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self-control to carry out the choices made above so that their lives can be as
happy as possible, probably even better than what is archived in George Vail-
lant’s Aging Well (Vaillant, 2008). The chaos depicted in Charles Mackay’s
classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (MacKay,
1841) may never occur in their “real” lives.
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Obviously not everyone enjoys this self-portrait, and efforts made to
search for the alternatives contributed to the formation of a new kind of
homo, known as homo sapiens, that has become the statue of behavioral econ-
omists. The 2017 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Richard Thaler, predicts
that models of individuals in economic theory will be characterized by a par-
adigm shift from homo economicus to homo sapiens (Thaler, 2000). His
prediction was made almost two decades ago, when the current ICT revo-
lution was not yet fully developed. If humans can be empowered with intel-
ligent wearable devices, bionic chips, and IoE, will the evolving cyborgs
eventually reverse this trend and revive homo economicus?

10.3.1 Cyborgs

It seems to be a good place to detour slightly to involve the term “cyborg”
(short for cybernetic organisms) here when one is addressing the economic con-
sequences of IoE. If placed in a proper historical context, IoE may be regarded
as the further implementation of cyborg science. The term cyborg was coined
in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline (Clynes & Kline, 1960). As
Manfred Clynes recalled in an interview, “I thought it would be good to have
a new concept, a concept of persons who can free themselves from the con-
straints of the environment to the extent that they wished. And I coined this
word cyborg” (Gray, 1995, p. 47). Is not the statement also the pursuit for
those who are so enthusiastically devoted to IoE? Despite this being the case,
IoE differs from the idea of cyborgs by placing its focus, not on individuals, but
on societies. Hence the picture is not just one of a man “travelling” through
different “spaces” freely in the sense of communication and control, but more
about the novel prototypes of interaction and coordination that can emerge
with the availability of these extending “spaces.”
The relationship between cyborg science and economics has been splen-
didly reviewed by the economic historian, Philip Mirowski. Mirowski

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This self-portrait of economists, homo economicus, contributed not only to the establishment of
economic imperialism (Hodgeson, 2001; Chapter 13), but also to the enlargement of the intellectual gap
between economists and other social scientists.