http://www.suite101.com/content/the-physiology-of-skin-a52807 (accessed 16 March 2011)
McPhee has a detailed introduction of human skin. We always ignore the functions of skin and take it for granted. There are different colors on the skin which can tell us our race. Apart from telling one’s race, skin is important to human body as it tells the body conditions and protects us from outside threat. Skin is a multi-Purpose organ. It is the largest single organ in the entire human body, nearly fifteen percent of total body weight is from our skin.
Skin protects all of our fragile organs on the inside from all the very harmful and abrasive stuff in the outside world. Skin is to provide humans a sense of touch, there are more than a thousand nerve endings for each square inch of skin in the human body. That’ why humans are sensitive for their actions and able to maintain a healthy chemical balance.
Skin tells the body conditions. McPhee mentioned “When bashful the face can turn red, and when frightened the face can turn pale white. “ Therefore, skin acts as an important tool for us to “hail” other humans with important information.
2 .The Danish Council of Ethics “Recommendations concerning Cyborg Technology”
http://etiskraad.dk/en/Temauniverser/Homo-Artefakt/Anbefalinger/Udtalelse%20om%20cyborgteknologi.aspx#5 (accessed 16 March 2011)
The writers said that new technology connects humans with machines. Humans can connect the bioelectrical signals of the brain and central nervous system directly to computers and robot parts that are either outside the body or implanted into the body. Cyborg technologies create a radical change in what it means to be human. Cyborg-technology also challenges the limits of individuality.
Human bodies marked inequalities. A lot of people benefit from their genetic advantages, for example some athletes naturally produce more hormones than other opponents and therefore have a clear advantage in the competition. Based on an ideal of equality, some people suggested obtaining enhancements with the help of cyborg technology. However, technology for developing a cyborg is expensive and not many people know how to make a cyborg. Only the rich can afford the technology nowadays, the writer doubted can cyborg create social equality?
Moreover, the writers raised the point that how cyborgs behave and think are under the system written by programmers. It will be possible to completely digitalize human beings. This could be described as man's total separation from his biological foundation. Should a non-biological body covered with skin?
3. PJ Rey “A brief Reflection on Donna Haraway” http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2010/11/11/a-brief-reflection-on-donna-haraway/ (accessed 16 March 2011)
Rey made his reflection on Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”. Haraway is the authority and pioneer in Cyborg theory. A lot of articles are based on her idea and the writers made further discussion.
Rey pointed out that Haraway has foreseen humans are not sufficient in the future. Humans are under restriction of phyicall body parts. We need to change the boundaries of the world by entering cyborg era. With technological development, individuals may have chance to challenge prevailing norms, like racial discrimination and inequality on women social status. Cyborg era marks the social changes. If we want to build a world with equality and discrimination and bias, do the cyborgs need to have sex organs to recognize their gender? DO we need skin to tell where do we come from? Do they need to skin to protect their material-semiotic bodies as the functions are written in programs?
However, emergence of new technology is both an opportunity and a danger. It gives us a chance to develop a better world on one hand. On the other hand, can humans control cyborgs in the future? Will it bring into another World War by using robots and cyborgs?
4. Susan Ballard “My viewing body does not end at the skin.”
http://www.voyd.com/ttlg/textual/ballardessay.htm (accessed 16 March 2011)
Ballard questioned that communications and relationships with others are not restricted by boundaries and bodies. She suggested that entrapment by images occurs because of the mimetic nature of the relationship of viewer to viewed. She argued that the viewing experience is not simply one of looking with the eyes but involves a connected, corporeally engaged body. She focused on the interactions with others and viewing functions on human beings. The transformations that new technologies engender create a new sense of the corporeal body. For example, we can see others face by webcam and we can know what’s happening in the world with the help of mediating technology. How we feel about others and things should not be under restriction of our bodies.
She believed that scanners, memory storage or other electrical devices can be our organs to help us receiving information from the world in the future.
She concluded that “My viewing body cannot end at the skin because there is too much to see out there”.
5. Claudia Castaneda “Robotic Skin The future of touch”
Claudia Castaneda started her essay by raising the question, : Can robots have skin?” Feminists thought that apparent givenness grounded the inequalities in human world. Castaneda quoted the statement from Donna Haraway and has her own explanation in the essay. Cyborg are the illegitimate offspring. Cyborg should have different design in order to distinguish from the old hierarchies of embodiment. They should not be restricted the race, gender, class and sexuality. Besides, skin is a bodily envelop that constitutes the material limits of human body, the material-semiotic body of cyborg should not have same restriction.
She mentioned robot would not simply emulate humans but entirely replace them. Artificial intelligence (AI) embodiments should have capacity to overcome the limitation of human hands. The cyborgs should able to do what humans can’t do under the limitation of physical body. Moreover, She pointed out if we (former humans) are already cyborgs, then how might a focus on skin enable both the difference between cyborgs and the the nature of their encounter. Cyborgs and humans are different in nature, they are not simply human beings. Why do cyborgs need skin to cover their body? There should be a clear-cut division of human embodiment and cyborg embodiment.
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