Book by Andy Clark
This reading is a real challenge to the average understanding of the relationship between human and technology. In his introduction to the writing, A. Clark successfully draws the picture of human as a "natural-born cyborg" (Clark, 2003, pp. 3-5, Introduction). His examples varing from the mobile-phone extended arm to the human-machine hybrids are illustrating the proposed ideas clearly and surely add interesting aspects to the analyses.
Clark takes to the center of his analyses every-day tools and activities which interrelate minds and worlds to eachother (Clark, 2003, pp. 5-6). He points out that what differentiates human from all other living species in the world is his ability of having "extended mental life" (Clark, 2003, p. 7) with the help of "tool-based extensions" (Clark, 2003, p.10).
I find that he approaches to the concept of cyborg from very humanly position. With his words: "For 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 accross the biological brain and nonbiological circuitry." (cit. Clark, 2003, p. 3) This nicely posed sentence pretty much draws the borderline to the definition of cyborgs used in the book but also expands the more known concept of it.
Interesting is to follow how he introduces the facts and smoothly combines every-day stories, such as ride to work, with the exclusive examples, such as the case of Professor Warwick's. Based on the introduction and first chapter I would say it is interesting and surely must read writing.
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