In five minutes
A cyborg is a living being that has technology built into its body, so that the machine and the body work together as one system. The word is short for “cybernetic organism”. It does not mean a robot, and it does not require glowing eyes or a metal arm. By the plain definition, a person with a pacemaker or a cochlear implant is a cyborg, although most of them would never use the word.
Three things explain most of what people want to know when they ask what a cyborg is. The word was coined in 1960 by two scientists who were thinking about space travel. Real cyborg technology already exists, mostly as medicine. And fiction has stretched the idea far beyond what the technology can do. The rest of this page takes those in turn. It is part of our guide to the History of Science Fiction.
Where the word came from
The word first appeared in 1960. Manfred Clynes, an engineer and musician, and Nathan Kline, a psychiatrist, were both working at Rockland State Hospital in New York. Their paper “Cyborgs and Space” was published in the journal Astronautics in September 1960, after a talk at a conference on the medicine of space flight in San Antonio, Texas, that May.
Their question was practical. Humans cope badly with space, so should engineers build a small piece of Earth around the astronaut, or change the astronaut? Clynes and Kline argued that adjusting the body’s own controls could be smarter than hauling a whole artificial environment along. They imagined, for example, a pump implanted under the skin that releases a drug at a steady rate, so that the traveller’s attention stays free for the mission. They called the result, a person and a machine regulating themselves together, a cyborg.
“Cybernetic” comes from Norbert Wiener, who used the word cybernetics in his 1948 book for the study of control and communication in animals and machines. A thermostat is the simple example: it senses the temperature, compares it with a setting and corrects the difference. Clynes and Kline wanted that same loop to run inside a living body.
The real science
Here is what is established. The word cyborg is now used most often for technology that is already in people, and most of it is medical.
- Pacemakers. In 1958 the first fully internal pacemaker was implanted in Stockholm. Rune Elmqvist designed it and the surgeon Åke Senning fitted it. Today’s models sense the heart’s rhythm and give a small electric pulse only when it is needed.
- Cochlear implants. A microphone outside the ear turns sound into electrical signals, and electrodes in the inner ear pass them to the hearing nerve. This helps people with severe hearing loss. It works differently from a hearing aid, which only makes sound louder.
- Prosthetic limbs. Some artificial hands read the tiny electrical signals of the remaining muscles and open and close as the user intends.
- Brain–computer interfaces. Electrodes on or in the brain let some people with paralysis move a computer cursor or a robotic arm by thought. University trials such as BrainGate began in the 2000s, and in January 2024 the company Neuralink implanted its first device in a human volunteer.
- Self-described cyborgs. The engineer Kevin Warwick had a chip implanted in his arm in 1998 and an electrode array linked to his nerves in 2002. Neil Harbisson, who was born unable to see colour, has an antenna fixed to his skull that turns colours into sound vibrations.
Now the speculation. Upgrades that make healthy people far stronger or smarter, direct brain-to-brain conversation, and copying a mind into a machine do not exist today. Current devices mostly restore a lost function rather than add a new one, and each comes with surgical risk, upkeep and cost. New questions follow the technology: who owns the data from a device inside your body, what happens to the user if the maker closes down, and where the line falls between treatment and enhancement.
The cyborg as an idea
The word also lives in philosophy. In 1985 the American scholar Donna Haraway published “A Cyborg Manifesto” in the journal Socialist Review. She used the cyborg as a way of thinking rather than a medical term: a figure that blurs the lines between human and animal, and between organism and machine. The essay was reprinted in her 1991 book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. When you meet the word in a university course rather than a film, this is usually where it comes from.
Where it shows up in fiction
Fiction took the word almost as soon as it existed and carried it much further than the technology. Here are some of the best-known examples; films and television are named only.
Cyborg 009
Shotaro Ishinomori’s manga began in 1964. Nine people from around the world are kidnapped by a secret organisation called Black Ghost and rebuilt as cyborg soldiers. They escape and try to use their powers for peace. The story rests on one fact: they never chose the change.
Cyborg and The Six Million Dollar Man
Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg follows a test pilot who is badly hurt in a crash and rebuilt with artificial limbs and other parts. It became the basis for the television series The Six Million Dollar Man.
Ghost in the Shell
Masamune Shirow’s manga began in 1989. Its hero, Major Motoko Kusanagi, has a body that is entirely artificial, yet her mind, the “ghost” of the title, is still her own. If a body can be replaced, the story asks, what is left that makes someone the same person?
Neuromancer
William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer filled a grimy near future with implants and altered bodies, and helped define cyberpunk.
On screen, RoboCop (1987) and the Borg of Star Trek are among the best-known cyborgs.
Common misconceptions
“A cyborg is a robot.”
No. A robot is a machine from the start. An android is a machine built to look like a person. A cyborg starts as a living thing and has technology added to it.
“Cyborgs belong to the future.”
The first fully internal pacemaker was implanted in 1958, two years before the word existed. Many people live with cyborg technology today.
“Cyborgs are superhuman.”
Most real devices repair or replace something that was lost. Fiction made the superhuman version popular.
“Anyone with a smartphone is a cyborg.”
Some thinkers use the word loosely this way. In science and medicine it usually needs a device that is part of the body’s own feedback loop, not one that sits in a pocket.
“Science fiction invented the word.”
Scientists did, in 1960. Writers adopted it quickly, which is why many people assume it began in stories.
Read next
Cyborgs are one thread in a much longer story about how writers imagined science and the human body. Our guide to the History of Science Fiction shows where this idea sits among the others, from early tales to cyberpunk.
