Cyborg citizen : politics in the posthuman age

The creator of the cult classic Cyborg Handbook , Chris Hables Gray, here offers the first guide to "posthuman" politics, framing the key issues that could threaten or brighten our technological future.

For good or ill, politics has already been cyborged in ways that touch us all: on-line voting promises to change who participates.

Wars are won on video screens. Biotechnological advances - cloning, sexual prostheses, gene patents - are redefining life, death, and family in ways that strain the social contract.

In the face of these advances, visions of the cyborg future range from the utopian to the nightmarish, from a spiritual super-race transcending the body's confines to a soulless Borg consuming human individuality.

Only with a broad, historically rich and ethically grounded understanding of these issues, Gray argues, can we combat the threats to our freedom and even our survival.