Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 264 pages
• Published by: Routledge
• Edition: 1st Edition February 8, 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0415919797
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0415919791
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

Product Review
Some great science fiction has asked about robots and the right to vote--but what happens when we're 51 percent artificial ourselves? Cyberculture scholar Chris Hables Gray looks at the ever-changing human body in Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age and makes some well-educated guesses on the makeup of the future cybernetic body politic. Though he does go out of his way to remind the reader that nearly all of us are bioenhanced (that is a vaccination scar, isn't it?), he's neither a chrome-eyed Extropian nor a Rifkinesque fear-mongerer. His thesis is refreshingly simple in a world overfilled with postmodern complexity: we're changing our bodies more and more radically, and we ought to think about how this will change our way of life.

looking at health care, social interactions, and politics, Gray's focus is largely on particular modifications and enhancements such as prosthetic limbs, artificial organs, performance-enhancing drugs, and their descendants. The book never dips into freak show territory, though; even if Gray uses colorful examples to illustrate his points, he still maintains a humanistic attitude throughout. His simple thesis, coupled with this attitude, create a web of thought that is simultaneously entertaining and enlightening. Though our track record on preemptively dealing with change is spotty at best, reading Cyborg Citizen is still a good prescription for keeping the posthuman jitters at bay. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Review
[An] eruption of tomorrow's topics -- Andrei Yuri Lubomudrov, Willamette Week
insightful and well formulated. -- Andrei Yuri Lubomudrov, Willamette Week
An intriguing social survey perfect for discussion groups. -- Reviewer's Bookwatch
a supremely readable book, enlivened by weird science and slap-shot one-liners. -- Wired, Mark Dery
Cyborg Citizen is a ripping good yarn-just the thing for Dr. Moreau's waiting room. -- Wired, Mark Dery
In Cyborg Citizen, Gray manages to bridge the understanding gap between technology and politics. He uses a wealth of historical perspective to look intot he future of a cyber-augmented culture, and show us with depth and clarity what the changes will mean to our lives as individuals and as a society. The book is readable by people with all different levels of technological sophistication, and has much new to offer no matter how much you have already thought about the issues. -- Terry Winograd
Cyborg Citizen is an accessible, comprehensive, and intelligent guide to the complexities of citizenship in the posthuman world. Sprinkled with first-person accounts, Cyborg Citizen is no dry academic treatise but an invaluable and useful guide to the ethical challenges of a future that is already upon us. -- Katherine Hayles, UCLA
Volume 31
Cyborg Citizen provides an great introduction to the new normal and it is a worthy contribution to Chris Hables Gray ongoing project. -- Veronica Hollinger, Science Fiction Studies

[An] eruption of tomorrow's topics -- Andrei Yuri Lubomudrov, Willamette Week
insightful and well formulated. -- Andrei Yuri Lubomudrov, Willamette Week
An intriguing social survey perfect for discussion groups. -- Reviewer's Bookwatch
a supremely readable book, enlivened by weird science and slap-shot one-liners. -- Wired, Mark Dery
Cyborg Citizen is a ripping good yarn-just the thing for Dr. Moreau's waiting room. -- Wired, Mark Dery
In Cyborg Citizen, Gray manages to bridge the understanding gap between technology and politics. He uses a wealth of historical perspective to look intot he future of a cyber-augmented culture, and show us with depth and clarity what the changes will mean to our lives as individuals and as a society. The book is readable by people with all different levels of technological sophistication, and has much new to offer no matter how much you have already thought about the issues. -- Terry Winograd
Cyborg Citizen is an accessible, comprehensive, and intelligent guide to the complexities of citizenship in the posthuman world. Sprinkled with first-person accounts, Cyborg Citizen is no dry academic treatise but an invaluable and useful guide to the ethical challenges of a future that is already upon us. -- Katherine Hayles, UCLA
Volume 31
Cyborg Citizen provides an great introduction to the new normal and it is a worthy contribution to Chris Hables Gray ongoing project. -- Veronica Hollinger, Science Fiction Studies

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age (Hardcover) Written in the personal, post-modern style, down to earth, and occasionally profound, Cyborg Citizen is an instructive meditation on the interpenetration of the machine and the human, the machine and the non-human, the human and the non-human. Hables Gray reviews most of the relevant academic literature (Haraway and others) draws examples of cyborg lifestyles from the news (Christopher Reeves and others), from pop culture (TV, Sci-Fi, comic books) to make his larger point that the signs of cyborgization are everywhere now, and that we are all cyborgs now, whether we know it or not. Though penetrated by technoscience, most of us are not aware of the extent to which we have become drafted in the great cyborg experiment. Hables Gray argues we need to find new ways of thinking about the intersection of science, technology, and living things in order to make better (or at least some!) choices about where the technoscience juggernaut is taking us. He explores a variety of different areas where political thinking has either been ineffective or brushed aside by the exigencies of technoscience and capitalism: Frankenfoods, franken-species, cloning, in-vitro fertilization practices are all covered, as are transgendering and cyborgization in pursuit of sexual fulfillment. He does equal justice to all the complexities these collisions entail. That's why I didn't give the book the full 5 stars, actually, because not all these topics deserve examination at the same length. But that's a minor complaint, of course. After reading Cyborg Citizen you will find examples of cyborgs everywhere. Of course, as tool users and builders and putterers, we've always been cyborgs -- as much shaped by our tools as the things we've shaped with them -- but the recognition of this fact and how it plays out across the realms of the civic, the economic, the scientific and technological as described in Cyborg Citizen will show the reader how far we are from Rousseau's state of nature -- if indeed there ever was such a place -- but that we may not have much further to go before the tools and cyborgs we build remake the world into place where we would not choose to live, indeed, a world where we may not be able to live. Not anti-techoscience, but rather, pro-thoughtful technoscience, Gray lays out the conundrums simply and argues that to be only pro or anti-techoscience is a luxury we cannot afford. Ultimately, he argues that as cyborgs we have to start thinking about what that really means.