The Cyborg Subject Reality, Consciousness, Parallax
This book outlines a new conception of the cyborg in terms of consciousness as the parallax gap between physical and digital worlds. The contemporary subject constructs its own internal reality in the interplay of the Virtual and the Real. Reinterpreting
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The Cyborg Subject
Garfield Benjamin
The Cyborg Subject Reality, Consciousness, Parallax
Garfield Benjamin University of Wolverhampton Wolverhampton, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-137-58448-9 ISBN 978-1-137-58449-6 DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58449-6
(eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016944999 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
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PROLOGUE
The age of humanity is at an end! The cyborg cometh! This does not, however, represent cause for alarm; it is not the apocalypse, the new age will cause no sudden doom in which every last human is scoured from the earth by the rise of maleficent technology. Neither does not it constitute a technological singularity; there are no preparations underway for the ultimate party at the joyous moment of simultaneous transcendence by the entire species. It is not a single event at all. It would not be possible to define the moment at which humanity ceased and cyborgs appeared, for it is a process that has been decades, centuries, even millennia in the making, and it is far from complete. The cyborg is evolving just as humanity evolved. It took thousands of years for humans to evolve the cognitive capacities for language (the first and perhaps greatest ‘technology’ created by humans) and to develop them culturally into a scheme for externally storing and sharing ideas: from the earliest engravings 70,000 years ago; cave paintings and figurative sculptures 40,000 years ago; through crude symbolic Jianhu or Vinča glyphs from the seventh millennium BC; hieroglyphics and cuneiform as the first full written languages in the fourth millenniu
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