Sunday, August 16, 2009 by Sergio
I am notoriously indecisive. About a week ago I wrote a computer program to make all my trivial decisions for me. Essentially, it flips a coin and reports back on the result. Here's an example of it working:
I wondered if the act of using a computer program to decide things for me qualified me as a cyborg, but I think not as I am not inseparable from the technology. In fact, in its current state I can't make any decisions with it when I'm away from my computer.
That led me to wonder, would it be any different if I used the traditional (and fundamentally identical) flipping of a coin instead? Could an act such as this still be applicable to cyborg theory? What are the limits of what counts as technology or machinery? That the process of flipping a coin is so binary seems oddly fitting to me... but I digress.
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I wondered if the act of using a computer program to decide things for me qualified me as a cyborg, but I think not as I am not inseparable from the technology. In fact, in its current state I can't make any decisions with it when I'm away from my computer.
That led me to wonder, would it be any different if I used the traditional (and fundamentally identical) flipping of a coin instead? Could an act such as this still be applicable to cyborg theory? What are the limits of what counts as technology or machinery? That the process of flipping a coin is so binary seems oddly fitting to me... but I digress.