Overview

When you hear “cyborg,” you think of RoboCop. But Cyborg Anthropology says: look at your hand. Is there a smartphone in it? Do you panic if you lose it? Does it remember phone numbers so your brain doesn’t have to? Then you are a cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism—a hybrid of machine and biology. This field studies how tools don’t just help us, but change us.

Core Idea

The core idea is extension. Technology extends the human body and mind. A car extends your legs. A phone extends your memory. The internet extends your nervous system. Therefore, you cannot study “humans” in isolation; you must study the human-machine system.

Formal Definition

A subfield of anthropology that looks at how humans and non-human objects (machines, software, algorithms) co-evolve. It challenges the boundary between “subject” (human) and “object” (tool).

Intuition

If a blind person uses a cane, the cane becomes part of their sensory system. They feel the sidewalk through the cane. The cane is not a tool; it is an organ. Cyborg anthropology argues that we are all like that blind person, but our canes are iPhones, pacemakers, and Google Maps.

Examples

  • Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”: The founding text. She argued that the cyborg is a feminist icon because it rejects the rigid boundaries of gender and nature. It is a creature of fusion and fluidity.
  • Quantified Self: People who track their steps, sleep, and heart rate with Fitbits. They are using data to understand and modify their own biology.
  • Drone Warfare: The pilot sits in Nevada; the drone flies in Afghanistan. The pilot’s eyes are 7,000 miles away from their body. This is a cyborg experience of war.

Common Misconceptions

  • It’s science fiction: It is about the here and now. Glasses, vaccines, and writing are all technologies that make us cyborgs.
  • It’s about robots: It’s mostly about interfaces—screens, keyboards, voice commands—and how they shape our social interactions.
  • Posthumanism: The philosophical view that we are moving beyond the traditional definition of “human” (autonomous, biological) towards a state where we are networked and enhanced.
  • Actor-Network Theory (ANT): Bruno Latour’s theory that objects (like a door-closer or a speed bump) have “agency” and act on people just as people act on them.
  • The Singularity: The hypothetical future point where machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence.

Applications

  • UX Design: Designing interfaces that feel “natural” (like an extension of the body) rather than clunky tools.
  • Disability Studies: Reframing prosthetics not as “fixing” a broken body, but as a valid form of cyborg existence.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Techno-Optimism: It can sometimes sound like a breathless advertisement for Silicon Valley (“We are all becoming gods!”), ignoring the digital divide (not everyone has an iPhone).
  • Loss of Humanity: Critics argue that merging with machines erodes our empathy and attention span.

Further Reading

  • Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto”. 1985.
  • Case, Amber. An Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology. 2014.
  • Clark, Andy. Natural-Born Cyborgs. 2003.