Am I A Cyborg; a question that has plagued man-kind since Steve Mann and body suspensions. In this essay I will attempt to answer that very prolific question. I believe that even the people who rely on prosthetic limbs and computerized voice software and even motorized wheel chairs or life support machines are still only human beings. Technology has been great to us over the years, what with the invention of incandescent light, telephones, and the infamous personal computer, the ability to discover new scientific break-through's which would not be posssible without technology, We have developed cures for diasease, we can even remove cancerous tumors from people with the use of a tiny telescopic camera during surgeries; Technology is indeed a life saver in today's world, There is no human alive who is actually a computer, we have one major difference from Cyborg's, we have the ability to actually think for ourselves. In this never-ending argument there has also been a parallel made between human being's and Zombie's (everyone's favourite brain-hungry-cannibal's). I will break the parallel in this essay also thus disproving our likeness to Cyborg's and to Zombie's. I know that I am not a Zombie. I have never been dead, I do not hunger for brains and I am very capable of Intelligent thought. Zombie's are first and foremost just re-animated corpses, meaning dead bodies possessed by some type of life force. You must first be killed in order to become a Zombie. You become infected through contact with a zombie's saliva, blood, or other bodily fluids (which is something I am certain I did not ever come in contact with!). Zombie's eat brains, I am not sure why they do this, some say it is to Keep the Host Zombie's body alive, others say it is because it hurts to die, they feed solely because it fills a void. Thirdly Zombie's are incapable of intelligent thought, If a study of Zombie's and human's is done where the subjects (say five of each, Zombie's and Human being's) are presented with an argument, The human's will mull the idea over in their heads coming up with a logical solution or rebuttle. The Zombie subjects would just try to eat the other's. Thus disproving any inkling in anyone's mind of a Zombie being like a Human. Zombies are also anatomically correct, though there has never been a reported instance where succesful Zombie intercourse has occured. Zombie's cannot procreate (thank goodness) so there is no need for Zombie copulation nor is there an animalistic tendancy to crave sexual contact. Zombie's have amazing sensory perception, They say that when you are blind all your other senses are heightened, well I guess that when you are a re-animated corpse your senses are heightened even more. Zombie's hearing is comparible with echolocation, but it does not stop there, Zombie's have also been said to posess amazing eyesight as well, It has been said that a zombie can see a burning cigarette ember from up to 500 feet away! Their sense of smell helps them find victims as well, they locate their prey with the smell of blood or human scent. Except their perception of pain is completely obliterated. When a human being breaks a bone, immense pain dehabilitates us, We sense that we are injured and we get a pain signal from the brain. Zombies break bones but there is no perception of pain there to slow them down, Zombies just keep going, they are incapable of experiencing pain, which is another difference in itself. Finally Zombie's are cannibalistic, which seems to the average person to make somewhat logical sense. Assuming human flesh contains the same vitamins and protein that beef or chicken have. After researching this topic endlessly I have come to the conclusion that there is no nutrients in human flesh, Zombie's aren't eating out of necessity, they are eating because they can. STELARC said that “we have never had a mind of our own and we often perform involuntarily conditioned and externally prompted”. This statement is quite false and purely opinion. Every Person posseses a mind of their own, It is believed that this own mindednesss is the distinguishing factor between human's, Zombies and Cyborg's alike. All Human beings are different from one another whether they agree on some subjects or not, each and every human being has a different set of opinions and thoughts even STELARC. Zombies are not capable of any thought process whatsoever but however, Cyborgs are. Cyborgs have certain programs which serve as thought processes, which are programmed into them by creators. Human's are also programmed with inate abilities such as: communication, intellect, morals, and language, but the main difference between us is that we have the ability to choose what we do with these abilities: if we hold the door for someone or slam it in their face. Cyborg's programming serves to imitate a human being's and that fact alone can never be forgotten, Human being's are not Cyborg's, Cyborg's are meant to seem like and to simulate the actions of Human beings, and we do realize this. In 1970 Masahiro Mori theorized "The Uncanny Valley". The Uncanny Valley in layman's terms means that as technology progresses and Cyborg's become more and more life like we begin to feel repulsed by the robot, instead of focussing on how much like a human it looks, we would focus on the features that detract from it being human. thus it fails to evoke the response that is needed for succesful human-robot interaction. There are some people out there who exist because of robotics, The six million dollar man comes to mind, although that is an extreme case and a very fictitious one, people who are kept alive by life-support systems, people whom rely on motorized wheelchairs and artificial robotic prosthetic limbs. They also are not Cyborg's. Just because a person relies heavily upon software and technology, that does not make them Cyborgian in nature. They still have their own minds, their own thoughts They just have had something occur to their bodies so that they needed to be altered to make the world accesible to them. As for your "Human Cyborg's" like Steve Mann and STELARC I am sorry to say that they are not Cyborg's either, and they completely contradict themselves by saying that they are cyborg's after all we all came out of a Vagina.