The Community Cyborg

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Definition

The definition of a community cyborg can be best described by geohacker and former PARC developer Anselm Hook.

"The ultimate cyborg; an entity whose boundaries are fluid; that is the world and whom the world is. This of course asks the question what does it mean to be intelligent. And to some degree it means to internalize an external state; the ultimate cyborg is itself part of that externalized state. Cells transport chemicals across a porous boundary; can these be called cyborgs in that they internalize the external? In a sense the cyborg is the new homunculus; it is the object within which we place our hopes, aspirations and fears about the larger world beyond our current measure. People perceive shifts in cultural values as incremental but in many ways they are seismic: self induced criticalities that suddenly juxtapose the old against the new; carving off herds of huddled obsolescence - like sudden tectonic plate movements that uplift new formations into the cognitive zeitgeist".[1]

References

  1. Hook, Anselm. Written in a textedit document on Case's computer in late 2009 during a Sunday Makerlab event.