Cyborgization and ‘the spirit of sport’ - technodoping and cyborgs in sport

Bibliogr. s. 121-124. Streszcz. ang. s. 125. Recenzenci: dr hab. Radosław Kossakowski, prof. UG, dr Radek Wasilewski.

Cyborgization and ‘the spirit of sport’ – technodoping and cyborgs in sport

It is said that athletes are already cyborgs as they rely on technology to enhance their equipment and performance. With Oscar Pistorius’s willingness to participate in Olympics technodoping occurred to be an unsolved problem. A question of cyborgization being a kind of doping must be answered. Cyborgization is here understood as hybridization of human biological body and machine. Hereinafter cyborgization is divided into three categories: medical (improving an organism to the standard), modifying (improving above the standard to the border of human abilities) and enhancing (improving above human abilities). Doping here is to mean a real facilitation to achieve better scores. Reasonable as it is found Paralympics are organized for athletes suffering from disabilities and the goal is both a great performance and improvement of technology to simplify the disabled’s life. The second one is the aim of Cybathlon as well. An opportunity to organize Cyberolympics for cyborgs who are not disabled, but enhanced is mentioned there, too. It is believed that technodoping will not be a problem in a competition organised for non-biological cyborgs.