"A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction." (Haraway, 1991 p149)
"The term cyborg, a portmanteau of cybernetic organism, is used to designate an organism which is a mixture of organic and mechanical (synthetic) parts. Generally, the aim is to add to or enhance the abilities of an organism by using technology."

Ever since man first appeared on the Earth he has used his skills to track his prey by following marks left in the ground. Modern day Man is more likely to be the prey of the corporate cyborg; leaving cyber footprints in digital form that can be stored in vast databases held in cyberspace. No matter what we do in our daily lives, we can be tracked by our digital footprint or digital effigy as it has become known. The most obvious ways of surrendering information about ourselves is by the use of loyalty cards. By paying users in loyalty points corporate analysts can interpret vast amounts of personal purchasing data and gear their sales campaigns to reflect current fashions or trends. One of the most ingenious uses of shopping habits is targeted mail shots, where supermarkets use the data collected from loyalty cards to send their customers offers based on their recorded purchases. More importantly, governments are able to track our whereabouts by issuing national security numbers, passports and identity cards and even capture digital images of us whilst driving. Some may feel that this use of personal data is quite acceptable and necessary for our own safety; others believe that this is an infringement of our privacy.
More and more we have to come to terms with the fact that our identity is a valuable commodity and as such needs protecting. It is no longer unusual to find a paper shredder being used in a domestic environment to reduce the risk of identity theft. People who have had their identity stolen often feel as though they have been violated as well as robbed. Once captured, our identities can be transported through cyberspace without a trace. Our digital effigy is not simply our name and address, it is all our personal details wrapped into packets of 1s and 0s that can be used to defraud not only ourselves but, the corporate institutions that thrive on an endless supply of data.

Just thinking about the whole cyborg identity issue opens up a plethora of scenarios, and a thought that has crossed my mind is really a play on words:
Question; when does a person become simply persona?
Answer; when they enter the chat room.
By entering a chat room I am able to present my thoughts to people who I may never actually meet and although my identity is hidden from view, it is possible that my persona can influence someone reading my postings as I may also be influenced by postings made by other personae. Further more, in a chat room I am able to portray a totally different persona and become, whilst on-line, someone or something, else. Chat rooms of course aren't just a portal in cyberspace where one can escape from daily life. They can be very useful meeting places where people of similar ilk can exchange thoughts, emotions and information. During this type of interaction one would not normally take on an alien persona although you can not be sure that the person you are indulging in dialog with is who they appear to be. Indeed, the idea of manufactured identity has been used by both the criminal element and the authorities with different goals in mind.

One could argue that the chat room is a by-product of the early multi-player computer games known as MUDs (multi user dungeon). In her article 'Life on the Screen - Identity in the Age of the Internet', Sherry Turkle describes how one would engage in a virtual reality (VR) game over the Internet and also indicates the sort of person one might find there.
"MUDs put you in virtual spaces in which you are able to navigate, converse, and build... In some MUDs, players are represented by graphical icons; most MUDs are purely text-based. Most players are middle class. A large majority are male. Some players are over thirty, but most are in their early twenties and late teens. However, it is no longer unusual to find MUDs where eight and nine year olds "play" such grade-school icons as Barbie or the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers." (Turkle 1995 p11)
In the world of multi-player VR games, players are able to invent and act out increasingly elaborate personae, perhaps even using two or more disguises in one domain and my be even act as themselves in an attempt to fuse reality with virtual reality.

Our identity is immensely important to us, it is a part of us and we must strive to protect it. Although I certainly fit the description of a cyborg, I for one will fight to preserve my identity as a human. On the other hand, if I was unfortunate enough to loose a limb and was offered a prosthetic limb that was much more powerful than my original, I may feel different about the cyborg label but, would still want to preserve my identity I feel...

Haraway, D.J. (1991) A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York, pp.149-181.
Photographs by courteousy of Fotosearch.com
http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/cyborg.html