A thought experiment on the man-machine from 1970
The blog of HNF – the Heinrich Nixdorf MuseumForum in Paderborn – has published an article about the history of cyborgs in the 1960s and 70s. This reminded me of a curious story by Herbert W. Franke. First of all: in the German-speaking world, such human-machines or machine-humans were then called “Kyborg” for Kybernetischer Organismus cybernetic organisms, a translation that is no longer in use today. This was triggered by an article that Franke wrote on the subject of kyborgs for the book “Were the gods astronauts? Scientists discuss Erich von Däniken’s theories”, edited by Ernst von Khuon. In the same year, he published two articles on the subject – once in the popular magazine “Quick” and then in the well-known magazine “hobby”, which published the article under the headline “Zeitgenosse von morgen: Der künstliche Mensch” in issue 22. And then a version in English appeared in the fan magazine for science fiction “Fanorama international”.
Franke presented his own concept for the basic features of such a cyborg. It was a time when he was intensively involved with the biological-evolutionary development of human perception and sensory organs – in connection with his thoughts on a rational model of art. “What distinguishes human beings is their thinking, as was formulated not so long ago. Thinking is nothing other than a creative and expedient process for solving problems. Today, many very complicated thinking tasks are performed by computers”.
Franke advocates the use of controlled “emotional” control in such human-machine constructions. “Such a being must be given a certain ethical program, in cybernetic terms: locks are built in for certain types of behaviour.”
Franke goes one step further with his conclusions, however, and explains what such considerations mean for space exploration, but also for travelling aliens. For the inhospitable conditions and the long distances in space or on alien planets, such hermaphroditic beings would be far better and also specifically adaptable. And so Franke concludes the article: “Should extraterrestrials have landed on Earth or be on their way to Earth, then it is by no means necessary to assume that they would be prevented from doing so by ethical concerns comparable to our own. Everything that has been said about the breeding of creatures that might be particularly adapted to space travel, as well as about the construction of a kyborg, could have been realized by any community of living beings without hesitation. And it seems that these methods would also be absolutely necessary if we think of visits from beings sent by communities that roughly correspond to us humans in their level of development. This means, however, that if a spaceship were to arrive on our Earth from distant regions of space, we should by no means assume that its occupants would appear in a form that corresponds to their life on the home planet. It is much more likely that they will be robots, converted creatures or kyborgs with whom we will then become acquainted.”
After these publications, Franke received an airmail letter from the USA: An American asked if Franke’s Kyborg was for sale …
Susanne Päch