Chapter 0: Numbers
Before anything was nothing (0).
First came light (1).
Second was binary (0,1), dark and light, matter and antimatter, male and female, good and evil, exile and paradise.
Third, the trinity, father son and holy spirit, man woman and child, human animal and robot.
23 carries a reference to each.
Chapter 1: Foundation
The word 'cyborg' today is applied to beings part man,
part machine.
To most ears the word rings of Science Fiction,
while real life cyborgs walk every street without catching a sideways glance.
As Japan is home to the Android,
America is home to the Cyborg.
And when I say America I probably mean The United States but I prefer
to call it America.
And America, old grand America from Ellesmere Island to Ushuaia,
we are a Cyborg as well.
But in reality the Cyborg has much earlier origins.
They began as Chimera – beings of two or more animals spliced,
often part human.
In fact, the earliest sculptural artifacts yet found are Chimera (23,000 B.C.).
The Sphinx is a Chimera.
Animals never left the mix.
Now they intermingle with robots as often as we do,
influence the evolution of robotics as often as we do.
America invented the telephone, the personal computer,
the ubiquitous silicon(e).
These things we can't imagine living without
on our bodies
all the time.
We inject our minds into bodies of machines
we inject our bodies with minds of machines.
America has adopted the habit of filling as many needs
(or anticipated needs
or imagined needs)
as possible
with technological solutions.
We are willing to accept
problem-solving machines
into any facet of our existence.
If a task can be automated,
we will automate it.
If a flaw can be obliterated,
with little to no effort,
we will obliterate it.
Chapter 2: Animals
We began as animals, we are animals. Animals became creatures from not-creatures, they are plants that picked up and began to walk, to swim, to undulate.
Animals provide us genetic material, survival tips, companionship, sustenance, research, and, perhaps most importantly, metaphor.
Chapter 3: Robots
We built machines to make our lives easier, to automate and expedite and hasten the means of production. We built machines to do the jobs we no longer wanted to do, or weren't as good at, or animals weren't as good at, or we couldn't convince the animals to do them.
Even the simplest machines provide a metaphor for the mind. Soon we began making machines for the sake of providing metaphors to the mind, for the sake of doing jobs of the mind in addition to jobs of the body. These machines became computers. These computers, re-embodied, became robots.
