| Disappointment in the failure of artificial intelligence to live up to its original promise has indeed contributed to the decreasing interest in cybernetics. However there is another tradition in computer technology, focussing on intelligence amplification (IA), which is more promising than that of artificial intelligence (AI). Howard Rheingold documents the history of this tradition in his Tools for Thought [Rheingold, 1985]. One type of cyborg you may aspire to be - as suggested above - is one in which your natural intelligence is amplified by artificial intelligence. Cybernetics is the best language for discussing such a symbiosis of the person and the machine.
Batch-process computing did not enable the tight feedback loop between the person and the machine best described by cybernetics, and best embodied in the cyborg. However, in the interval the mainframe computer has moved to the desktop to the laptop to the palmtop. No doubt, with the refinements in voice-recognition software, it will soon move to the wristtop. (Already we can imagine the laughter at the bulky ancient wristtop device which provided only one piece of information - the time!) As this saga of the incredible shrinking chip continues - computers become smaller and smaller, faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper, smarter and smarter, friendlier and friendlier - the relationship between the person and the machine is better and better described by cybernetics.
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