Desire to seek non-biological resources

  I would like to start this post with a comment on the Selarc video we watched at the beginning of the class. The visual aspect of the video came to me as a shock so that I did not get to deeply ponder about the meaning of the video and the connection to the readings. After spending some time thinking about the video, I have concluded that the reason why Stelarc connects hooks on his skins instead of using other methods is that he was trying to extend the capabilities of the human body, forming an art piece that is an extension of him. What a human can do with his body alone might be limited, and Stelarc might have felt challenged when he was trying to express his artistic ideas using his body only. Therefore, his desire to use non-biological resources in order to express his artistic ideas could be directly related to the main point of Clark’s essay, which states that humans are “natural-born cyborgs” and have desires to seek non-biological resources in order to achieve complicated tasks.

  As a science major and pre-med student interested in neuroscience, I was able to comprehend some of the detailed examples that Andy Clark listed in his essay and agree that machines are becoming a part of human organ system. The nervous system actually uses electrical signal to transmit information. Therefore, it is surprisingly easy to manipulate one’s nervous system and such easiness made it possible for people like Selarc to build extensions and control them by using his own body. Lots of examples presented by Clark and Selarc lead us to conclude that humans do have natural desires to improve their own mental circuitry. The desires could start from trying to replace something that is damaged. As presented by Clark, blind people would dream of gaining their eye sights back, and such desire would increase the effort that goes into developing the technology that involves planting a camera and connecting it to the brain visual cortex. This is just one small example showing that finding some non-biological means in order to improve one’s physical statue is very natural.