Re: >H Fwd: [isml] Building Better Humans

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Jan 01 2001 - 22:17:12 MST


Newsweek deep thinker sez:

>When the word "cyborg" first appeared in the middle of the 20th
>century, it was strictly the stuff of science fiction.

Well, no. When the word "cyborg" first appeared in 1960, it was strictly
the stuff of science - a projection, by neuroscientist Dr Manfred Clynes
and associate Nathan S. Kline (no, not clones), of the human-machine hybrid
NASA might need to develop for extended space missions.

E.g. http://www.microsoundmusic.com/clynes.htm

That would have taken about 15 seconds to discover, but hey, why bother
when there's this great cheap gibe at hand?

[BTW, what does `the stuff of' *mean*, anyway? It seems to be one of those
weasely phrases that crop up out of the memetic undergrowth when really,
like, grown up, poised, take no shit from *you* bozos sophisticates wish to
express their disdain for ideas they're too lazy to try to understand. Or,
as an Aussie would say, they `couldn't be stuffed'.]

Damien Broderick



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