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Re: Humans, Cyborgs, and Legacy systems
Kirby Urner (pdx4d@teleport.com)
Tue, 19 Sep 1995 17:19:54 GMT
>The analogy between legacy systems and cyborgization described in the
>above essay is quite appropriate.
>| Mike Bishop
I had a problem with the analogy. The biological core was analogized
with old, obsolete, kludgey stuff that we moderns can scarcely understand
(because its so old, obsolete...). But we have sparkling, cool new stuff we
can add anyway.
But in fact most the biosystems in our bodies are way more advanced than
anything modern engineering has come up with. Our prosthetics are the
kludgey attachments, used by necessity when the cooler, slicker biostuff is
damaged or breaks (and yes, our prosthetics break too -- in reality, the
'6 million dollar man' spent most of his life in the garage, being fixed).
And when it comes to the brain etc., we simply do *not* understand how it
works (as a whole -- various subprocesses are fairly well documented), not
because its "old, obsolete" but because our engineering is still kindergarten
level vis-a-vis the biosystems we had no hand in designing.
In conclusion, I thought the essay tried to give an unrealistic aura of
technical superiority to contemporary engineering vis-a-vis the human
body, which latter is clearly superior. Pure science fiction, with more
fiction than science.
Kirby
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Kirby Urner & Dawn Wicca "All realities are virtual" -- KU
Email: pdx4d@teleport.com
Web: http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/
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