@ZachWeinersmith I think it’s more useful to define it for humans only, and then let usage extend them to other creatures. Like zombies imply humans, but if you say “zombie dog” people will immediately get it.
The broader definition would be littered with asterisks and exceptions. Like, is a plant on a pot with an humidity sensor and automatic watering a cyborg?
@ZachWeinersmith
hmm, I always thought of them as technological enhanced meatsacks... so dog with artifical leg is a cyborg, human with artificial heart is one. but also people breast enlargement, or eye laser surgery. So also definately the tortoise with the wheel as a leg.
I would say that without any other qualifiers yes it refers to human hybrids but you could have dog cyborgs or horse cyborgs as well, but just saying e.g. "I saw a cyborg" means you're talking about a human one.
@ZachWeinersmith I always find it weird when people decide that made up sci-fi words are objective definitions that are not up for debate like the rest of language is.
@ZachWeinersmith I feel like the more we play with premade biological systems (dead spider machines) the less likely prosthetics will need to be made out of non organic materials. The more hybrid the builds, the less cyborg they'd be considered.
Kinda like how metal femurs aren't considered a prosthetic being hidden, but a full metal leg is.
@ZachWeinersmith As others have posted any organic/machine hybrid technically counts, but since you asked for the implication/connotation of the word, I think it most definitely does refer almost exclusively to human/machines. If you just tell someone you saw a cyborg, they're going to think robocop or whatever. If you mean a cybernetic dog, you'll probably have to specify exactly that whereas if you did mean a cybernetic human(oid) then you probably don't need to add any other descriptors to get the point the point across.
@ZachWeinersmith Not by it's original meaning, but as 99% of Cyborgs in fiction are based on humans, we're pretty much to conditioned to understand it that way..
@ZachWeinersmith most of our communication is anthrocentric, so... Yes... but... also strictly No. It is a term for a organic/machine hybrid being.
My wife was newly inducted with the addition of a metallic hip joint.
I cosplay a cyborg with my ocular correction devices.
@ZachWeinersmith
It does mean a combination of cybernetic and organic components, but there's nothing saying that those organic components have to be human.
So, machine-organic combination? Yes, always.
Human-machine? No, it could be any other animal. Heck, even plants or bacteria would be sufficient for the "organic" part, technically.
@ZachWeinersmith cyborg dogs feature in Snow Crash, there's a cyborg dolphin in one of William Gibson's stories, and The Borg are famously inclusive in their approach to assimilating different species.
@ZachWeinersmith it's the very root of the word. Cybernetic/organic.
I guess you could say it literally means human-machine combination. Irony of "literally" intended. Except it can be any organism with cybernetics. Fnord.
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