Introduction: “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde
“Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde first appeared in Medical Technics (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) as a chapter that critically examines the intersections of aging, technology, and the human condition. In this work, Ihde draws upon both philosophical reflection and personal experience to explore the concept of “cyborghood,” situating it within broader cultural narratives influenced by Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory and popular technofantasies such as The Terminator and RoboCop (Ihde, 2019). The central theme revolves around the contradictory human desire for technologies to enhance and extend bodily capacities while simultaneously wishing for them to remain transparent and fully embodied. Ihde traces this tension through historical and contemporary prosthetic and medical technologies—ranging from peg legs, eyeglasses, and hearing aids to implants, stents, and open-heart surgery—arguing that each represents a compromise between restoring function and accepting human finitude. He contrasts utopian visions of bionic invincibility with the pragmatic reality of technological trade-offs, emphasizing that prostheses and implants, while life-saving, never fully erase human vulnerability. Ultimately, the chapter suggests that technofantasies of overcoming mortality underpin much of technological development, but that aging forces us to confront the existential reality of limits, making the “partial cyborg” a condition inseparable from modern life (Ihde, 2019).
Summary of “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde
🔮 Technofantasies and the Cyborg Myth
- Ihde reflects on Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg as a hybrid of human, animal, and machine, noting its cultural spread through science fiction.
- He emphasizes the contradictory desire of humans: the wish for seamless transparency of technology and the simultaneous craving for enhanced capacities.
- “I want the transformation that the technology allows, but I want it in such a way that I am basically unaware of its presence” (Ihde, 2019, p. 25).
🦿 Prostheses as Proto-Cyborgs
- Ancient prosthetics (peg legs, false teeth, arm hooks) represent early compromises between human finitude and technological enhancement.
- These devices amplify certain capacities while limiting others, creating what Ihde calls “quasi-transparency” (p. 27).
- He notes that while such technologies restore function, they rarely inspire fantasies of superiority.
👁️ Sensory Prostheses and Transparency
- Vision and hearing aids exemplify sensory technologies that extend human capability into old age.
- Glasses and contact lenses quickly become transparent in experience, whereas hearing aids resist full incorporation.
- “Even one’s musical memory reminds one that music no longer ‘sounds the same’” (Ihde, 2019, p. 31).
🦷 Dental and Internal Implants
- Ihde’s own experiences with crowns illustrate the partial cyborgization of everyday life. Crowns restore functionality but retain subtle differences detectable by the body.
- Similarly, hip and knee replacements highlight the limited shelf-life of implants, tied to finite human lifespans.
- “Though permanent, the crown retains a marginal self-difference” (p. 32).
❤️ Medical Implants and Cyborg Identity
- Devices like pacemakers, defibrillators, and stents deepen the integration of technology into the aging body.
- Ihde recounts his own stent implantation as a turning point toward partial cyborghood.
- “Interestingly, I have no direct bodily awareness of the stent at all—unlike my tooth crowns, it remains totally ‘invisible’” (p. 34).
⏳ Aging, Mortality, and Cyborg Strategies
- Aging drives the proliferation of technological interventions, from eyeglasses to open-heart surgery.
- Ihde stresses that such interventions are trade-offs—better than decline, but always short of the utopian bionic fantasies.
- “Better to be partially cyborg than dead” (p. 39).
🌌 Cultural and Existential Dimensions
- Popular media sustains technofantasies (e.g., RoboCop, Terminator), reflecting deep-seated human desires for superhuman power and immortality.
- Ihde questions whether such fantasies also fuel technoscientific funding and development.
- Ultimately, he suggests that accepting cyborghood is tied to accepting finitude and aging.
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde
| Term | Example from Chapter | Explanation |
| 🤖 Cyborg | Ihde’s heart stent, pacemaker cases, and crowns represent partial cyborgization. | The cyborg is a human–technology hybrid. Ihde resists the science-fiction version (e.g., Terminator) but accepts that aging pushes humans into cyborg states through medical technologies. He stresses that this hybridity is always partial and tied to trade-offs rather than utopian fantasies. |
| ✨ Technofantasy | References to The Six Million Dollar Man and RoboCop. | Technofantasies are cultural narratives that imagine technologies granting superhuman abilities. Ihde argues these fantasies reflect desires for power, immortality, or transcendence but overlook the compromises of real medical technologies (Ihde, 2019, p. 25–26). |
| 🔍 Transparency / Quasi-Transparency | Vivian Sobchack’s description of “forgetting” her prosthetic leg while walking. | Transparency is when technology recedes from awareness and functions as part of the body. Quasi-transparency occurs when the device is usable but never fully disappears from perception (e.g., crowns feel different to the tongue). Ihde notes this is the phenomenological condition of most prostheses. |
| 🧩 Embodiment Relation | Wearing glasses: quickly embodied, unnoticed in daily life. | Ihde’s concept from Technology and the Lifeworld (1990). Technologies mediate experience but can become integrated into bodily perception. Aging makes these embodiment relations more evident (e.g., reliance on reading glasses or hearing aids). |
| ⚖️ Trade-off / Compromise | Choosing a stent instead of bypass surgery. | Ihde insists technologies are not enhancements without cost—they involve compromises. Prosthetics restore mobility but lack sensation; implants prolong life but introduce risks. Thus, cyborg existence is defined by finite trade-offs rather than limitless progress. |
| ⏳ Aging and Finitude | Decline of hearing, need for digital aids, and open-heart surgery. | Ihde situates cyborgization within the inevitability of aging. Rather than escaping mortality, technologies highlight human finitude. He concludes: “Better to be partially cyborg than dead” (p. 39). |
| 🎭 Cultural Representation | Sci-fi figures: Terminator, RoboCop, Bionic Woman. | Popular culture exaggerates cyborg potential, offering utopian or dystopian myths. Ihde contrasts this with real prostheses and implants, showing the gap between cultural imagination and lived embodiment. |
| 🌌 Existential Desire | Humans dream of transcending mortality—Stephen Hawking’s “escape to other planets.” | Ihde interprets cyborg fantasies as rooted in existential desires: to overcome vulnerability, aging, and death. Yet he argues technologies cannot fulfill this; they only delay decline and expose the human condition of contingency. |
Contribution of “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde to Literary Theory/Theories
🤖 Posthumanism & Cyborg Theory
- Ihde engages Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto and critiques science-fictional technofantasies.
- He resists utopian visions of seamless human–machine integration, instead grounding cyborg identity in the aging process.
- “Better to be partially cyborg than dead” (Ihde, 2019, p. 39) reframes posthumanism away from transcendence and toward embodied finitude.
- Contribution: Helps literary scholars reinterpret cyborg narratives (Terminator, RoboCop) as fantasies of overcoming mortality, contrasting them with real-world prosthetic compromises.
🧩 Phenomenology & Embodiment Theory
- Ihde applies phenomenology to technology, emphasizing embodiment relations and quasi-transparency.
- Example: Vivian Sobchack’s account of her prosthetic leg—“I want the leg to become totally transparent. However, the desired transparency here involves my incorporation of the prosthetic” (p. 28).
- Contribution: Offers literary theory tools to analyze embodied experience in texts—how prosthetic or technological metaphors shape identity, subjectivity, and sensory perception.
🎭 Cultural Studies / Representation Theory
- Ihde critiques how popular media exaggerates cyborg potential: “Explosion movies remain popular—the quasi- or even superpowers of a Terminator or a RoboCop indulge wish fulfillments and revenge fantasies” (p. 35).
- Contribution: Strengthens cultural/literary analyses of science fiction and film, situating cyborg myths within broader cultural desires for superhuman power and resistance to mortality.
⚖️ Aging Studies & Biopolitics
- Ihde shows cyborgization as a response to aging bodies, not just futuristic fantasies.
- Example: his accounts of stents, pacemakers, and hearing aids reveal technologies as survival strategies rather than enhancements.
- Contribution: Extends biopolitical literary theory—scholars can analyze how texts represent aging, medicalization, and bodily vulnerability under technoscientific regimes.
🌌 Existentialist & Mortality-Centered Theory
- Ihde interprets technofantasies as existential desires to evade death: “Is it that the deepest desires and fantasies are simply our wishes to avoid mortality and contingency?” (p. 36).
- Contribution: Connects with existentialist literary theory (Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus), showing how cyborg myths in literature dramatize humanity’s refusal to accept finitude.
✨ Science and Technology Studies (STS) & Narrative Theory
- Ihde’s personal narrative (crowns, stents, open-heart surgery) exemplifies how technology reshapes selfhood.
- His phenomenological “case study” style creates a narrative form blending autobiography, philosophy, and cultural critique.
- Contribution: Provides literary theorists a framework to analyze autobiographical-technological narratives (memoirs, autofiction) as hybrid texts where the body and machine co-author experience.
Examples of Critiques Through “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde
| Literary Work | Critique through Ihde’s Framework | Reference to Ihde’s Chapter |
| Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) | Ihde’s stress on trade-offs and quasi-transparency challenges the fantasy of creating a perfected “superhuman.” Like prostheses that restore but never surpass natural limbs, Victor’s creature embodies the limits of technoscientific imagination, exposing vulnerability instead of transcendence. | Ihde: “They remain worthwhile trade-offs, but they also remain short of full transparency in user experience” (2019, p. 31). |
| William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) | Gibson’s cyberspace celebrates posthuman transcendence, but Ihde’s phenomenology critiques this as technofantasy. Real prostheses and implants remain finite, partial, and tied to aging, not liberation. Thus, Case’s escape into cyberspace masks the embodied compromises Ihde highlights. | Ihde: “What, then, motivates the continuance of technofantasies, the unrealistic imaginations of utopic cyborg solutions to our existential woes?” (2019, p. 35). |
| Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) | Ihde’s concept of embodiment relations critiques the blurred boundary between androids and humans. Just as prosthetics never achieve full transparency, android “humanness” remains incomplete, exposing quasi-transparency of identity—a cyborg compromise rather than full equivalence. | Ihde: “I want the technology to become me… Such a desire secretly rejects what technologies are and overlooks the transformational effects” (2019, p. 25). |
| Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) | Ihde critiques Haraway’s optimistic hybrid by grounding cyborg identity in aging and mortality. Where Haraway celebrates boundary breakdowns, Ihde insists cyborgization is not emancipation but survival strategy: better to be partially cyborg than dead. | Ihde: “Better to be partially cyborg than dead” (2019, p. 39). |
Criticism Against “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde
· Overemphasis on Personal Anecdotes
- Ihde frequently grounds his argument in personal medical experiences (tooth crowns, hearing aids, stents, open-heart surgery). While vivid, critics may argue this limits the scope, making the analysis too subjective rather than universally philosophical.
· Limited Engagement with Haraway’s Cyborg Theory
- Although he references Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, Ihde primarily positions cyborgs within medical and prosthetic contexts. Critics could argue that he neglects Haraway’s broader feminist, political, and posthuman dimensions of cyborg identity.
· Neglect of Disability Studies Perspectives
- Ihde frames prosthetics and implants as compromises against loss, emphasizing their inability to fully replace natural capacities. Disability scholars might critique this deficit-based view, arguing it overlooks how prosthetic users actively redefine embodiment and agency.
· Technological Pessimism
- Ihde stresses the compromises, trade-offs, and failures of medical technologies, but critics might see this as leaning toward pessimism. By foregrounding limitations, he arguably underplays the transformative, empowering aspects of medical technics.
· Insufficient Consideration of Socioeconomic Contexts
- The chapter largely assumes access to advanced medical interventions (stents, implants, digital hearing aids). Critics could note the lack of attention to class, inequality, and global disparities in who can actually become “cyborg.”
· Simplification of Technofantasies
- Ihde portrays technofantasies (e.g., Terminator, RoboCop) as escapist desires for superhuman power. Critics might argue that this oversimplifies how popular culture engages with deeper anxieties about technology, politics, and identity.
· Failure to Fully Confront Mortality
- While Ihde frames aging technologies as trade-offs against human finitude, critics could say he stops short of a deeper existential or ethical discussion about mortality, transhumanism, and the philosophical implications of seeking immortality through technics.
· Narrow Focus on Aging
- By situating cyborg embodiment mainly within aging bodies, Ihde may neglect broader forms of cyborg existence (digital implants, brain-machine interfaces, biohacking) that affect younger generations and reshape cultural understandings of selfhood.
Representative Quotations from “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde with Explanation
| Quotation | Explanation |
| 🤖 “I want the transformation that the technology allows, but I want it in such a way that I am basically unaware of its presence” (p. 25). | Shows Ihde’s contradictory desire: humans want both enhancement and transparency. Technology transforms embodiment but never vanishes. |
| 🦿 “The proto-cyborg is thus a compromise” (p. 27). | Prostheses illustrate compromise—restoring mobility but never replicating natural limbs. Cyborgization is always partial, not utopian. |
| 👁️ “I want the leg to become totally transparent. However, the desired transparency here involves my incorporation of the prosthetic—and not the prosthetic’s incorporation of me” (Sobchack, p. 28). | Highlights embodiment relations: technologies are lived-through, not absorbed fully into the body or identity. |
| ⚖️ “Nor do I think that because my prosthetic will, in all likelihood, outlast me, it confers on me invincibility or immortality” (Sobchack, p. 28). | Rejects technofantasies of immortality. Technologies may prolong life but cannot erase mortality. |
| 🦷 “Though permanent, the crown retains a marginal self-difference” (p. 32). | Even subtle implants (tooth crowns) remind us of technological presence. Transparency is incomplete—remnants of difference remain. |
| ❤️ “Interestingly, I have no direct bodily awareness of the stent at all—unlike my tooth crowns, it remains totally ‘invisible’” (p. 34). | Illustrates quasi-transparency: some implants recede entirely from awareness but still shape cyborg identity. |
| ⏳ “It is better to have a pacemaker than to have life-threatening arrhythmia… Yet all these trade-offs fall far short of the bionic technofantasies” (p. 35). | Defines cyborgization as trade-offs: technologies preserve life but lack utopian perfection. |
| 🎬 “Explosion movies remain popular—the quasi- or even superpowers of a Terminator or a RoboCop indulge wish fulfillments and revenge fantasies” (p. 35). | Critiques cultural cyborg myths in media. Popular stories fuel unrealistic expectations of enhancement. |
| 🌌 “Is it that the deepest desires and fantasies are simply our wishes to avoid mortality and contingency?” (p. 36). | Links technofantasy to existential desire: humans resist aging and death by imagining transcendent technologies. |
| ✅ “Better to be partially cyborg than dead” (p. 39). | Ihde’s conclusion: cyborg identity is inevitable with aging. It reflects acceptance of finitude rather than utopian transcendence. |
Suggested Readings: “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II” by Don Ihde
- Ihde, Don. “Aging: I Don’t Want to Be a Cyborg, I and II.” Medical Technics, University of Minnesota Press, 2019, pp. 25–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvpmw56v.5. Accessed 21 Sept. 2025.
- Downey, Gary Lee, et al. “Cyborg Anthropology.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 10, no. 2, 1995, pp. 264–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/656336. Accessed 21 Sept. 2025.
- Orr, Jackie. “Materializing a Cyborg’s Manifesto.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 1/2, 2012, pp. 273–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23333457. Accessed 21 Sept. 2025.
- Penley, Constance, et al. “Cyborgs at Large: Interview with Donna Haraway.” Social Text, no. 25/26, 1990, pp. 8–23. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/466237. Accessed 21 Sept. 2025.