On being a cyborg

When I think of cyborgs I picture a Terminator, or perhaps one of the Cybermen from Doctor Who. Not me. And yet, because I have a pacemaker, I am a cyborg*:

a person whose physiological functioning is aided by
or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device.

Dictionary.com**

There are plenty of us out there who fall into this category; people with pacemakers, mechanical valves, artificial legs, eyes, hands, whatever. Some people would argue that even people who wear glasses are cyborgs.  A discussion about someone wearing glasses being a cyborg was actually what started me off thinking about this whole subject of cybernetic humans. Here is a bit of it:

@SimonXIX @ijclark What about people with pacemakers?—
  (@anicecupoftea) February 15, 2013

I don’t know whether people who wear glasses really count as cyborgs, though. Mainly because the glasses are not a part of them in the same way that the pacemaker is part of me – it’s in me and literally intertwined with me. I can never be without it. It’s part of the mechanics of my body in a way that is very different to the interaction between someone and their spectacles. However, I see the flaws in my argument – what about people with removable prosthetic limbs? for one.

The idea of people-technology hybrids as being “more than human” is an intriguing one. Cyborgs are more than human in that we’re humans with ‘add-ons’, as it were, but not usually in the sense that we’re enhanced beyond normal human capabilities. However, we are also not less than human (which was Simon’s point). We usually think of cyborgs in the context of science fiction, where they’re quite often portrayed as the bad guys; and we think of them as being somehow less than human – robots, rather than people enhanced with machinery – so the term ‘cyborg’ can carry quite negative connotations. [I'm not sure whether the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica really count as cyborgs, but there is an excellent and fascinating case in point if they do.] As well as this, some people can get a bit freaked out when thinking about machine-human hybrids. Being part-machine is  not natural, it’s not ‘normal’, and humans tend not to like things or people that don’t fit their ideas about what is natural or normal. Bizarrely, when I went to see the surgeon before my heart surgery in 2008 the thing he said that upset me most was that I might have to have a pacemaker. I still can’t coherently explain why, but I think it was just the idea of having something in me that wasn’t me. It just seemed wrong. But now I know it’s perfectly alright, and being a cyborg has improved my life tremendously!

It seems that the definition of who or what is a cyborg has moved far beyond my personal opinion and what the original definition of the word referred to. If I remember rightly, the conversation on Twitter went on to discuss cyborgs and librarianship. If you’re interested in such things you might want to have a look at Simon’s post on the subject. Further afield, at least one person is arguing that “we’re all cyborgs now”:

What do you think?

_______________

*Although I may be paranoid, this is not to be confused with an android.

** Interestingly, not every dictionary defines “cyborg” in the same way. Some define cyborgs as being fictional or hypothetical, and as someone who is technologically enhanced beyond normal human capabilities. However, if one goes back to the original of cyborg (cybernetic organism) as someone who is part-machine and part-human then cyborgs certainly do exist, although most ‘real’ cyborgs are only enhanced ‘up’ to, rather than beyond, normal human capabilities (if that). Even with my pacemaker I’m not going to win any races! However, I’m pretty sure I exist…

Knitting in the age of the Internet

If it wasn’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t have got very far with my knitting. I still count myself as a novice knitter, but without the Internet I wouldn’t have got much beyond casting on. Most of what I’ve learnt about knitting has been learned from the Internet – from blogs, Twitter and particularly YouTube. I know there are lots of books about knitting, but they tend to be relatively expensive, and, being somewhat lacking in coordination and (I have discovered) the ability to decipher diagrams of yarn and needles, I find it much easier to learn to knit by watching someone else actually doing something than by looking at a 2D image or trying to follow written instructions.

I suspect that a lot of people learning to knit now have the same experience – using the Internet where previously we would have asked our parents/aunts/uncles/grandparents. I’m sure many people are still taught how to knit by their parents, particularly, but for a lot of people this is no longer as practical as it would have been in the past where people tended to stay living close to family for most, if not all, of their lives.

It could be said that the learning of knitting skills is an example of a microcosm of  how society and particularly learning have changed over the past twenty years or so.

Coldcoughsorethroatearachebrainfog. Also, a Christmas tree

The cold/cough/associated horridness is still lingering on. I’m still off sick from work, as I’ve been for the last couple of days. However, I’m feeling a lot better than I was and my brain is just about back to normal – well, as normal as it ever gets.

In other news, the kitchen ceiling has been leaking! Argh! So far, it only leaks when we use the bath, so we haven’t used the bath (or the shower, which is in the bath) since New Year’s Eve. We have been cleaning ourselves, though, fear not. We’ve reported the leak to our landlord, who rang the plumber, who told the landlord he would sort it out “straightaway”. We have not seen or heard anything from the plumber to date. We phoned the landlord again last night, who said he was surprised he’d not received the plumber’s bill yet. Well, that is because he hasn’t been! It is the same useless plumber we had all the trouble with before. Sigh.

To cheer us up, here is a picture of the Lego Christmas tree that was at St Pancras station last year:

One third of a lifetime

Someone once told me that we (I suppose that means we in a western, capitalist society) spend one third of our lives at work. This is a sobering, and somewhat saddening, thought. One third is a lot of a lifetime to be spending in a place you might not really want to be in, doing things you’d probably rather not be doing. Even those of us who enjoy our work would surely prefer to be doing things other than being at work, most of the time?

I enjoy my particular role at work (cataloguing),  I get satisfaction from helping people to use the library resources, and I’m fortunate to work with some lovely people. However, I don’t enjoy all the other things that seem to go on continuously;  the communication breakdowns, the unjust or quite simply foolish decisions that are made by those in power, the lack of courtesy with which library staff are treated (mainly by their own managers), the processes that go wrong year after year – mistakes made that we (as an institution) never seem to learn from. It gets very frustrating and very wearing, and I don’t even have to deal with much of this stuff directly anymore – although, like everyone else, I suffer the consequences of it in various ways.

Every year that I’ve been in my current workplace I’ve thought that, surely, things have got to get better at some point. But, in terms of the overall management of the place, they never really have. At the moment I feel literally (not clinically) depressed by work – not the volume of it (I’m lucky in that my personal workload is very manageable at the moment), but by the mess of it. Someone said to me today, it feels all wrong at the moment, and it does. It feels like a big tangle of wrongness that I can’t unravel – that none of us can unravel apart from the people in power, and they’re the ones causing the mess in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s felt quite wrong for a long time and I can’t see it getting much better anytime soon.

I suppose if I want to make things better I should start by being more positive, but I find this quite hard to do!

Dream a little metadream

Last might I dreamt about dreaming. Does that mean I had a metadream?

As I may have said before, I dream about the same places, things and people a lot. I don’t have recurring dreams, because I don’t think I’ve ever had exactly the same dream twice, but the same themes show up a lot in my dreams. I dream about friends from university a lot, and it’s safe to say that my dreams are quite an accurate reflection of the real-life relationships (or lack of) I have with these people.

The places in my dreams are usually sets from my university life – the hall of residence, the arts building. I don’t know why this time of my life seems to influence my subconscious so much – maybe because I want to stay there in some way. I don’t think I’m ever happy in my dreams there as I was in real life, though.

The other recurring thing I dream about at the moment is running. I love running in my dreams, because I’m really good at it. I run for ages and my feet are so light, I fly across the ground. The sense of freedom is immense. I don’t know why I run in my dreams – there often doesn’t seem to be any context for it; I’m not running to or from anything, or at least not that I can remember. I think I just do it because I enjoy it. I’m enjoying my dream running so much I’m thinking about doing some running in real life, which is probably ridiculous, but I do need to do something to improve my fitness. Maybe I should just start off with a few long walks.

Sleep

I like sleeping, nowadays. However, when I was a child I suffered from nightmares on a regular basis. I kept rituals, because I thought they would stop the nightmares coming. I think one must have ‘worked’ once, so I did it again, then it became a bedtime routine – counting up to seven seven times, singing a particular song in my head, lying on the right side. Once, while I was a student, I experienced sleep paralysis, and was convinced that there were wolves in the room. That was scary.  I don’t dream as often anymore, and I sleep better.

[This post was written for Timnah's Thursday Tell Me In 100!]

One year ago

….I started my new life as a library assistant. I know I talk about my escape from assistant librarianing a lot, but it was a big deal (as they say) for me. I still have moments when I can’t quite believe I don’t have to do my old job anymore, and then I remember that it is true. I am a cataloguer. I sit over here now and I get to catalogue books (almost) all day. [Although not at the moment - invoicing is still going on, but we only have half a pile of boxes left to do!]. I don’t dread going to work anymore. I actually enjoy my job, most of the time.

I am immensely grateful for this.

A thing of beauty…

I like where I live. There are several reasons for this, our friendly neighbours, the assortment of cats around the place, the foxes that make horrible noises, the very short  distance between our house and the railway station. However, apart from our lovely neighbours, it’s the proximity of our road to the park that I am most grateful for. I never get tired of looking at it or being in it, no matter how many times I walk around it or across it or up and down its steps and slopes. I think it’s the view from it, as well as the park itself, that makes it such a special place. Lots of people have a lot to say about this little part of South East England, a lot of it not particularly complimentary, but there are many hidden gems in this area, the park being one of them.

This might sound odd, but the park is made up of a lot of sky. Because of the lie of the land, and depending on where you’re standing, you can have a view that is made up of a thin strip of green at the bottom and a big mass of sky in the rest of your frame of vision. (It is at the top of a hill that is very steep on one side).  The sunsets are often beautiful, but a ‘run-of-the-mill’ evening at twilight is just as special for the changes in the blues of the sky.  Being on a hill also makes the park an excellent place from which to view the night sky. Added to this, there aren’t many dwellings at the top of the hill, once you go past our road, so there’s not very much light pollution.

There are trees, that (I want to say ‘who’)  have become very familiar to me over the years. I watch them change, season after season, putting on and shedding coats of many colours. I listen to the birds that sing in their branches. If you stop at the corner of our road you can hear a sweet cacophony of birdsong in the tree above your head.

I love the greens of the grass, the blues of the sky, the pinks of the blossom, the black and white of the magpies. The park is a balm for all of my senses. It is a thing of beauty in so many ways.

The park in the evening of the longest day 2010

Why am I attempting to post something every day?

This is a good question. It came up when I was discussing blogging and blogs with one of my colleagues the other day. I mentioned that I’m trying to post something every day and she, quite rightly, said something along the lines of perhaps it’s not really worth posting something every day if you don’t have something to say. I can’t remember what exactly was said by either of us, but it did get me thinking about why I am trying to post something every day. After my couple of days of (not continuous) thought I came up with the following rather vague reasons:

• As a way of disciplining myself. I have far too little self-discipline and waste quite a lot of my life procrastinating about things, rather than doing them. However, I do try and do things that I’ve said I will do (if I don’t it’s usually because I’ve forgotten rather than that I didn’t bother, which might be just as bad I suppose), so now I’ve told people I’m trying to post every day I’m more likely to be disciplined to actually do this, rather than procrastinating about it and then not bothering.
• I think that even I will feel a sense of achievement if I actually manage to post something every day.
• It helps me get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes I find it really hard to find the motivation to get out of bed. I know this is bad, for various reasons – whether it’s because I’m lazy or because I’m miserable, neither of these are very good. I know I have lots of reasons to get out of bed, really, but it doesn’t always feel like that, and  ’having’ to post something is just one more. See my first point about trying to do things I’ve said I’ll do.
• I like writing blog posts.

I hope this makes some sort of sense. I’m not very awake at the moment.

Quote of the day

I know this is cheating, but I haven’t got time to write anything else.

“…he acts with the whole of himself at every moment, and I’m always holding something back out of caution or prudence, or because I want to watch and record rather than participate.

‘If you let go of your caution, you might be carried away by passion as he is.’

‘No, said Christ. ‘There are some who live by every rule and cling tightly to the rectitude because they fear being swept away by a tempest of passion, and there are others who cling to the rules because they fear that there is no passion there at all, and that if they let go they would simply remain where they are, foolish and unmoved; and they could bear that least of all. Living a life of iron control lets them pretend to themselves that only by the mightiest effort of will can they hold great passions at bay. I am one of those. I know it, and I can do nothing about it.”

Philip Pullman, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ