conflicting, values inherent in our modern conception of sports, effect the line of reasoning suggested by Jönsson. I conclude that they strengthen his position and that gender separation should in sports should be abolished. I have found that one central value within the field of sport, expression of self, is especially important. I also argue that the same arguments pose a strong challenge for arguments against doping and other technological enhancements in sports.Den här uppsatsen bygger vidare på Kutte Jönssons diskussion om genus, sport och och cyborger i Idrottsfilosofiska introduktioner i vilken han tar ställning för en agnostisk hållning till vad sport är. Jag menar tvärtom att vi har mycket god kunskap om sportens historia och att det går att skapa en definition utifrån vad olika idrottsliga traditioner har gemensamt. I den här uppsatsen tittar jag på de fyra stora idrottsliga traditionerna i Europa. Dessa är den grekiska, romerska, nordiska och den brittiska traditionen. Utifrån vad dessa har gemensamt föreslår jag i uppsatsen följande definition av sport. Sport är ett publikt uppvisande av mental och fysisk disciplin som motsvarar socialt relevanta värden och inkluderar ett element av tävlan. I uppsatsen diskuterar jag sedan hur denna definition och framför allt de många olika, ofta konkurrerande, värden som finns nedärvda i begreppet sport påverkar Jönssons diskussion. Jag kommer fram till att de stärker hans argumentation och att vi bör överge könsseparation inom idrottsvärlden. Av de värden jag har funnit inom de olika idrottstraditionerna är ett särskilt viktigt, nämligen värdet av att atleterna kan uttrycka sig själva genom sitt idrottsutövande. Jag argumenterar även för att samma resonemang utgör en allvarlig utmaning för de som vill att doping och andra tekniska förstärkningar av kroppen ska vara förbjudna i sportsliga sammanhang.
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Mason, Steven M. "Life as a red blood cell in the artery of a cyborg." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 1999. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/76.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
Humanities
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Panteli, G. "From puppet to cyborg : posthuman and postmodern retellings of the Pinocchio myth." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2016. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1528658/.
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The myth of Pinocchio is the story of a puppet that desires to become human and achieves it with the power of his will. Created by Carlo Collodi in The Adventures of Pinocchio, the myth of Pinocchio is linked to the fairy tale tradition and is the most recent manifestation of the animate/inanimate archetype. This thesis is the first systematic study of the Pinocchio myth and examines how it has been used and reinterpreted in different retellings across different media and disciplines. The first part of this study focuses on Pinocchio retellings in film and shows that the most contemporary example of the Pinocchio myth is in the story of the sentient cyborg/robot that desires humanity. Moving from the classic in the field of cyborg studies Blade Runner through Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which directly links the robot to Pinocchio, to the least technophobic and most transhumanist Battlestar Galactica, Chapter 1 demonstrates how all case studies are connected to Collodi's novel through the confrontation scene, a specific passage in the text which touches upon the core of the Pinocchio myth, as Pinocchio is confronted both by the Blue Fairy and his corporeality. Chapter 2 examines Robert Coover's Pinocchio in Venice and Jerome Charyn's Pinocchio's Nose, two metafictional novels that deconstruct the myth of Pinocchio by challenging each of its components. Pinocchio's posthumanity is a reversal of the original story, as both protagonists turn from flesh to wood. Moreover, this analysis focuses on the role of the Blue Fairy in instigating Pinocchio's desire for humanity and on the role of writing and authorship in both texts. Chapter 3 analyses Pinocchio retellings that combine posthumanism with postmodernism. Winshluss's Pinocchio and Ausonia's Pinocchio focus on the malfunctioning conscience of Pinocchio. Both graphic novels deconstruct the Pinocchio myth visually and conceptually. The desire for humanity, central to the myth of Pinocchio, is missing from both texts, suggesting an alternative reading of the original text and exposing the ways the myth has been used to perpetuate consumerist values.
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Midson, Scott Adam. "The cyborg and the human : origins, creatureliness, and hybridity in theological anthropology." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2015. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-cyborg-and-the-human-origins-creatureliness-and-hybridity-in-theological-anthropology(da0cf017-3900-46a3-be69-0a348d7809bc).html.
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Are we cyborgs or humans? This question is at the heart of this investigation, and the implications of it are all around us. In Christian theology, humans are seen as uniquely made in the image of God (imago dei). This has been taken to mean various things, but broadly, it suggests an understanding of humans as somehow discrete from, and elevated above, other creatures in how they resemble God. Cyborgs mark a provocative attempt to challenge such notions, especially in the work of Donna Haraway, whose influential ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ (1991) elaborated a way of understanding cyborgs as figures for the way we live our lives not as discrete or elevated, but as deeply hybridised and involved in complex ways with technologies, as well as with other beings. Significantly, Haraway uses the cyborg to critique notions of the human rooted in theological anthropology and anthropogeny: the cyborg was not created in Eden. This assertion is the starting point of my investigation of cyborgs and humans in theological anthropology. Analysis of this position is broken down into three key concepts throughout the investigation that form the three main parts of the structure: (1) What is the significance of Eden, specifically as a point of origin? What ideas do we inherit from Genesis mythologies, and how do they influence our multitudinous understandings of not only humans, but also cyborgs, that range from the Terminator, to astronauts, to hospital patients? What does it mean to say that the cyborg cannot recognise Eden or even dream of the possibility of return?(2) If the cyborg was not created in Eden, then is it still to be considered as creaturely? How does this figure tessellate into, or challenge, notions of human nature and sin in the absence of an origin or teleology in a Garden? What commentaries of the human as created in God’s image can we compare this to, and how do all of these readings bear on how we see ourselves and technologies? (3) More constructively, given that the cyborg amalgamates the organic and the mechanic, and discusses hybridity, how might this be appropriated by theological anthropology? What does it mean to say that we are hybrids? From these questions, I reflect on tensions between the cyborg and the human, and make suggestions for a theological appropriation of the cyborg figure that takes heed of the emphasis on hybridity by applying it to notions of Eden and imago dei. The overarching aim is to decentre and destabilise the human, and to refigure it within its broader networks that are inclusive of other creatures, technologies, and God.
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Vale, Cynthia. "Autonomy and Collaboration for the Cyborg Self Integrated with Brain-to-Brain Interfaces Are Dependent upon the Development Process of Underlying Multidimensional Systems Which Reorganize the Cyborg Self Boundaries." Thesis, California Institute of Integral Studies, 2019. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=13423874.
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This dissertation is about impacts to the capacities for autonomy and collaboration for the cyborg self integrated with brain-machine (BMI) and brain-to-brain interfaces (BTBI). These capacities are dependent on the reorganization of the cyborg self boundaries which are contingent on the development cycle of the underlying BTBI multidimensional systems as evidenced in recent neuroscience research and development (Carmena et al., 2003; Fitzsimmons, Lebedev, Peikon & Nicolelis, 2009; Hochberg et al., 2012; Pais-Vieira, Lebedev, Kunicki, Wang, & Nicolelis, 2013; Pais-Vieira, Chiuffa, Lebedev, Yadav, & Nicolelis, 2015; Ramakrishnan et al., 2015; Wessberg et al., 2000) and speculated by the science fiction of the Nexus trilogy (Naam, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c).
The central accomplishments of this study include furthering the concept of the cyborg by positing a cyborg self with representational, cognitive, and functional dimensions, and identifying the cyborg self as a special case of the “cognitive assemblage” (Hayles, 2017, p 11). My analysis entails understanding an interdisciplinary model of the self that addresses the dynamic nature of the biological self, the self as a process, as a complex system emerging from material, physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social processes that is autobiographical and unified, having ownership and agency of mind and body (Damasio, 2010; Hayles, 2017; Marks-Tarlow, 1999; Ramachandran, 2004) dovetailing (Clark, 2003, 2008) with nonconscious cognitive assemblages (Hayles, 2017). I demonstrate that the dimensions of the cyborg self are reorganized by the development process of BMI and BTBI further affecting the locus or loci of self. The recursive reorganization of the cyborg self boundaries and dimensions leads to greatly fluctuating capacities for autonomy and collaboration.
I discuss the competing cultural forces such as transhumanism, and government and corporate interests promoting and hindering the advancement of NBIC and BTBI research and development, as well as the role of science fiction as a futuring tool, and the possibility, probability, and preferability of a cyborg self in 2040.
The research design is essentially a case study of contemporary and speculative BTBI in which I analyzed the multidimensional systems that comprise BTBI, their functionalities, and their development evolution. I analyzed how the cyborg self, autonomy, and collaboration showed up for the subjects integrated with BTBI. As NBIC and BTBI progresses, autonomy and collaboration face many challenges as they become pendulums swinging between ever increasing and decreasing capacities that are contingent upon the latest development cycle.
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Recht, Marcus. "Homo artificialis eine Androiden & Cyborg Analyse mit dem Fokus auf Star Trek." Saarbrücken VDM, Müller, 2002. http://deposit.d-nb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2870182&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.
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Smith, Susan Ursula Anne. "Shifting (a)genders : gender, disability and the cyborg in American women's science fiction." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/10223.
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Shifting (A)Genders examines the representation of cyborgs in post-war American women’s science fiction, focusing on issues relating to gender and disability. Drawing on ideas expounded in Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1985) and theories of disability that conceptualise the disabled subject as a figure that disrupts the human and gender identity, it explores the ways in which novels by C.L. Moore, Anne McCaffrey, James Tiptree Jr., Joan D. Vinge, Lois McMaster Bujold and Marge Piercy highlight the emancipatory potential of technology for marginalised subjects. While critics argue that Haraway’s theory of the cyborg is idealistic, failing to consider the materiality of the body, this thesis demonstrates that representations of the human-machine in women’s writing emerge at particular historical moments confronting gender stereotypes in science fiction when gender relations are unstable in American society. Situating texts in their socio-historical context, I argue that women writers portray cyborgs differently to male writers and challenge western heteropatriarchal concepts of the human subject. The thesis identifies a shift in focus from representations of female to male cyborgs in women’s writing, which reflect changing perceptions of the gendered and disabled body. It also asserts that anxieties about the instability of gender can be related to moments of social upheaval that define post-war America.
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Benjamin, Garfield. "The cyborg subject : parallax realities, functions of consciousness and the void of subjectivity." Thesis, University of Wolverhampton, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2436/621858.
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This thesis contributes to the fields of digital technology, consciousness studies and cultural theory by reassessing the relation of the contemporary subject to physical and digital worlds. By moving beyond the materiality of these worlds, this investigation will position the subject as a cyborg: a series of relations within consciousness that defines the reality and psychological construction of the subject across and through physical and digital perspectives. The functions of consciousness are set out as Existence, Meaning, Virtual, and Real, and their shifting relations defined in terms of physical and digital modes of consciousness. Using Slavoj Žižek's conception of parallax, applied ontologically to digital technology, and introducing a new framework for analysing consciousness as a series of relations between functions, the void of subjectivity is defined as the gap between physical and digital worlds. Within this framework the work of Gilles Deleuze and the philosophy of quantum physics are employed to negotiate a disruption of conventional reality with the Virtuality of thought and matter respectively, towards the conception of the subject as an engaged spectator. These methodological tools are developed to analyse cultural phenomena that highlight and challenge our consciousness of the relation between physical and digital worlds. Online and gallery-based digital art interventions, avatar-mediated spaces, computer games and representations of digital technology and culture in literature are examined in order to assess specific relations between functions, drawing the discussion towards the antagonism between Virtuality and Reality within the construction of the cyborg subject. Through these analyses, a critical position is established through which the contemporary subject is able to achieve the rupture of a minimal distance towards its own parallax position to confront the void of subjectivity between Virtual and Real functions of consciousness and between physical and digital modes of cyborg reality.
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Hulan, Michelle. "“We Require Regeneration Not Rebirth”: Cyborg Regeneration in Feminist Science and Speculative Fiction." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39081.
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This thesis examines a recent trend in contemporary science and speculative fiction to produce new and/or alternative iterations of reproduction that are not limited by biology, gender, or species. Through Donna Haraway’s notion of “cyborg regeneration” and recent critical and theoretical revisionings of this concept, I investigate this trend in three key texts: Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods, Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, and Larissa Lai’s long poem “rachel” from her book of poetry Automaton Biographies. Each of these authors offers representations of reproduction that counter gender stereotypes and essentialism and produce new cyborg maternal or explicitly non-maternal figures unbound to patriarchal models of repronormativity and colonialist constructions of the mother. By portraying these nonunitary maternal figures and/or non-reproductive bodies, I argue that these sf texts present new forms of procreation that further feminist conversations about gender, the body, the limits of the human, future populations, and desire.
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Meyer, Melissa Isabella. "Let's talk about sext : gendered millennial perceptions of sexting in a cyborg society." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20774.
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In a cyborg society where people exist both organically and via technology, sexual expression and interaction via technology has become 'normal'. The controversy surrounding sexting stems from contemporary literature and media portraying it as coercive, harmful and unacceptable, with particular reference to young females. Qualitative data on this phenomenon is extremely limited and biased, potentially resulting in unjust limitations and restrictions. This study investigates Millennial sexting behaviour by considering general and gendered perceptions of sexting to better understand the phenomenon; its risks, benefits, and the practice itself. An exploratory mixed methods study amongst university students (N = 579) revealed expected and unexpected findings. Respondents acknowledged sexting's risks, while the benefits of and motivations for sexting were emphasised with little evidence of negative pressure. It is argued that the benefits of sexting greatly outweigh the potential risks, but moreover, that sexting is a primarily feminist practice that holds much promise. The need for sextual education and awareness of sext-consent is examined, as theoretical and policy implications are discussed.
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Lupold, Eva Marie. "Literary Laboratories: A Cautious Celebration of the Child-Cyborg from Romanticism to Modernism." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1339976082.
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Andréasson, David. "En annan upplaga av oss : Cyborgens implementation i samhället." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-994.
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Cyborgen, en samansättning av orden cybernetik och organism, en gestalt vars innebörd bör ses som mer än en fiktiv gestaltning. Cyborgen är idag enligt forskare och filosofer en samhällelig verklighet och dess inverkan på individen är mycket större än vi tror. Det här kandidatarbetet undersöker vad som definierar en cyborg, med stöd ifrån forskning och filosofin summeras tankar och synsätt för att få en mer definitiv bild av begreppet. Arbetet studerar även hur den sociala kontexten kan komma att förvrängas när tekniken letar sig in i den köttsliga kroppen. De resultat och insikter arbetet resulterat i sammanfattas och står som grund för en gestaltning vars mål har varit att kategorisera öppen data från individer med inbyggda Rfid-chip, en diskussion av begreppet och dess innebörd sammanfattas i en resultatdel för att få en bred bild av cyborgen som helhet. Metoder såsom workshop och litteraturstudier har bidragit till att arbetet fått en bredare bild av människans sätt att leva tillsammans med tekniken.Cyborg, a shared setting of the words cybernetics and organism, a figure whose meaning should be seen as more than a fictional creation. The cyborg is today, according to scientists and philosophers a social reality and its impact on the individual is much greater than we can imagine. This bachelor thesis investigates what defines a cyborg, with support from research and philosophy thoughts and approach are summed up to get a more definitive picture of the concept. The work also studies how the social context may be distorted when the technology finds its way into the physical body. The results and insights this work resulted in is summarized and stands as the basis for a design whose goal has been to categorize open data from individuals with built-in RFID chip, a discussion of the concept and its meaning is summarized in the results section to get a broad picture of the whole cyborg. Methods such as workshops and literature studies have helped to get a broader picture of the human way of living together with technology.
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Martin, Erin Deann. "Tweens, sexualization and cyborg-subjectivity : New Zealand girls negotiate friendship and identity on Facebook." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/10201.
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In the context of public debates about the ‘sexualization’ of ‘tween’ (preteen) girls and their use of social network sites (SNSs), this study explores girls’ online practices, experiences and reflections of their engagement with Facebook. This project is part of a growing body of research that prioritizes talk ‘with’ girls, rather than ‘about’ girls, as a way of contextualizing issues related to their girlhood. I argue that preteen girls’ identities on SNSs can be reimagined as cyborg-subjectivities as girls disrupt binaries through ongoing discursive negotiations of gender and sexuality depending on moment to moment online/offline interactions.
Utilizing examples from an online ethnographic observation of eighteen 12-13 year old girls in Christchurch, New Zealand, I discuss how these girls constituted online subject positions through co-constructive relationships with friends. I explore how girls utilized SNS technology to explore and engage with discourses of gender and sexuality. I discuss how girls’ ‘played’ with both conventional and alternative femininities and sexualities in their online photographs and discuss how these images resist classification as ‘sexy/innocent’, ‘children/teens’ and online/offline. This research also reconsiders how identity is understood on SNSs and utilizes a poststructuralist theoretical framework to explore how online identities are embodied and ‘citational’ of shared online/offline subject positions. In addition to ethnographic observation, this research explores girls’ talk and reflections about their Facebook practices through a focus group discussion and a qualitative questionnaire.