Page - 13 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

Why Use the Term ‘Cyberneuroethics’? • 13 that the breakdown in boundaries since the twentieth century enabling the concept of a cyborg to be explored included a disruption of the borders between: (1) human and animal; (2) machine and human; and (3) physical and nonphysical. In this, she uses the concept of the cyborg to illustrate the possibility that no real distinction exists between human beings and human- made machines.13 Therefore, the prospect is for humanity to increasingly question what it means to be human when the traditional boundaries are challenged. As the British philosopher Andy Clark explains, in the future ‘we shall be cyborgs not in the merely superficial sense of combining flesh and wires but in the more profound sense of being human-technology symbionts: Thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological circuitry’.14 This would then require a significant reappraisal of the way in which human beings consider themselves and relate to others. In this regard, Clark indicates that human beings may already be natural-born cyborgs in that they have a capacity to fully incorporate tools even as simple as a pen and notebook as well as cultural practices which are external to their biological bodies. He also suggests that human minds are already condi- tioned to integrate non-biological resources enabling them to think through technologies.15 Cyberspace First used in science fiction in the 1980s, the term ‘cyberspace’ now refers to the virtual space created as communication technology extends into set- tings such as offices, schools, homes, factories, trains and refrigerators. More specifically, the concept of cyberspace became popular in the 1990s when the Internet, which is an interconnected network between several billion com- puters around the world, and digital networking were growing exponentially. The term was able to reflect the many new ideas and developments that were emerging at the time.16 Cyberspace was also popularised through the work of American-Canadian science-fiction author William Gibson and became identifiable to anything related to online computer networks.17 But he has now criticised the manner in which the term is understood, indicating, with respect to the origins of the word in 2000: ‘All I knew about the word “cyberspace” when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essen- tially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.’18 The concept of cyberspace has therefore developed on its own and now denotes a global network of social experiences where persons can interact This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.