Digital cyborgs: not what Hollywood predicted

Courtesh gryloch

Cyborgs are part human part machine. When I think of cyborgs I think about the Terminator and other movie renditions of awesome ass kickers. Each step to becoming a cyborg removes a human element and replaces it with a robotic one. I recently realized cyborgs have actually arrived, just not how we expected them.

We are made up of two halves. The physical half is what we typically think of enhancing when when it comes to cyborgs. Adding super strength arms, jacking a computer into your brain, and getting xray vision implants are just a few cool things you could do to enhance your physical self.

Then there is the mental half. This is our conscious and subconscious. It is what we think and feel, it is the definition or expression of who we are. Our mental make up is also where we are transforming into cyborgs. It’s happening so quickly even the government is developing social media cyborgs.

Think about social media. At it’s basic level social media is a way express your thoughts to the masses as well as receive information back from the masses. Typical social media users are still normal people for the most part, they just have a small amount of reprogramming to their communication wiring.

The next step in the cyborg transformation is automated syndication.  We can set up digital systems so our message can be delivered and syndicated automatically whenever we want without having to be present to do it. People that post to blogs and have it syndicate to social networks are utilizing this upgrade. They are still creating the content and have mostly full control over it’s end point but have removed a small presence of themselves for the process.

Setting up auto follow tools adds one more enhancement and can remove the personal aspect of actually finding people to follow. It can be implemented in a large way where the user just follows everyone under the sun, or it can be a small upgrade that the user uses to follow a few people a day then filter out those they don’t like.

Then you have the full on brain replacement. When you are automating your tweets, automating responses and retweets to randomly look like you’re engaging, and auto DM’ing you have crossed the line to full blown cyborg. There are still traces of human left. Someone has to keep a watch on the whole thing and maybe even throw out something real every now and then, but it is still a robot.