"Prosthetics: The castration complex raised to the level of an art form." J. G Ballard. "Nothing is more disembodied than Cyberspace. It is like having your everything amputated." --John Perry Barlow (former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, "electronic frontier" advocate, and major supporter of the Republican party)

The medical prosthesis was developed to replace amputated limbs (for which war is the great experiment and driving force) As Mark Wigley points out, "Prosthetic technology alternated between producing substitutes for the body parts that military weapons had destroyed and producing these very weapons." (p. 23) see Ambroise Paré , "A Supplement to the Defects in Man's Body" in Collected Works, Paris, 1579.