It was the era of the Cold War and the Space Race. NASA was not even two years old. Sputnik (the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth’s orbit), not even three. Kennedy was also a year away from announcing America’s commitment to putting a man on the moon. It was then, in 1960, that the term “Cyborg” was first used by a pair of scientists, Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, who ideated that instead of adapting the environment to ourselves, we adapted ourselves to the environment. For which, they reasoned, one would need a cybernetic feedback system to maintain homeostasis unconsciously. These systems need to become a part of the organism. A cybernetic organism or a Cyborg.
Cyborg is short for cybernetic organism. It refers to a being with both, biological and artificial (electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts. The key notion here is non-hereditary adaptation. Technological interventions that changes the course of biological existence. Brains jacked into computers, bodies invaded by technology, limbs and organs amputated and replaced by machines until the resulting creature is barely recognizable as human.
Few argue that we are all and have always been cyborgs, hybrid entities...