We are cyborgs. We are so dependant on our digital devices that we have become cyborgs. I do not even use my phone that much but I am definitely a cyborg. Someone pointed this out during a seminar. They said, “if you don’t believe that you are a cyborg let me take your phone away and then you will realise that you are a cyborg.”
I just read The Unsustainable Fragility of the Digital, and What to Do About It by Luciano Floridi. In the paper Floridi talks about the fragility of the digital and how we need to make sure that it stays healthy because otherwise viruses can spread fast. Linking this with the cyborg idea I realised that we need to start talking about our own “digital health”. The digital is not going away any time soon, so in order to stop the spread of viruses, which can cause enormous amounts of damage, we need to start thinking about digital health. Now this obviously firstly works on the level of software and cybersecurity companies. They are the healthcare sector, but we as individuals also need to work on this, just like we do with our physical health.
We have our bodies (physical health), our brains (mental health), and our digital extensions (digital health). If we are cyborgs then it only makes sense that we look after the robot part of ourselves. Especially because that robot part is only going to grow over time (sadly).