is Iron Man a cyborg + other questions

[Checkmate]

Using Christopher's example, does a wristwatch powered by your movement make you a cyborg? What if it can, say, check the temperature outside? It's just met all the criteria you mentioned. So... everyone wearing one is a cyborg?

 

[Teelie]

No, it's not physically connected to your body for one. It's not directly responding to your commands for another. It does those things automatically, whether you will it to or not.

 

[Christopher]

Is it really a MacGuffin? It does drive the story but they usually are just an ends to a means whereas the thing in his chest is more than just a throw-away plot device.

Well, the arc reactor was definitely a MacGuffin in the first film, because the pursuit of that technology and its potential applications drove most of the story. A MacGuffin is the thing that motivates the characters, the thing they desire or fear or need. Their pursuit of the MacGuffin, or their conflict over it, is the reason for their actions.

I still think that you can call the suit cybernetic.

Yes, of course it's cybernetic in and of itself, but an organic person inside a cybernetic device is not the same thing as a cyborg. Keep in mind that Cyborg was the name of the novel on which The Six Million Dollar Man was based. Essentially, a cyborg is a living being with bionic body parts, computerized prosthetics that replace or augment the functions of biological organs. There's nothing in the Iron Man armor or the arc reactor that replaces any of Tony Stark's biological functions.

It's integrated into his body. It might not be through his brain but it is through a device in his chest which itself is quasi-cybernetic but the suit itself becomes a literal part of him.

Again: the arc reactor is physically inside his body, but it is not functionally a part of the systems of his body. It doesn't contribute to his life processes beyond keeping the shrapnel out of their way. If you made a flow chart of the processes going on inside Stark's body and of the processes going on in the armor, there'd be no direct connection. They're just adjacent, not integrated.

He moves, the suit moves, the suit does take in information from the outside and relays it to his body just as it responds to his actions.

A jet aircraft can do the same thing. So can modern cars, increasingly. Hell, so can a horse. That doesn't make their pilots or drivers (or riders) cyborgs. The Iron Man armor is a sophisticated vehicle. Or, it's an exoskeletal robot. It's mecha.

His suit acts and reacts to his body and the environment around it making them essentially a single entity.

Many equestrians would say that horse and rider function as a single entity. "Be one with the horse," as Captain Kirk said. But a rider on a horse is not a centaur. And a person inside an intelligent, responsive suit of armor is not a cyborg.

I don't think a cyborg needs to be a 50% organic and 50% non-organic composition to qualify.

I'm the one who pointed that out several posts back, so I'm certainly not claiming anything of the sort. What matters is the integration. Cyborg technology means bionics. It means something that's part of the body, that participates in its processes.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I don't think a cyborg needs to be a 50% organic and 50% non-organic composition to qualify.

I'm the one who pointed that out several posts back, so I'm certainly not claiming anything of the sort. What matters is the integration. Cyborg technology means bionics. It means something that's part of the body, that participates in its processes.

I would just point out that during the Extremis period, which I mentioned on the previous page, there's really no doubt that Tony Stark is a cyborg. He injected himself with nanites to keep himself from dying, his armor "merged" with his body and became his skeleton, and he gained the ability to "jack" into the 'net. At that point, he was more machine than man.

 

[Christopher]

^Sure, but my understanding was that we were discussing the movie version of the character. At least the version in the first movie. There is, of course, nothing to preclude the movie's Tony from becoming a cyborg later; he's just not one in the first film.

 

[SG-17]

Wouldn't all that magnetic energy be dangerous to Stark's body?

No. Electromagnetic Radiation is not harmful to cells in the slightest (as far as we can tell from 100 years of using them).

Subsequently, neither electric fields nor magnetic fields are harmful to humans. If they were, we would not use MRIs.

 

[Anwar]

Didn't they make some discovery a while ago of some magnetic frequency that would remove a person's moral inhibitions when used on them?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ No.

 

[Nowhere Man]

I think Vader or General Grevious or of course the Borg would be better examples of a cyborg. Tony Stark just uses the suit as a tool to fight crime and the thing in his chest just powers it. I guess it's like Lex Luthor using his suit or Batman and all of his wonderful toys including the Batmobile.

 

[melancholymecha]

what about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6R5bm6qx2E&feature=related


and this (its soo cool!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0_mLumx-6Y&feature=related

sci-fi is becoming sci-fact

 

[Christopher]

Didn't they make some discovery a while ago of some magnetic frequency that would remove a person's moral inhibitions when used on them?

Not exactly. Rather, they found there's a part of the brain that's involved in making moral judgments and can be temporarily "scrambled" by an intense magnetic field.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/03/magnets_mess_minds_morality_1.html

Most people make moral judgements of others’ actions based not just on their consequences but also on some view of what the intentions were. That makes us prepared to attribute diminished responsibility to children or people with severe mental illness who commit serious offences: it’s not just a matter of what they did, but how much they understood what they were doing.

Neuroimaging studies have shown that the attribution of beliefs to other people seems to involve a part of the brain called the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ). So Young and colleagues figured that, if they disrupted how well the RTPJ functions, this might alter moral judgements of someone’s action that rely on assumptions about their intention.

To do that, they applied an oscillating magnetic signal at 1 Hz to the part of the skull close to the RTPJ for 25 minutes in test subjects, and then asked them to read and respond to an account of an attempted misdemeanour. They also conducted tests while delivering the signal in regular short bursts. In one scenario, ‘Grace’ intentionally puts a white powder from a jar marked ‘toxic’ into her friend’s coffee, but the powder is in fact just sugar and the friend is fine. Was Grace acting rightly or wrongly?

Obvious? You might think differently with a magnetic oscillator fixed to your head. With the stimulation applied, subjects were more likely to judge the morality based on the outcome, as young children do (the friend was fine, so it’s OK), than on the intention (Grace believed the stuff was toxic).

So it doesn't remove your moral inhibitions; it just changes the way you evaluate the morality of an act, basing it on results instead of intentions. Indeed, the emphasis on morality here is pretty much an artifact of the experimental design; it's more that this part of the brain helps give us the ability to understand what other people are thinking. Without it, we don't consider what someone's intentions may be, only what the results of their actions are. So if the story were one where someone well-intentioned did accidental harm, a person with the RPTJ scrambled would actually find it more morally objectionable.

 

[Trekker4747]

House would have fun with that.

 

[JoeZhang]

I don't think a cyborg needs to be a 50% organic and 50% non-organic composition to qualify.

I'm the one who pointed that out several posts back, so I'm certainly not claiming anything of the sort. What matters is the integration. Cyborg technology means bionics. It means something that's part of the body, that participates in its processes.

I would just point out that during the Extremis period, which I mentioned on the previous page, there's really no doubt that Tony Stark is a cyborg. He injected himself with nanites to keep himself from dying, his armor "merged" with his body and became his skeleton, and he gained the ability to "jack" into the 'net. At that point, he was more machine than man.

And now

Spoiler: current Iron Man spoiler

they have taken it a step further and his Armour literally seeps out of his skin.

 

[melancholymecha]

I wonder if they will cyborize(<<I think I just made a new word) him more in future movies or just keep him in a suit.