Virtue and Ethics - Cyborgs

Cyborgs Essay - Virtue and Ethics

In this article Neil Harbisson, a fully fledged human Cyborg, talks about his 'eyeborg' and the different art works he has created thanks to this amazing new technology. Neil Harbisson says that Technology will be increasing its integration into our body to extend our abilities, knowledge and perceptions of reality. Harbisson suffers from a visual impairment called Achomatopsia, which is where he only sees in shades of grey. To aid this he wears his eyeborg, which is connected at the back of his head with an antennae attached so as to convert the colour waves into sound frequencies which then is used to perceive the different colours of the world. Due to this, Harbisson started dreaming in colour and so he started to become more passionate about his work. As a result, he founded the organization 'Cyborg Foundation' which promotes the use of cybernetic implants to help extend our capabilities and human limitations. This is also pointed most especially towards the amputees or people suffering from different disabilities be it visual or physical. He creates his artworks by scanning the facial construction of a person and then converts them into sound frequencies, thus creating small collections of musical compositions. There are many other Cyborgs like him, such as Kevin Warwick who embedded a chip underneath his skin to enable him to operate appliances such as light, heaters and doors. Another person would be Tim Cannon, who has a self administered body monitoring device attached to him which enables him to read certain data like his body temperature. Cyborgs nowadays are found more frequently due to the fact that the science in computing and technology is rapidly growing. Thanks to this, a lot of people such as Neil Harbisson are able to live on as regular human beings while having the support of a cybernetic implant to aid them in daily life such as the eyeborg. Different examples of cybernetic implants