4.3.1 We have gradually been learning how to substitute various inaminate mechanical parts in our total human organic assembly. We have also been learning how to synthesise more and more of the atomic and molecular ingredients of our organic assembly. We have also been learning from the virologists' DNA-RNA about all unique biological-design programming of various biological species. We have also been learning that you and I and "life" are not the physical equipment we use. "Life" itself is entirely metaphysical-a pattern integrity. (Fuller, 1981, pg. 342)

4.3.2 Fuller's Phantom Captain draws its roots from the cybernetic theories of Norbert Weiner and anticipates the "Cyborg" (cybernetic organism). The first being to be called a Cyborg was a white laboratory rat at the New York State Hospital in the late 1950's. The term Cyborg was first coined by Manfred E. Clynes, who co-authored, with Nathan S. Klinem, the article "Cyborgs and Space" (1960). The idea was first presented under the title "Drugs, Space, and Cybernetics" at the Psychophysiological Aspects of Space Flight Symposium. For the first time "extensions of man" was being proposed as a scientific concept:

4.3.3 What are some of the devices necessary for creating self-regulating man-machine systems? This regulation must function without the benefit of consciousness in order to cooperate with the body's own homeostatic controls. For the exogenously extended organisational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term "Cyborg." The Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending self-regulatory control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments. (Clynes and Klinem,1995, pg. 61)

4.3.4 Donna Haraway reinterpreted and made famous the Cyborg in theoretical circles in her widely cited, seminal work "Manifesto for Cyborgs" in 1985. The Cyborg concept unifying flesh and circuits, living and artificial cells, is central to the late-twentieth century discourse and collective imaginary. With the widespread use of the Internet and the accompanying role-playing games and multiuser environments, to a large degree the Cyborg has been supplanted, or at least enriched, in the collective imaginary by the concept of the Avatar. [top]