On the Necessity of Protecting our Extended Cyborg Self

Discussion

Aral Balkan:

"Individual Sovereignty and the Cyborg Self

We can no longer afford the luxury of not understanding the nature of the self in the digital age. The very existence of our freedoms and democracy depend on it.

We are (and we have been for a while now) cyborgs.

We must resist any attempt to reduce people to property with the greatest of fervour.

In that, I don’t mean to conjure up the stereotypical representation of cyborgs as prevalent in science fiction wherein technology is implanted within biological tissue. Instead, I offer a more general definition in which the term applies to any extension of our minds and our biological selves using technology. While technological implants are certainly feasible, possible, and demonstrable, the main way in which we extend ourselves with technology today is not through implants but explants.

We are sharded beings; the sum total of our various aspects as contained within our biological beings as well as the myriad of technologies that we use to extend our biological abilities.

We must constitutionally protect the dignity and sanctity of the extended self.

Once we understand this, it follows that we must extend the protections of the self beyond our biological borders to encompass those technologies by which we extend our selves. Wherefore, any attempt to own, control, and trade in these technologies by third parties is an attempt to own, control, and trade in the constitutional elements of people. It is, in short, an attempt to own, control, and trade in people.

Needless to say, we must resist any attempt to reduce people to property with the greatest of fervour. For to do not do so is to give our tacit consent to a new slavery: one in which we do not trade in the biological aspects of human beings but their digital aspects. The two, of course, do not exist apart and are not truly separable when manipulation of one necessarily affects the other." (https://ar.al/notes/encouraging-individual-sovereignty-and-a-healthy-commons/)