25th May 2025
*Adapted from an essay for university
The game Cyberpunk 2077 immerses players into a speculative future set in 50 years’ time, rampant with oppressive megacorporations, extreme economic disparity, and advanced body-technology integration through neuro-medical implants. While such integration only currently exists in its infancy through clinical trials and research, both invasively into the brain (Neuralink) or as prosthetics (Fillauer), we also witness ‘embodied’ technology through consumer wearable devices such as the Apple Watch or Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses.
The Body
Francesca Ferrando (2014) describes the body as “multiple and situated [...] constantly reshaping and defining its boundaries”. In the present day, we temporarily interface with technology as an external tool, never integrating it into our bodies. Even our most immersive technology, such as a VR headset, remains a worn device which can be removed to revert us to a ‘default’ human state. Yet, these technologies still blur the boundaries of the self, similar to Cyberpunk 2077’s fusion with flesh.
Jason Farman (2012) observes that ‘cyberspace’ becomes “produced through use”, where the boundary between mind and body dissolves into one as we take on a virtual avatar of whoever we may choose. Using our eyes and ears to perceive audio-visual mediascapes, navigation is done by keyboard, mice, controller or touch, forming a “coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right” (Clarke & Chalmers, 1998). Gallagher (2005) defines body schema as a “non-conscious system of perceptions and motor actions that coordinate bodily movement, such as balance during walking, without conscious effort”.
In digital interfaces, skeuomorphic metaphors and gestures (e.g., mouse cursor forming a hand) extend the body’s schema by mapping familiar physical actions onto virtual environments so that we may traverse their UI with similar instinct. For example, dragging a file icon mimics physically moving an object, engaging the body’s schema to create a seamless interaction which translates the user’s sense of proprioceptive awareness within cyberspace. A version may eventually evolve past 2D to become a ‘metaverse’ in VR/AR, as demonstrated in both fiction (Stevenson, 1992) and proposal by Meta. Here cyberspace would be spatially engaged with and literally an environment, akin to base reality where you exist within digital 3D space in a bodily form.
Regardless, incremental advancements in UX and schematic engagement in computers, the Internet, smartphones, social networking, and even now AI have increasingly integrated technology as part of our person.
The term ‘personal computer’, coined by Alan Kay in 1972, began the integration of the device as an extension of the self, which evolved as smaller and more portable devices like the smartphone that embody our digital presence became our companion access points to broader information. Seeing our devices, environments, and virtual representations as extensions of self has now become commonplace, particularly following COVID-19 where all of society, both in work and play, has been expected to run via digital intermediary, or at least utilise digital infrastructure to allow for eased communication from afar.
Yet, as we have been extended into technology, many have begun to live their lives almost exclusively through the medium, its integration leading to a shift where some begin to feel as themselves more when ‘augmented’ over when entirely ‘organic’ / without their devices (Suler, 2004). Amidst this we have found many dangers arise, including but not limited to: compulsion/addiction, identity fragmentation, or ideological entrapment.
Tristan Harris, warned in his 2019 testimony before U.S. Congress (above) that tech companies exploit our accessibility through such intimate devices to hook our attention for engagement, fostering compulsive behaviour and creating an “asymmetry of power” between a supposed transactional relationship. From this can form informational overload, which can accumulate feelings of stress, confusion, pressure, anxiety, and low motivation (Eppler and Mengis, 2004).
Overload can occur from seeing too much of everything, as well as too much of one alignment, which can reinforce ideology through inferring individual leanings to stimulate engagement (Cinelli et al., 2021). To circumvent what may be deemed taboo or inappropriate to tie to a real name, many create multiple avatars/pseudonyms/‘alts’ to compartmentalise, which can fracture into several alter-egos (Belk, 2013).
Cognitive dissonance can break an individual as they self- contradict, leading multiple ‘lives’ in parallel, leading to a loss of self entirely. Whilst here the user faces more of an external conditioning by technology to ‘replace them’ by psychological/metaphysical means, this may be considered the precursor to the embodied replacement of self which Cyberpunk 2077 speaks of.
Embodiment
A cyborg is defined as a human-machine hybrid and could be said to emerge from something as simple as the act of the unification between the two; for example, a motorcycle and its driver forming one body and entity in motion (October, 2025), or, in the case of computers, a mind metaphysically melding with a machine to hallucinate a unified “mindbody” in self-perception (Hayles, 2002).
However, wearable technologies begin to integrate technology more literally, echoing Cyberpunk 2077’s cybernetic enhancements where body anatomy becomes machine. Consumer devices like the Apple Watch, AirPods or Meta Ray-Ban camera glasses could be seen as an early form of common body augmentation, where one accesses health data, notifications, audio or can record photo/video via tools attached to their corpus rather than through entirely separated devices. The speculative timeline of the game suggests technology may first attach as such, then become embedded as brain-computer interfaces and prosthetics develop.
Whilst this occurs, there becomes an increasing conversion of the human body into information (Precup, 2015), as the traditional notions of what it means to be ‘human’ in flesh are challenged. This theme is core to the game; alongside ‘organic’ and ‘chromed’ (augmented) individuals exist other classes of entity, such as digitised minds.
Johnny Silverhand’s digitised consciousness exemplifies the shift from body to information taken to an extreme, where his entire identity becomes distilled as code. Despite his human body being ‘dead’, he is stored onto a brain-readable chip that can display his essence as a hologram-projection through AR eye implants, forming a continuation of his person, post-mortem. Arasaka Corp. sells this technology under the promise of immortality in data, though in Johnny’s case this procedure was inflicted on him against his will (for acts of ‘terrorism’) so that his psyche could be interrogated and tortured indefinitely until everything valuable had been extracted. His body was killed in this process so that, remaining as code, he would have no autonomy to escape his holdings and remain stored as data.
As the body becomes increasingly mediated by technology and quantified as data, we may face dilemmas similar to those in Cyberpunk 2077, where individual autonomy may become eroded and exploited.
While Johnny’s case is extreme, many implanted individuals in the game face hostage situations where employers terminate their corporate-issued implants (‘Corpo’ prologue) or an enemy can be ‘hacked’ to have their implants short circuit/overheat. As more of the body becomes technology, it becomes easier for technology’s attack vectors to harm it in a biomimicked manner, and a similar “asymmetry of power” may arise on top of any inherent psychological consequences from body augmentation, like cyberpsychosis.
Cyberpsychosis
In Cyberpunk 2077, past a certain point cyberware integration leads to cyberpsychosis, a tolerance-like disorder which can cause self-dissociation and psychosis. It often manifests as apathy, disregarded identity, belief in ‘chrome’ superiority over ‘meat’, body dysmorphia, hallucinations, and, at its extreme, a breakdown into violence. Victims often instead require armed forces (such as MaxTac, seen above) for restraint or even neutralisation after experiencing denial until they break. Only debatably effective immunosuppressants or personality reassembly therapies are deemed to postpone the condition.
Whilst it is already known (Geetha M. et al., 2008) that the body can reject implantations due to material factors (i.e. titanium implants chosen for biocompatibility), a 2005 study by Tsakiris and Haggard into the “Rubber Hand Illusion” found that artificial augmentation only incorporates into the body’s schema under certain conditions. Perceived placebo, where touching the hand would register as real sensation, would only occur when the rubber hand’s anatomical plausibility was aligned, lest its illusion be disrupted and the subject’s self-coherence disturbed, similar to what occurs in fictional cyberpsychosis.
However, there do exist exceptions where cyberpsychosis doesn’t seem to affect heavily implanted individuals. Potentially akin to how some alcoholics/drug users can accept a ‘high functionality’ despite abnormally high dosages (Vaillant, 1995), this usually only occurs in those who willingly overstep the line and embrace their replacement.
The first case witnessed in game is the Maelstrom gang, termed ‘chrome-junkies’ for their drastic body modifications and cult-like worship of technology. Although a crazed collective regardless, fuelled by street drugs and hardcore techno raves, members are impulsive and fast to violence. Individuals are known to augment multiple red ‘eyes’, possess gouged-out faces, wires running through their skin, and whilst this appears sickening to most, they see it as an upgrade.
Supposedly in this embrace they gain a higher tolerance against cyberpsychosis. Maelstrom’s heavy dissociative/stimulant drug culture may play a factor in their immunity; their ‘Black Lace’ drug resembles methamphetamine, strongly linked to the development of psychotic symptoms, including schizotypal features (Grant et al., 2012). Studies following the rubber hand illusion have similarly found that people with higher dissociative tendencies may find it easier to accept less-anatomical flowing schemas (Asai, T. et al., 2011).
Still, they aren’t entirely immune; the ‘Psycho Killer’ quest line shows hardcore Maelstrom members actively seeking cyberpsychosis by allowing an AI to possess/hack them in a ritual sacrifice, showing their techno-fetishism remains hubristic, like many others.
