As humans become cyborgs, are we still Homo sapiens?

Homo sapiens are turning into cyborgs as they replace their bodies with machines and develop digital minds. Discuss how these changes will affect human identity and the concept of life.

 

We, Homo sapiens, are increasingly researching and practicing the replacement of body parts with non-organic ones, and we are working on giving computers digital minds. We are becoming cyborgs. According to the dictionary, cyborg is a combination of the words cybernetic and organism, and refers to a hypothetical artificial human being who has been modified through the replacement or transplantation of artificial organs to survive in a foreign and hostile environment. In this future, will we still be able to call ourselves “Homo sapiens”?
There have been many attempts to overcome disabilities with prosthetics and artificial limbs in the past, and humans have invented and use various machines that replace the eye with a computer chip or act as a heart and kidney. You can even move a bionic arm or leg with just your thoughts, and this can be done over very long distances. We’re also building machines that go beyond the functions of basic human organs, such as electronic noses and electronic tongues. Even if you’re reading this right now, you’re probably already enjoying the convenience of having your smartphone or computer do some of the “remembering” that your brain is supposed to do.
In the future, we may not only have people who want to replace various parts of their bodies with machines due to accidents or disabilities, but we may also have people who want to become cyborgs themselves simply because of the superiority of bionic organs, and we may have people with faces that look more like machines than skin. We may no longer have to worry about epidemics, but we may have to fear computer viruses and hackers. When we reach this stage, will we still be able to call ourselves ‘Homo sapiens’? Some might argue that we are no longer Homo sapiens, but something new, and some might disagree.
What would happen if we uploaded our “self” to a computer, rather than replacing a part of our body with a non-organic one? Recently, Dr. Stephen Hawking, a star in the world of physics, passed away. What would happen if a scientist was able to copy his brain into a computer? Would the “Stephen Hawking” in the computer be a person? Would it be murder to put him in the trash? We can already do so much in cyberspace. But in the future, if it is possible to connect our brains to computers, how will we define concepts like personhood, selfhood, and so on?
Imagine a giant computer with all the people in the world stored in it, each with their own memories, knowledge, and experiences. If people can access each other’s brains to get information from within that computer, they will have each other’s memories. Would there be any need to distinguish one from the other? If this were to happen, the entire human race could be compressed into a single entity, and there would be no need to discuss the concept of personhood or self.
We are Homo sapiens, living in different places on the planet, engaging in different activities, and dying at the end of our lives as living beings. However, if our limbs are replaced by machines and our brains are uploaded to computers, we will live in cyberspace instead of on Earth, and death may not be an option. Can we really call the “people” living in cyberspace “homo sapiens” in this situation? According to the Korean dictionary, life is defined as “the state of an organism from birth to death”. If we are ‘stored’ in a non-organic computer and become immortalized, we will no longer be ‘Homo sapiens’ or even ‘life’ in the current sense, and the ‘end of Homo sapiens’ will occur.
No matter how much we imagine and speculate about this possibility, it is very likely that the future is much more than we can imagine. We are already moving away from Homo sapiens, and it is imperative that we think about the future we will have when Homo sapiens ends and we become something else.