Cyborgs and Uploads A staple of science fiction is that humans will merge with machines, either by technologically enhancing biological bodies into cyborgs (short for “cybernetic organisms”) or by uploading our minds into machines. In his book The Age of Em, economist Robin Hanson gives a fascinating survey of what life might be like in a world teeming with uploads (also known as emulations, nicknamed Ems). I think of an upload as the extreme end of the cyborg spectrum, where the only remaining part of the human is the software.
