The Cyborg Handbook

Are you a cyborg? Is your neighbour? Do cyborgs live forever? These are only a few of the thought-provoking questions the authors address in "The Cyborg Handbook". The Cyborg - short for cybernetic organism - is an entity that mixes the mechanic and the organic, such as a creature that is part human and part machine. Today's technology is transforming and even transcending the human. People who have implanted pacemakers or attached prostheses are certainly cyborgs. Even the millions of people whose immune systems have been reprogrammed to resist disease can be considered cyborgs. Cyborgs are everywhere, multiplying. And many people, cyborged or not, now live in cyborg societies where humans and machines exist symbiotically. This work is an initial look at cyborg society and 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.