A cyborg is a crossbreed of a human and a machine. The cyborg metaphor was coined by the astronautics researcher Manfred Clynes and the psychiatrist Nathan Kline (Clynes and Kline 1960, pp. 26–27), who argued that space travel required the development of "self-regulating human-machine systems." Such systems were termed cyborgs, from cybernetic technology and organism. However, the term is not restricted to astronautics. Robotic beings that blur the distinction between humans and machines inhabit myriad science fiction novels and films, such as Star Trek (1979), Robocop (1987), Blade Runner (1982), and Terminator (1984). Above all, cyborg derives its intellectual influence from Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto (1985).

This manifesto rang in Haraway's presence as a leading theorist in the field broadly defined as science and technology studies. Haraway was educated as a primatologist, philosopher and historian of science and technology. In the early twenty-first century she teaches as a professor of the history of...