In the first edition of the work We, cyborgs, the author allowed the reader to follow themes of opposing paradigms, raised while still carrying out her doctoral thesis, and which raised the man/machine debate. Dichotomous themes, such as nature vs. culture, philosophy vs. art vs. science, subjectivity vs. objectivity, pervade the central subjects of the first work. In this regard, Fátima Regis already pointed out ways for the refinement of the human senses as one of the elements and greatest challenges to be pursued by the machine.
The current 2nd edition expands and updates this universe of humanization of the machine, in order to consider the actants (Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory) as elements that can escape subjectivity, when thinking about automata and the forms of manifestation of bots, programming and artificial intelligence in the contemporary universe of digital culture. In this edition, the chapter on artificial intelligence, which contextualizes the metaverse environment, expands the content related to the cognition process, since it considers the environment and social and sensory interactions as part of the cognitive process. In this sense, it is worth a revised, adapted and updated reading, necessary in the context in which cognition is seen as part of a compound that comprises the body, the senses and the affections. (Excerpt from the Preface, by Alessandra Maia, José Messias, Letícia Perani and Raquel Timponi).