Geekery

Overheard: “And, you know, of course everybody has their smart phone with them 100% of the time”

At some point in time, the word “cyborg” conjured up images of this:

But really, what is a cyborg? To answer that, first you have to answer “what is a human?” And I’m not talking about an existential answer, I think it is a simple as humans are analog beings (credit for that phrasing is due to DROdio). They touch and feel and smell things to derive data. They don’t interact with electronic data outright.

But there’s so much electronic data whizzing over our heads every second of every day. And yet, we continue on our way completely unawares. But our ubiquitous handsets are completely aware of all that data. They pull it down from the proverbial cloud, and send it back up just as frequently. And best yet, they display it in a format that us analog beings can relate to.

So what else is a cyborg besides an analog being that interacts continuously with digital information? A being that uses that data to make split second informed decisions and to plan?

I’m not convinced there’s anything else to it. And by that measure, the age of the cyborg is firmly here, and short of a massive EMP, here to stay. It’s here though we’re not wearing crazy wires on our faces and in our heads; just deep in our pockets. Ain’t it a crazy world we live in?