Recommendation
Entering _ Kim Won-young

Part 1: Are We Cyborgs?

Chapter 1: Becoming a Cyborg _ Kim Cho-yeop
Cyborg Man from the Diamond Planet | A Disability Cyborg, Strange and Familiar | Technology That Transforms Instead of Enhancing

Chapter 2: The Status of Wheelchairs in Space _ Kim Won-young
Companion Wheelchair | A disabled cyborg standing in front of a mirror | Are prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs part of the body? | Becoming a wheelchair

Chapter 3: Disability and Technology, Between Promise and Reality _ Kim Cho-yeop
A warm technology that overcomes disability? | "We will end disability" | Will technology bring about the end of disability?

Chapter 4: Blue Tape Cyborg _ Kim Won-young
Humans who survived Mars | Humans beyond human | Not as human as Hawking | Beings who question human identity | Beings like duct tape


Part 2: Imagination of Care and Repair

Chapter 5: The Feuding Cyborgs _ Kim Cho-yeop
Invisible Disabilities | The Cyborg Stigma | Do Cyborgs Dream of Robotic Exoskeletons? | Maintaining a Cyborg Body | There Is No Such Thing as a Cyborg

Chapter 6: Disability-Cyborg Design _ Wonyoung Kim
The Limits of Bone Engineering | Sperm Whale Bones and Invisible Hearing Aids | Fashion and Discretion | Technology, Disability, and Fetishism | Avoiding the Uncanny Valley | Designing for Disability

Chapter 7: Cyborgs Redesigning the World _ Kim Cho-yeop
Declaring the Technology of Disability | People with Disabilities as Knowledge Producers | Universal Design, Disability-Centered Design | Is Straw Banning Ableism? | YouTube and Hashtags: A New Wave in the Disability Rights Movement | Accessibility in Virtual Space | Remaining Questions

Chapter 8: Superhuman Gaps _ Kim Won-young
A drug that cures disabilities | Become Captain America through treatment? | The allure of smoothness | Seamless design and the labor of seams | A being that creates cracks in a smooth world | The power to endure bumps


Part 3: The Futurology of Coalition and Hospitality

Chapter 9: Imagining the Future of Disability _ Kim Cho-yeop
Our Other Cognitive World | Design Your Spaceship | Anthropologists on Mars | Cyborg Neutrality

Chapter 10: Cyborgs Existing Connectedly _ Kim Won-young
If I stand on my own two feet, will I be free from dependence? | A robot that cares for me, a robot that I care for | A life without having to see others' faces | The ontology of coalitions - Technology that helps us be together


Bold _ Kim Cho-yeop, Kim Won-young
Becoming Partners | Stories Beyond Survival | Examining the Complex Relationship Between Disability and Science and Technology | Opportunities to Reveal One's Body or Existence, Online and Offline | The Uniqueness of the Disability Experience | On the Symbol of the Cyborg | The Inseparable Connection Between Humanity and Technological Civilization | The Moment Our Lives Intersect

Coming out _ Kim Cho-yeop
Acknowledgements
References

How should the human body interact with science and technology?
Different bodies, senses, technologies and environments combine to create
What does a redesigned future look like?

Humans have developed science and technology to explore the laws of nature and to provide what is necessary for the survival, maintenance, and improvement of the community.
Naturally, science and technology aim for a better tomorrow, a future with less exposure to danger and disease and with minimal inconvenience or impossibility.
The future envisioned by the so-called "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is also one in which humans, deeply connected to networks, seamlessly navigate a world designed for them, without the constraints of physical distance or environment.
In this optimistic picture, humans are depicted as beings who have no limitations in enjoying the benefits of technological civilization, or who have overcome physical and mental limitations by replacing or supplementing their innate vulnerabilities with various machines, equipment, and medicines.
Kim Cho-yeop and Kim Won-young, who have lived in close connection with technology, such as hearing aids and wheelchairs, respectively, take a critical look at the "technological utopia" proposed by elites of global tech companies, technocrats, and futurists.
In particular, it points out the emptiness of discussions that use easy metaphors like “posthuman” or “transhuman” to refer to the bodies of disabled people combined with machines at the forefront.
While it is true that scientific and medical achievements have cured diseases and improved the functions of damaged bodies, integrating with machines in real life is never a smooth experience. Some technologies are not only inaccessible to people with disabilities, but promises of an end to disability erase the various possibilities for people with disabilities to live better in the here and now.


For some people, providing sign language or written information may be more appropriate than technology that improves hearing, or a wheelchair may be more appropriate than a robotic exoskeleton.
The bodies of people with disabilities are so diverse that they cannot be standardized, even if they have the same type of disability, and each person faces different situations.
(…) The gazes covered with warmth and charity close their eyes to the reality of disabled cyborgs, and only promote futuristic images as ambassadors for technological optimism.
We keep postponing the task of addressing the pain and barriers experienced by people with disabilities here and now to a future when technology will advance.
Ramps, elevators, and sign language interpretation don't require cutting-edge, amazing technology to make it happen.
- Page 87

As people with disabilities who have developed their own modes of mobility, communication, and everyday wisdom through close interaction with machines, the two authors boldly bring the unique experiences and newly constructed identities of people with disabilities through the combination of their bodies and senses with technology to the center of discourse on science, technology, and the future.
This is not just to point out the myths and harms of technological optimism, or to expose those who are left out of such discussions.
In an era where the human condition is increasingly intertwined with technological civilization, the experiences of people with disabilities, who have endured and integrated the daily bumps, seams, and steps that arise from the connection and discord with machines and the environment built around non-disabled people, can play a significant role in helping us imagine and design a different future.
Furthermore, if we view technology not simply as a tool to compensate for damage, but as an opportunity to define disabled people as "extended" beings rather than "deficient" beings by constructing parts of their bodies, and as beings "connected" to the world and others, I believe we can envision a future in which all humans can live equally and fully, despite their inherent vulnerabilities and dependencies.


When a visually impaired person moves as one with a guide dog, or when a person with severe brain damage connects with a wheelchair and then connects with an activity support worker who pushes the wheelchair, the experience of overcoming the many misalignments, discord, and gaps in connection between these two is the capacity that we 'need to strengthen' in the future.
(…) I said that people with vulnerable physical conditions, such as disabilities or illnesses, may be the ones who can exert their capabilities in the automated and seamless society that some tech elites dream of.
As a being who has the courage to reveal the differences and the ability to willingly endure misaligned seams.
- Pages 250-251

Therefore, in this book, 'cyborg' goes far beyond the dictionary definition of an organism combined with a machine.
Kim Cho-yeop and Kim Won-young use the symbol "cyborg" to symbolize the ensemble of humans, science, technology, nature, the environment, and all other physical and cultural elements interacting, complementing and caring for one another, and coexisting.
This book will be an intellectual journey that examines the specific realities of "disabled cyborgs" at the forefront and imagines a world without hierarchy, beyond the barriers of normality or standards.


Fix, fill, add, and repair
The imagination of a cyborg redesigning the world

Kim Cho-yeop, a woman who majored in natural science and works as a science fiction writer, had long struggled to connect these elements of herself with her identity as a hearing impaired person. She believed that depicting beings with different cognitive and sensory worlds through science fiction and creating a space-time centered around them was a separate issue from her disability.
However, in the process of writing this book, I discovered people with various types of disabilities, including my partner Wonyoung Kim, each navigating an unfriendly world in their own way, and I encountered the courage to shake up rigid hierarchies and norms of normalcy and call for a structural change in the world. Only then was I able to connect and integrate the various identities within me.
Because we have established that a person's identity cannot be separated from the way his body interacts with the world.

In this book, Kim Cho-yeop introduces people with disabilities who actively participate in the field of science and technology by reconfiguring, modifying, or repairing machines connected to their bodies, as well as developers who design tools and environments with the needs and accessibility of people with disabilities at the center.
From kitchens for the visually impaired designed to allow the entire cooking process to be confirmed through touch and sound, to houses designed with ramps at the center for wheelchair access, to text interpretation services for the hearing impaired, to online games with meticulous accessibility settings so that people of all physical abilities can participate, to YouTubers sharing their daily lives and advocating for their rights, people with disabilities are no longer just objects of kindness and charity, but are fully demonstrating their potential as knowledge producers.
Kim Cho-yeop introduces the concept of 'creep technoscience', recently proposed in disability studies, and gives positive meaning to this movement.

Crib Technoscience seeks to focus on how people with disabilities reconfigure everyday technologies and reshape the world within their specific experiences of disability.
People with disabilities are not simply recipients of the world or shaped by it; they are actively re-creators of the world.
(…) People with disabilities are constantly ‘tinkering’ with their surroundings, as well as with their local communities and communities.
Disability scholars have coined the term "creating a world for people with disabilities."
The work of disabled people adapting to their disabilities and creatively repairing their environments (…) If this everyday knowledge is properly captured, we will be able to secure knowledge that will be helpful not only to disabled people, but to all people with vulnerabilities and dependencies.
- Pages 188-189

Kim Cho-yeop then critically examines the ways in which recent science fiction works portray disabled characters and the perspectives on designing the world surrounding them, suggesting that the genre of science fiction can serve as a place for thought experiments, exploring a future in which each individual's subjective world coexists despite their incomplete understanding, and the unknown realm that can be reached by striving to imagine the lives of others. This is because science fiction is a story that rebuilds the world from the ground up, centering on other beings, and is a "story that explores accessibility," such as devising ways to take humans to the past and future, space and the deep sea, or designing an environment where non-human beings can live.
So, what kind of future does Kim Cho-yeop aspire to? He envisions a world free of meritocracy, which assigns hierarchy to physical conditions and pursues only physical and mental competence, and proposes the concept of "cyborg neutrality."


Cyborgs are always precarious and unstable beings, teetering between contempt and superiority.
So, can we imagine 'cyborgism' not as an icon at the forefront of transhumanism, not as an alienated machine-human who frowns at everyone he meets, but simply as a neutral characteristic of humans?
(…) Even if it is a very difficult imagination, I believe that a future where vulnerable people can comfortably be themselves is more liberating than a world where everyone is ‘competent.’
(…) Let’s redesign the spaceship where other beings live and share a single space.
Such a design would require numerous drawings.
(…) If we look at those countless drawings together and continue to revise them, we may be able to create a future different from the present.
- Pages 281-282

Slow, misaligned, and slippery bodies appearing in a smooth world
The ontology of expansion and coalescence that emerges from the gaps they create

Unlike Kim Cho-yeop, who had an 'invisible disability', Kim Won-young, who had significantly shorter legs and longer arms than others and a body that could not walk, was interested in the shape and structure of his own body from a young age.
He, who had been perceiving himself as a being of 'nothingness', lacking something compared to a standard body, discovered himself 'existing' there in a new form as a combination of 'human + wheelchair' when he stood in front of a mirror with a wheelchair he had encountered for the first time at the age of fifteen.
We are faced with the question of identity: 'Who on earth are you?'
He brings this question to the gaze of science and technology, which seeks to eliminate obstacles, that is, to eliminate my 'absence'.
If a wheelchair is merely a tool to compensate for my shortcomings, then even with the most advanced wheelchairs developed, wouldn't I still be a "deficient" human being? If I consider the wheelchair a part of my body, then what kind of person would I be once I step out of it? Kim Won-young addresses this long-standing question through a concrete, everyday scene where people with different physical conditions and abilities come together with machines and technology to help one another.


Y (who is wheelchair-bound and hearing impaired) visited an auto repair shop in Gyeonggi Province in late summer 2020 to have an auto box installed.
(…) As B, a person with a disability, gained expertise as an auto mechanic, he probably also became interested in auto boxes, which are needed by many wheelchair users around him.
J's father, A, watched his daughter (who is hearing impaired) grow into an architectural expert through hearing aids and digital devices, and he would have had a special interest in the relationship between disability and technology and Y's professional growth as a friend of his daughter.
Knowing Y well, I recognize that Y may have difficulty communicating with people wearing masks, and because I use a wheelchair like Y, I understand the specifics of vehicles for people with disabilities (which A is not familiar with).
In this way, Y, I, J's father A, mechanic B, J's car, and the machine called the autobox met at that place and cooperated and exchanged opinions in various ways to install an autobox suitable for Y in his new car.
- Pages 111-112

Viewing the disabled body combined with technology through the symbol of a cyborg is not to praise the "humanistic hero" who overcame disability through the power of science and technology, or to discover a "hybrid being" who crosses the boundaries between machine and human, normal and abnormal.
Like duct tape that is placed anywhere and mends and connects objects, it is to focus on the relationships that fill in each other's vulnerabilities and form a network within the close network of humans and other humans, science and technology, culture and the environment.
Kim Won-young describes these inconspicuous yet deeply connected and caring beings as “heroic, like duct tape” (borrowing the expression used by reporter Kim Hye-ri in her article on the film “The Martian”).

If we can view the disabled body, which has become one with the machine, as a new identity, is it also possible to fashion that body? How should a body equipped with a machine express its desire for beauty? Kim Won-young, still conflicted about whether to find a way to be beautiful with a wheelchair, like Paralympic track and field athlete Amy Mullins, who revealed her sleek figure with her elegantly curved carbon fiber prosthetic legs, or to proudly reveal her "natural" self after leaving her wheelchair, cites Amy Mullins' words about feeling "naked" without her prosthetic legs to describe her relationship with her wheelchair.
The prosthetics fitted on the body of a disabled person are a kind of home, a place that cannot be reduced to mere tools or designs.
In this way, Kim Won-young explores a new ontology that explains people with disabilities who use prosthetics such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, white canes, and artificial limbs throughout the book.
He focuses on the abilities of people with disabilities who are struggling to adapt to the trend of cutting-edge tech companies like Apple and Tesla pursuing ever-more seamless designs and designs that minimize human intervention, and who complain about the inconvenience.
In a situation where the majority says it's convenient, the presence of a disabled person who says, "I can't access it," creates cracks and seams in the smooth world, giving us another opportunity to think.
In that gap, we connect with others with different bodies, senses, and minds, and we stand beside each other, caring for each other's vulnerabilities.
Kim Won-young awaits the future technologies that will emerge from this very gap.


I would like to say that the condition of life called coalition is a life that is connected to the ‘other’ who may appear at any time.
The typist is my support worker, my guide dog, my wheelchair, my hearing aid, my auto box, my duct tape, my friends, my audience, and my readers.
(…) It could be a person who repeatedly tears paper, a strange teenage boy who asks himself in the mirror, “Who the hell are you?”, or a science fiction novelist who appears like a comet and draws up a picture of a space hero we’ve never seen before.
Maybe it's an animal face.
These 'others', who transport us to worlds and identities we never imagined, appear as errors in the smooth order of knowledge, technology, ideas, political beliefs, and wisdom that we believed to be firm.
Instead of rejecting, repelling, and wiping away such errors, the community of care begins a new exploration between the seams opened by the errors.
What will the knowledge and technology that helps others, helps as others, and helps others help themselves, be open to the emergence of the future-other, look like?
- Pages 305-307

Kim Won-young and Kim Cho-yeop become partners.

Kim Won-young and Kim Cho-yeop grew up within the explosive growth of the disability rights movement in Korean society since the 2000s.
In other words, they have developed a perspective that accepts their disability as an identity rather than a 'lack' and resists the social structure that makes physical impairment a disability.
From this perspective, attempts by science and technology to treat, correct, and eliminate disabilities are bound to be viewed critically, but as individuals who have sustained life and improved bodily functions through the achievements of science and technology, they have chosen to intervene in that direction rather than exclude science and technology.
Although the two people are headed in similar directions, they unfold different themes stemming from their gender identities, types of disabilities, intellectual backgrounds, and life paths.

Kim Won-young, a person with a physical disability, a lawyer, an actor, and a history of rehabilitation schools and disability rights communities, pursues his interest in the form and movement of the body, and further describes how to define the state of the body when it meets artificial prosthetics, whether it can be beautiful in itself, and what unexpected encounters occur when such beings appear in a space filled with standard or normal bodies.
On the other hand, Kim Cho-yeop, a woman with sensory impairment, science fiction writer, and science major, is more interested in how people with diverse bodies and senses create tools, environments, and worlds that are suitable for them in the fields of science, technology, and creativity.
The conversation at the back of this book features two people who find interesting perspectives on each other's differences.
Kim Cho-yeop, who does not usually wear a hearing aid, is intrigued by Kim Won-young, who feels the wheelchair as a part of the body and explores its aesthetic potential. Kim Won-young, who has been a member of a community of people with disabilities for a long time, is amazed by Kim Cho-yeop's perspective on the world, embodying the perspective of disability studies without such experience.
Discovering the rich meaning that arises when their experiences and perspectives intersect will also be a great joy for readers of this book.