Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs (review)

Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre provide the survey of a future focused on robots and cyborgs. They predict an imminent change ahead of us (compared to the advent of personal computers during the 1980s) and set out to describe what that future will look like. They claim that in the next decade or two robots will be performing many of our jobs—such as surgery and firefighting—while having an unremarkable presence that is comparable to the computer screens of today. At the same time, we will proceed with augmenting interior and exterior body parts, changing our physical performance and our mental abilities. Benford and Malartre claim that these practices of augmentation will provoke controversies, which, however, will not be able to stop the trend.

The most engaging part of the book regards interview material. The authors report on their conversations with Gregory Stock, the director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine, and author of Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism (1993); Jenn Penko, user of a “functional electrical stimulation” system who survived a severe spinal-cord injury; Anne Foerst, a theologian, Lutheran minister, and director of MIT’s God and Computers project; Hiroaki Kitano, head of the Kitano Symbiotic Systems firm in Tokyo; and Steve Mann, the pioneer in wearable technology and professor at the University of Toronto. The interviews are intertwined with the authors’ own arguments, which touch on a vast array of topics as diverse as: limb prosthesis, functional electrical stimulation, brain–computer interface, artificial skin, cochlear implants and the “culture of deaf,” electronic retinas, the enhancement of smell and taste, organ supply in China, biotechnology and nanotechnology, the mind–brain relationship, cognitivism, creativity, consciousness, emotions, robots as “niche intelligences,” androids, bionic man, cyborgs, human labor and immigration, issues of rights, naturalness, sexuality, gender, humanness, privacy and surveillance, war and spectacle, the networked community, the symbiotic relationship with machines, wearable computers, American ethos and the First Amendment, space travel, evolution, and “superintelligence.”

Both authors are scientists as well as science-fiction writers. Benford is professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of California, Irvine, and an award-winning science-fiction writer known for his Galactic Center Saga novels. Malartre is a biologist and environmentalist specializing in hard biological science fiction. While their skillful referencing of the science-fiction literature pervades the book, the text remains surprisingly removed from the reality of today’s science. This lack is paralleled by a neglect of social science and humanities literature on the topic. Based on the premise that science often stems from fiction, the authors are willing to disregard the challenges of the present as they—with great enthusiasm and lightness—announce the promises of the future.

In line with this approach, complexities (often brought up by the interviewees) are dealt with through two rhetorical moves. Either the authors rush to assure the reader that the difficulties will be resolved with the progress of science, or they follow with an example from science-fiction literature. This strategy contributes to the general trend where, instead of indepth analysis, the authors offer a quick survey of catchy speculations.

Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs is based on the idea that robots and body augmentation can be treated as two facets of the same general phenomenon. Yet the book, rather than explaining or problematizing this fascinating proposal, instead overwhelms the reader with huge lists of topics. There is a similar difficulty regarding the concept of “living” mentioned in the book’s title: it is not treated with respect to the intricacies of our everyday coping with technologies but instead stands for the authors’ imaginary portrait of how we may use technology in the perfect United States of tomorrow. This future without a present and past may interest the readers of Technology and Culture if they are on the lookout for a piece of discourse that necessitates further analysis...