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Tran, Nhi
Professor Collins
English 113A
22 October 2015
Humans Powers
The emergence and use of electronics has become an extension of human life.
Researchers who study humanism are considering people who are addicted to technology
as cyborgs since they spend more than half of their time per day on electronic devices.
However, many human beings would not be happy to label as a material such as a cyborg
or humanoid robot, even an object has the abilities beyond humans. Although
developments in new technology to expand human knowledge are meant to improve our
life on earth, these advancements can be considered as a double edged sword because of
abusing new techs can go against the naturalism of being human, which blurs the lines
between reality and virtual reality, and lower down value of the technology in certain
group of people.
The human life cycle has six stages that
begin with birth and end with death. After death,
people who are still alive should slowly move
on and accept the fact that person is no longer in this world. According to the episode of
the television show Black Mirror Be Right Back, a character Martha has a hard time to
accept Ashs decease and that is a tragedy for her to mourn over. Not longer after his
death, she found out that she is pregnant with his baby. At that moment, Martha desired to
have someone by her side to comfort and talk so that scariness and stressfulness would

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not turn her down. She tried to call out her sister; unfortunately, her sister was busying
with two kids and could not pick up her phone. Martha was really frustrated and decided
to click on an app on her tablet, which can imitate Ashs voice and then talked to it, as if
Ash is still alive.
After that, Martha spent days through nights to communicate with a similar Ashs
voice on her phone and it a human voice. She was not realizing that new tech tries to
manipulate reality that Ash is no longer in the world. When she dropped her phone, she
cried out and continually apologized to the voice. From a normal persons perspective,
Martha has mental problems since she is ignoring the fact that Ash is dead and keeps
communicating with an emotional voice that is trying to be same as Ashs. In fact, a dead
person cannot come back alive no matter how sorrowful and depressed we try to mourn.
In my world, my grandparents passed away, as grandchildren, we must move on and be
happy for them so they can rest in peace and go to heaven. If we keep mourning and
grieving over their death, it means we are trying to hold them back and their souls will go
around as ghost and scare us. In certain terms, they are not our grandparents anymore but
ghosts, they can hunt us in our dreams and more unfortunate events happen in our life.
Furthermore, The advanced of technology in the Black Mirror can replicate a
cyborg that identical as ourselves based on the memory we imprint on social media.
However, those memories are not as accurate as the historical that exists (or even once
exist) in the world. In Be Right Back, the replica Ash is created out of historical of Ash
on his social media sites; therefore, Martha said: You look like him, on a good day but
then, she acknowledged that the cyborg does not have a mode, and it automatically
created one. First time seeing a cyborg, Martha was mixing between virtual and reality

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because of replica Ash. It resembles of Ash that is only thing make Marthas mood
became little bit lighter since she has a cyborg by her side. As time goes by, she started
realizing cyborg is not Ash since it acts like a puppy by obeying to what she orders and
moving awkwardly around her. The replica Ash did not get mad to Martha, no matter how
Martha offended it by hurtful words.
Hence, humans are sometime turn out more complicated than normally. Since
they might act enthusiastic, poignant, or touching toward others or incident that is
happened and surprised them. However, cyborg is acted opposite with human beings,
regarding to Be Right Back movie. Sine the beginning of the episode, Ash pays
attention to his phone more than time he spends on Martha. However, the replica Ash was
completely different, not only it is obedient but also really attentive, and calm toward
Martha. Furthermore, when Martha was upsetting about cyborg and telling it to hit her, it
responded to her that it does not have memory of Ash being harsh to her. That is showing
cyborg has humans valuable of being generous not violated.
Anyway, no matter how wonderful of technology, it cannot replace or copy a fully
real historical of a person in the world.
People perform differently on social
media sites than usually in real life.
Since they use filters to edit out their
pictures before posting them on social
network. Plus, some people are so generous, socially and sweet or violate, impolite on the
Internet but they are really shy in reality. Therefore, there is no guarantee that what is on
social media is real or matched up with the memory of people around us have for us.

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Especially, when Martha expressed sad
words at the cliffs, Ash will be scare less
and tries to stop her. However in history
of Ash, which the cyborg obtains from
his social media site does not show how
Ash supposes to react with his girlfriend
in this situation. Again, no matter how advantage of new techs, inventors cannot replicate
a real person by using crappy history imprint on social networks.
After watching Be Right Back, a certain group of people might a have negative
perspective about the development of technology. Therefore, they forget to value the
benefits of new tech in our life. Through many articles about cyborgs, I change my
perspective after reading those and consume that we should not blame on the objects but
ourselves because it is our choice to break boundary between machines and ourselves to
emerge in new technology. Nothing is perfect, the authors of each article have different
perspective and judgment as they have discussion about cyborg, and some of them are
value cyborg but other authors against cyborg exist. According to Bateson, a blind man
with his cane (Bateson 1972) as a cyborg, the cane feeding important information on the
local environment to the man, so a hearing aid for deaf person can put into same category
as cane. Therefore, we cannot judge cyborg as a harmful objected like (Harraway 1985)
A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Social Feminism in the 1980s by
Donna Harraway. She claimed that the cyborg is disruption of traditional categories,
which violates human distinction. Somehow, this declaration was unfairness, it could not

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persuade people but also create the disagreement for people who devote the convenience
and simple of technology brings to their life.
In conclusion, nothing is perfect because we do not really know if the earth is in a
specific shape like a circle or a mango shape or none of those. Some people might pour
their interests in machines; however, they have ability to prove that they are not
cybernetic organisms. Since we are who created and developed techs and machines; thus,
cybernetic organism cannot replace us, even it might have ability to imitate and large
capacity to record memories, more accurate than we do. However, they do not have
human heart, which has consideration to make decision based on mind and heart before
turning a decision into an action. Afterward, we are holding a sword to control over
things in this society, so we must compromise among ourselves to avoid mistake between
reality and virtual reality. Because we are the boss of ourselves in judgment and decision.

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Works Cited
Owen. Harris, dir. Black Mirror season 2 episode: Be Right Back, 2013. Film
Bateson. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Ballantine Books, New York, 1972.
Haraway. A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the
1980s. Socialist Review, 80: 65 108, 1985.