Sigh, Borgs

"He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field"

Black Sabbath - Iron Man
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"Its hand was stone - living, moving stone"

The Thing on the Fourble Board
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*clank*
(sound effect attached to many a robot in many a SciFi show)
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"Domin:  The pestle for beating up the paste. In each one we mix the ingredients for a thousand Robots at one operation. Then there are the vats for the preparation of liver, brains, and so on. Then you will see the bone factory. After that I’ll show you the spinning mill.
Helena:  Spinning mill?
Domin:  Yes. For weaving nerves and veins. Miles and miles of digestive tubes pass through it at a time."

Karel Čapek - R.U.R.
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I've been playing entirely too much of the simpleminded gear-grinding online game Warframe over the past few months. As one of its recurring thematic elements, NPCs will make a big deal of the eponymous frames of war being biometallic constructs, poetically exalting them as melding flesh and metal, that sort of thing. The same descriptions (but with an eeeeevil tone) get reiterated for the game's obligatory zombie swarm, which can include robotic units. Sounds very dramatic and it follows a long tradition of cyborgs being defined in terms of their duality: soft, squishy human flesh contrasting with hard metal bits. Flesh is human; metal is robotic. At least in fiction.

But the more our technology advances, the farther we leave the iron age behind us, and the less likely it becomes that artificial, self-aware beings would look like the giant tinkertoys of 20th century Hollywood fame. Assuming China doesn't knock the world down to a Mad Max scenario with its upcoming genocidal bid for a global empire, mechanisms of the future will grow ever more fine and will incorporate more sophisticated materials, self-repair apparatus, programmable flexibility and redundancy. Conversely, our own bodies are receiving ever more prosthetic aid.

Interestingly, as in most matters robotic, our modern fiction barely exceeds, and in some respects is only now catching up to, Karel Čapek's plot elements from the play which repurposed the word "robot" to its current global meaning. Albeit artificial, his robots were closer to industrially vat-grown Frankensteins. (*) Now, there are at least three levels on which to look at this:

First, we could marvel at the possibility of our cyborg future.

Second, we could realize we're well on our way to it already. I had a tooth replaced with a titanium implant last year and that sort of thing's old hat by this point. Artificial joints, artificial heart valves, pacemakers, cochlear implants, cosmetic implants for war veterans and accident victims, all these functional inserts really snuck up on us. Limb replacements are rapidly approaching Mannie's arm from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Third, we could realize that "cyborg" is a largely meaningless distinction which will reach the end of its memetic lifespan soon enough... because our bodies were never just flesh to begin with. Halfway down the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, you'll find a rock called apatite. One of its forms, hydroxyapatite, happens to make it possible for you to lean in your chair and rattle off angry tweets on your keyboard instead of just flopping down like a jellyfish. It's bone. You've had a mineral framework scaffolded onto your cellular matter all your life, and it will outlive you. Once you realize that individuals are not their bodies, and that bodies are just the physical interface of the genetic code with its environment, the perceived artificiality of grafting utilitarian, acellular structures onto oneself fades into a continuum along the extended phenotype. What are stromatolites but billion-year-old junkyards, mausolea built of the cyborg halves of cyanobacteria?

And even if you insist on attaching some false moral weight to the terms natural and artificial, admit that to a large extent we have been in the process of becoming cyborgs since we started supplanting our bodies' limited abilities with tools. You could use a rock to mash your food into an easily swallowed pulp; you could implant rocks straight into your jaw to continue mashing the food inside your mouth. Meh, either way's good, whatever works, y'know? You could pick up a rock and sharpen it into a hand-axe to slash at your enemies, or you could implant retractable Wolverine-style blades in your wrists. Somewhere between those stages lay soup pots and butter knives and the whole rest of human technological development. And, wiring a pot into your nervous system would just mean never burning the sauce again.

To put it another way, "cyborg" is merely an inevitable (and ultimately indistinguishable) midpoint between medicine and technology. As prosthetics improve, they become better integrated into their host bodies, less distinguishable. As technology improves, it will become logical to build larger structures out of semi-autonomous, self-replacing, interactive subunits. A.k.a. cells.

The psychological impact and storytelling appeal of cyborgs is not a logical one. It hinges instead first on reactionary luddism and second on our primitive, instinctive response to bodily and especially facial disfigurement, on our kin recognition responses. It neighbours the uncanny valley. But, if anything, the whole issue reminds me of the eerie feeling I got as a child when I first held my palm against an elevator's lights in a darkened hallway and realized my body is, in some very real way, transparent. That first sight of mysterious, shadowy bones outlined through my flesh traumatized me no more than learning their nature and realizing that my hand is "stone, living, moving stone" as is the thing on the fourble board's. Whether the stone in question should be a calcium compound or a titanium one comes down to utility and availability. Apatite's a real bargain with an exhaustively quality-tested production chain, and at least we still get to look down on those stupid plankton with their store-brand calcite. Plebs.






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* In fact, I'll wager Boris Karloff's shambling portrayal of Frankenstein's monster had more to do with Čapek's mass-produced menial laborers than with Shelley's intelligent, independent, philosophical, grandiose, passionate and vivacious daemon.

P.S.
I often have no idea what direction these posts are going to take. This thing was supposed to be a single paragraph calling SF writers to "stop making a big deal out of it". I don't know when the hell Frankenstein's monster butted in. He just occasionally pops in here at the werwolfe's den for a monster mash.

P.P.S.
I suddenly find myself wishing I could get some Amish feedback on this post.