From Utne Reader:

A spiritual question lies at the core of many science fiction stories: What makes us human? There are countless explorations of the line between humans and machines in popular culture, from the newly remade TV show Battlestar Galactica to the film Wall-E. Nan Runde writes for Parabola (excerpt only available online), “the popularity of cyborg stories reveals a deep undercurrent of ambivalence and anxiety about the presence of machines in our lives.”  More…