The purpose of anaesthesia is to temporarily insulate a patient's senses from the trauma of surgery. This necessitates a reconfiguration of bodily boundaries and a redistribution of bodily functions. Anaesthetic machines are called upon to assume some of these responsibilities, for example, frequently patients are paralysed in the process of anaesthesia thus disabling their capacity to breathe, and the anaesthetic machine, once programmed, will then assume this responsibility. Furthermore, in rendering the patient unconscious, anaesthesia incurs a silencing of the patient. Here, anaesthetic machines are again enrolled to provide an alternative route of expression with monitoring devices displaying ‘readings’, diagrammatic ‘traces’ and measurements. An anaesthetised patient, therefore, is heavily reliant on the relationship that is forged with the anaesthetic machine. Indeed, the patient is technologically extended and augmented through this relationship. In a very practical and material sense, the patient becomes a mix of organic and technological components, in other words, a cyborg.

Cyborgs: Fact, Fiction and Social Reality

The word ‘cyborg’ was coined in 1960 by Clynes and Kline, as short for ‘cybernetic organism’. It referred to a living creature enhanced by computer-controlled bio-feedback systems, developed in the aim of liberating the human from environmental constraints:

Space travel, according to Clynes and Kline, would be better facilitated by modifying the body in partial adaptation to space conditions rather than persisting in carrying the earth's environment into space.