The Cyborg Handbook

Are you a cyborg? Is your neighbour? The Cyborg - short for cybernetic organism - is an entity that is part human and part machine. Today's technology is transforming and maybe even transcending the human. People who have implanted pacemakers or attached prostheses are certainly cyborgs. Cyborgs are everywhere, multiplying. And many people, cyborged or not, now live in cyborg societies where humans and machines exist symbiotically. The Cyborg Handbook is an initial look at cyborg society and at the range of cyborg technologies, from the restorative and normalizing to the reconfiguring, and enhancing. These technologies can restore some to health and they can prolong horrible deaths, but they can also remake humans into more effective killers. Cyborgs, good, bad, and indifferent, are with us. The handbook brings together key documents from the history of cyborgs as well as the best writing about cyborgs, including recent cyborg cultural theory. The contributions cover the role of space technology, war, medicine, and the imagination in the production of cyborgs. The appendix lists cyborg films, videos, stories, and books.