Difference between revisions of "1 Introduction"

From Cyborg Anthropology
Jump to: navigation, search
 
(12 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
−
When I was very little, my dad would sit me down at night and say, "I'm going to teach you about time and space in the future." And I said, "Great." And he said one day, "What's the shortest distance between two points?" And I said, "Well, that's a straight line. You told me that yesterday. I thought I was very clever." He said, "No, no, no. Here's a better way." He took a piece of paper, drew A and B on one side and the other and folded them together so where A and B touched. And he said, "That is the shortest distance between two points." And I said, "Dad, dad, dad, how do you do that?" He said, "Well, you just bend time and space, it takes an awful lot of energy, and that's just how you do it."And I said, "I want to do that." And he said, "Well, okay." And so, when I went to sleep for the next 10 or 20 years, I was thinking at night, "I want to be the first person to create a wormhole, to make things accelerate faster. And I want to make a time machine." I was always sending messages to my future self using tape recorders.
+
[[Image:protocyborg-maggie-nichols.jpg|600px|center]]
 +
===Introduction===
 +
This book is a dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology. In this introduction, we will familiarize ourselves with this strange discipline, characterize some of the salient features of the discipline, and provide some context as to the format of this book. Cyborg Anthropology, in short, studies the culture of new technologies that are re-defining our traditional notions of what it means to be human.
  
−
In college I wrote my thesis on cell phones. And when I was writing my thesis on cell phones, I realized that everyone was carrying around wormholes in their pocket. They weren't physically transporting themselves, they were mentally transporting themselves. They would click on a button, and they would be connected as A to B immediately. And I thought, "Oh, wow. I found it. This is great." I realized that over time, time and space have compressed because of this. You can stand on one side of the world, whisper something, and be heard on the other.
+
In April 2008 I began speaking about Cyborg Anthropology at conferences, and in May 2010 I created the Cyborg Anthropology wiki to help categorize and collect work related to the subject. Given Cyborg Anthropology's short history, this book is in the position of walking a thin line between a description of what this discipline has been and a manifesto of what the discipline should be. Despite my care in distinguishing my ideas from the scholarship that has come before me, these lines inevitably blur. I am not the holder of Cyborg Anthropology. Cyborg Anthropology is, and it is the right of everyone to be able to edit and contribute to its creation.  
  
−
But I get ahead of myself. The reason this book is a dictionary can also be traced back to an experience from my childhood. When I was little, I was always making up strange words. My classmates would egg me on to create a dictionary of these words. The requests began in first grade, to which I responded “soon, soon - I’m not yet a writer, and I haven’t got many words in me yet!”. In true procrastinative spirit, it took me eight years to sit down and write the first dictionary of strange words. I called it The Complete Dictonary of Coolish Language. It was an oddity full of strange philosophical arguments, bizarre concepts and novel words. Curiously enough, it became an underground hit at school, and I printed out copies from my printer and sold them to classmates and teachers. My mom, who had to bear through my first tome, (presumptuously titled “A Psychology of World Peace”) liked the flow and wit of this dictionary quite a bit more than the pseudo-psychological writings of a 13 year old with nothing better to do with a summer vacation. It was a turning point. I realized that I had failed in writing before simply because of the now familiar lack of an ability . I also had a fleeting and jumpy attention span. I often couldn’t remember what I wrote only a few days ago, and restarting a paragraph, or even finishing one, was difficult.
+
Its formal history is rather short. It was introduced as a formal subject of study in 1992 at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association.<ref>Dumit, Joseph. PhD, and Davis-Floyd, Robbie. PhD. Cyborg Anthropology. PDF. Also see Davis-Floyd, Robbie and Joseph Dumit (1998) Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots. New York:
 +
Routledge.</ref>
  
−
At some point in my college career, I happened to sit in on a philosophy conference on campus. I was somewhat intrigued by the various presentations, but it was the last talk that would prove to change everything. A woman stepped up to the podium, dressed from head-to-toe in a leather motorcycling outfit, with giant leather boots, thick black-framed glasses, and bright-red hair to complete the image. She was right out of a cyberpunk comic-book or techno-thriller novel, and her name was Deborah Heath. Her talk was on a fledgling field called “Cyborg Anthropology”. It was legendary. Most of the students in the audience thought it was pretty cool, but I went ballistic. Finally there was a subject that made sense to me, a subject that married the analytical, technology-obsessed side of my brain to an understanding of humans. This was a framework with which to understand humans and technology! I should note that this speech occurred right before Facebook cast the campus into an addiction of techno-social glee and obsession.
+
In their short presentation, Cyborg Anthropology was characterized "as an activity of theorizing and as a vehicle for enhancing the participation of cultural anthropologists in contemporary sciences”<ref>Downey, Gary Lee, Joseph Dumit, eds. (1997) Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging
 +
Sciences, Technologies and Medicines.</ref>. A conference on the discipline was hosted in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1993 which led to the collaborative book Cyborgs and Citadels. The Cyborg Handbook was published in 2001 as a reference book on the topic, and includes several essays on the field.  
  
−
I was a shy and anxious college student. Rather than get along with my classmates, I was a quiet and quirky conundrum. This speech was an exception. Immediatey afterward I went up to Dr. Heath and asked her more about the field of cyborg anthropology. I didn’t think it really existed. I thought she was making things up. “No”, she said, “it’s quite real. I helped found it. I even teach a class on it here. You should take it!”. I had to wait a few years before the class was offered again, but I took it. I took my thesis with Dr. Heath as well, and wrote it on “cell phones and their technosocial cites of engagement”.
+
A preliminary sketch of the discipline is facilitated by looking at the two words that make up the name, “cyborg” and “anthropology”.
  
−
When I finished school I found that other people were curious about the strange subject that I had studied in college. It began to become synonymous with my name. The methods of cyborg anthropology also became a very good tool-set for understanding a world rife with rapid technological change. There have been many requests for a book on cyborg anthropology, and I have tried many manuscripts. Because of the nature of the subject, and the nature of technological and social development today, I think that a dictionary format is a good starting point. It’s a way to get a quick look into a certain concept, as well as an overview of the discipline and ideas as a whole. This book is not meant to subscribe to a particular view, but to many. It is a set of thoughts and ideas and different ways of understanding the world.
+
Anthropology, from the Greek “anthropos” (human being), is the study of humanity. There are four main branches of Anthropology, including Physical Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Archeology, and Lingustic Anthropology. Cyborg Anthropology falls most directly within Cultural Anthropology, but has intruiging links to the other branches of Anthropology as well. Cultural anthropologists seek to understand human cultures by immersing themselves in a culture and figuring out how each custom, ritual, institution, belief, profession, practice, and technology work together to form the complex whole we call “culture.” There have been entire libraries written on how to best undertake this task, but for now lets just say that the process tends to involve writing an “ethnography”, or a description of the culture based on interviews, careful observation, and questionaires. Historically, anthropologists would travel to exotic locations to do this research, but today anthropologists also write about cultures and sub-cultures much closer to home.  
−
This book is meant as an overview of concepts related to the study of cyborg anthropology. It is a definition of a universe of ideas and new developments, concepts and ways of thinking in a quickly morphing world. This is not a book of methods, but a book of ideas.
+
  
−
Best, Amber Case
+
While Cyborg Anthropology is most closely allied with Cultural Anthropology, there are elements of the other branches of Anthropology that also inform Cyborg Anthropology. Archeology studies the material artifacts of a civilization--often a prehistoric civilization that lacked writing--and infers information about the culture based on these artifacts. Cyborg Anthropology diverges from Archeology in focusing on contemporary culture, but overlaps in its analysis of material culture as a means for understanding the less concrete elements of culture.
  
 +
The other branch of Anthropology that offers intriguing links with Cyborg Anthropology is Physical Anthropology. Physical Anthropology studies the evolution of the human species in the context of our closest relatives, primates. Physical Anthropologists study the physical remains of various humanoids and uses this information to understand the culture, conditions, and evolutionary trajectory of hominidae. Many futurists have posited that technology is ushering a new era of human evolution by facilitating drastic changes to the human condition.# While we do not unequivocally endorse these arguments, they do highlight the pervasive ways in which technology is affecting our species. The prevalence of the evolutionary metaphor in talking about the role of technology in our lives implicitly challenges Physical Anthropology to join the discussion, and thus finds itself implicated in the project of Cyborg Anthropology.
  
−
Introduction
+
The second major concept (and object of study) in Cyborg Anthropology is the cyborg. Broadly speaking, a cyborg can be defined as a system with both biological and artificial components. In one sense, the use of any tool that functions as an extension of one's abilities makes one a cyborg, but cyborgs are more narrowly understood to have physical technological prostheses. Thus in the narrowest sense, examples of cyborgs would include people with pacemakers, insulin pumps, or bionic limbs. In the broadest sense, the whole human-technological apparatus could qualify as a cyborg system (and since the border of a cyborg system has no inherent limits, the entire ecosystem could qualify as a cyborg). The narrowest sense of cyborg does not let us grasp the various combinations of biological beings and technological artifacts, while the broadest conception runs the risk of being so vast that the discipline cannot be defined. Couldn’t one call a neanderthal with a rock a cyborg? What about a swarm of bees and their vast architectural creations? Doesn’t any interaction with technology basically qualify as Cyborgs? The rest of this book will complicate and interrogate this definition, exploring the many permutations of the concept.
  
−
"To live in the world of creation – to get into it and stay in it – to frequent it and haunt it – to think intensely and fruitfully – to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation – this is the only thing.” - Henry James
+
Given the elasticity of the concept, we will do our best to historically situate the cyborg through the actual history of the term and the discipline of cybernetics, both of which find their temporal home in post-WW2 America. This does not preclude applying the concept of the cyborg to other periods in history, but does focus our analysis to contemporary culture and avoids anachronistic projections.  
  
−
This is a book is a dictionary of cyborg anthropology. In short, it is a guide to interface culture. What is this study called Cyborg Anthropology? Why is it important? What does it entail? Why does it exist?
+
The term cyborg was originally coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in a paper about the advantages of human-machine couplings for surviving in space.<ref>Clynes, Manfred and Kline, Nathan. Cyborgs and Space. Astronautics, Sept 1960. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2962194/Cyborgs-and-Space-Clynes-Kline Accessed Jan 2011.</ref> The authors presented a case for humans augmenting their physiology to better adapt to the vicissitudes of outer space, including taking specialized drugs and using hypnotherapy. The idea was that if humans adapt to outerspace rather than taking their environment with them, they could avoid “being a slave to the machine” and be “free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel".<ref>Ibid.</ref>.
  
 +
The cyborg in popular culture is a cinematic concept. Works such as the Wizard of Oz, Metropolis, Robocop and Terminator are frequently referenced when the term Cyborg is mentioned in conversation. Cyborgs were also explored through different works of Science Fiction (although this tradition goes back to works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). However, became a topic of widespread scholarly interest with the publication of Donna Haraway’s essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” in 1985. It is here that the theoretical force of the concept of the cyborg really took shape. Haraway identifies the cyborg as a border creature, a non-entity that rejects the very notion of essentialization. The cyborg operates at the borders of the self. It takes the cohesive individual subject that has played such an important role throughout history and shows where the borders have become permeable and elastic through technological augmentation.
  
−
What is Cyborg Anthropology?
+
Another way to think about cyborgs by breaking down the term itself. “Cyborg” is short for “cybernetic organism”. For most, “cybernetics” is vaguely familiar concept that seems to have survived merely as a buzzword prefix, but the story of is through the discipline of Cybernetics. Cybernetics was a discipline that was pioneered in 1946-1953 during the Macy Conferences. The Macy Conferences were a series of conferences in which scholars from seemingly disparate fields came together to form a new meta-science. At these conferences the concepts of feedback loops, information, and systems were brought together to understand a wide range of phenomenon, from brains and computers to weapons and rats.  
−
Cyborg Anthropology as a formal subject of study was formally introduced in 1993 as a subset of the Anthropology of Science to address the need for a set of methods and theories in order to understand the increasingly complex relationship between humans and technological objects.
+
  
−
ANTHROPOLOGY
+
Besides the ubiquitous prefix “cyber”, Cybernetics has seemed to slip into the cracks of historical obscurity, but it’s basic assumptions are still found in the set of disciplines now called “Informatics”. Informatics include the disciplines of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Bionics, Information Technology, Nanotechnology, Genetics, Artificial Life, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and the variety of sub-disciplines within these larger fields. The common link lies in the pervasive concepts of information, systems, and feedback loops, and their corresponding implicit metaphor of organism as machine, machine as organism, and everything understood as information. Every time someone says “I’m not wired for this type of work”, or “One second, my phone’s thinking”, they are propagating an extended metaphor that was incubated at the Macy Conferences. These metaphors can be useful in understanding certain processes and technologies, but they must be carefully scrutinized and discussed to keep the horizons of our future open.
  
−
To understand Cyborg Anthropology, we first need to understand the two terms that make up make up the discipline, cyborg and anthropology. Anthropology, from the Greek “anthopos” (human being), is the study of humanity. There are several main branches in Anthropology, but it is cultural anthropology that interests us here#. Cultural anthropologists seek to understand human cultures by immersing themselves in a culture and figuring out how each custom, ritual, institution, belief, profession, practice, and technology work together to form the complex whole we call “culture”. There have been entire libraries written on how to best undertake this task, but for now lets just say that the process tends to involve writing an “ethnography”, or a description of the people based on interviews, careful observation, questionaires, etc. Historically, anthropologists would travel to exotic cultures to do this research, but today anthropologists also write about cultures and sub-cultures much closer to home.
+
The fields that make up Informatics are at the forefront of researching and implementing the technologies that are forming our cyborg condition--technologies like genetic engineering, brain-computer interfaces, smart phones, and prosthetic limbs. By grounding the cyborg in Cybernetics we avoid studying all technology--a monumental task for any discipline--and also trace a specific history in a field where history is often overlooked in the excitement for future technologies.  
  
−
CYBORG
+
===Anthropology and Methodology===
−
The object of study for Cyborg Anthropology is the cyborg. The term cyborg was originally coined in 1965 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in a paper about the advantages of human-machine couplings for surviving in space. Broadly speaking, a cyborg is traditionally defined as a system with both biological and artificial components. In one sense, the use of any tool that functions as an extension of one's abilities qualifies one as a cyborg, but cyborgs are more narrowly understood to have actual, physical technological extensions or prostheses. Thus in the narrowest sense, examples of cyborgs would include people with pacemakers, insulin pumps, and bionic limbs. In the broadest sense, all of our interaction with technology could qualify as a cyborg system (and since the border of a cyborg system has no inherent limits, the entire ecosystem could qualify as a cyborg). The narrowest sense of cyborg does not let us grasp the many synergies of human/non-human splices, while the broadest conception runs the risk of being so broad that the discipline cannot be defined. Donna Haraway’s essay “Cyborg Manifesto” inaugerated the cyborg as a noteworthy object of study in the humanities and social sciences, priming the ground for the Cyborg Anthropology today.
+
The central unit of analysis in Anthropology is the ethnography, a snapshot of how a culture functions as a whole (often with some recourse to the notion of the "structure" of a culture, a metaphor that suggests unchanging stability). In this sense, anthropologists often spend less time considering how a culture has changed over time and instead try to understand how the culture functions as a synaptic whole. Cyborg Anthropology seems different in this respect. Because technology and interface are changing so fast, cyborg anthropology is much more likely to note the changes over time in culture and use this diachronic analysis to understand the ramifications of our cybernetic condition. The rhizome (a cybernetic, feedback-looping, adaptive, decentralized network) is the metaphor that replaces static structure. Insofar as Cyborg Anthropology is studying phenomena that have very little cultural precedence, it seems to be inextricably tied to historical analysis and theories of interface r/evolution.
  
−
CYBERNETICS
+
Under this view, Cyborg Anthropology studies humankind and its relations with the technological systems it has built, specifically modern technological systems that have reflexively shaped notions of what it means to be human. But this still leaves the question of why the discipline needs to exist. If you find yourself reading this book, you probably have a good idea of why we should be thinking about how technology affects our lives. Humans and technology have co-created each other since the beginning of humanity. Katherine Hayles calls this dynamic “techno-genesis”, and it is the idea that humans and technology mutually define each other. A hammer extended the capabilities of the fist, and a knife extended the capabilities of the tooth. The increase in technological development went hand in hand with the logarithmic increase in population, leading to the proliferation of new technologies we see today.  
−
Another way to think about cyborgs is through the discipline of Cybernetics. Cybernetics was a discipline that was pioneered in 1946-1953 during the Macy Conferences. At these conferences the concepts of feedback loops, information, and systems were brought together to understand a wide range of phenomenon, from brains and computers to weapons and rats. Besides the ubiquitus prefix “cyber”, Cybernetics has seemed to slip into the cracks of historical obscurity, but it’s basic assumptions are still found in the set of disciplines now called “informatics”. Informatics include the disciplines of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, bionics, Information Technology, Nanotechnology, Genetics, Artificial Life, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and the variety of sub-disciplines within these larger fields. The common link lies in the pervasive concepts of information, systems, and feedback loops, and their corresponding implicit metaphor of man as machine, machine as organism, and everything as information. Every time someone says “I’m not wired for this type of work”, or “One second, my phone’s thinking”, they are propagating an extended metaphor that was incubated at the Macy Conferences. The fields that make up Informatics are at the forefront of researching and implementing the technologies that are forming our cyborg condition--technologies like genetic engineering, brain-computer interfaces, smart phones, and prosthetic limbs. By grounding the cyborg in Cybernetics we avoid studying all technology--a monumental task for any discipline, and also trace a history in an area where history is often overlooked in the excitement for future technologies.
+
  
−
    Thus Cyborg Anthropology studies humankind and its relations with the technological systems it has built, specifically modern technological systems that have reflexively shaped notions of what it means to be humans. But this still leaves questions as to why the discipline needs to exist. If you find yourself reading this book, you probably have a good idea of why we should be thinking about how technology affects our lives. Things are changing fast--very fast. The long term effects of these changes are difficult to measure, and thus require careful study from a variety of disciplines.
+
With a basic understanding of Anthropology and cyborgs, we can start to understand why the resources of anthropology should be utilized to understand our technological condition.  
  
 +
1. Science erases it’s own culture in its efforts to strive toward perfect objectivity. There is nothing wrong with attempting to stay as objective as possible; after all, a surgeon should not practice in a sewer just because perfectly sanitary conditions do not exist. But this dynamic leaves little room for self-reflexive thought on how __________. Because we no longer have generations to integrate new technologies into culture, we need to use the tools of Anthropology to scrutinize our current condition.
  
−
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) is probably the closest discipline to Cyborg Anthropology.
+
2. The cyborg operates at the borders of the self. It takes the cohesive individual subject that has played such an important role throughout history and shows where the borders have become permeable and elastic through technological augmentation. The adaptation of information technologies doesn’t merely affect the border of the self, it derivatively affects many other pervasive concepts that we use to organize our world. Concepts like place, rootedness, cognition, consciousness, privacy, and many others are being challenged and reformed at an accelerated pace. To examine these pervasive changes we need to carefully study how technology is affecting all facets of our emerging techno-culture, a task that this book hopes to contribute to.
 +


 +
===Form and Content===
 +
This dictionary was primarily created on a closed-wiki devoted to Cyborg Anthropology, with many sessions on Skype and Google Docs to supplement. A wiki is a unique creature. Rather than provide a linear narrative, a wiki is a node-based platform that mutates and evolves over time. We wanted the form to follow the content, and thus have tried to have the format follow the content of the book. Rather than a linear narrative that cohesively and definitively explains Cyborg Anthropology, we have chosen to create a cloud of concepts orbiting around the various nodes that make up Cyborg Anthropology. This book is not meant to be read linearly, but rather to be browsed at one's whims, just as one would scroll through an RSS feed. These entries are meant as small synaptic snapshots that weave together a rhizomatic sketch of possible futures. They are not meant to be read from cover-to-cover, although you are welcome to do this. We don’t claim to be objective, because there is no way to be objective about the future. Despite postmodernism’s warnings of the decay of master narratives, we are not stuck with purely subjective experience. In our compromise, a certain objectivity emerges out of a network of subjectivities, thus allowing for an emergent “postmodern objectivity.”
  
 +
One of the major reasons for writing this book is to respond to the polemical visions that often vitiate discourses on the future. Historically, the first futurists were religious prophets, and too many writers, thinkers, scholars and media pundits follow in this tradition by proclaiming the imminent techno-utopia or ecological apocalypse. This dynamic is also fueled by the formidable influence of Science Fiction in guiding our thinking about the future. Regardless of the cause, we seek to mitigate the stark polarities of these master narratives by providing a set of concepts to think about the role of technology in the future of humanity. Following Keith Ansel-Pearson, we wish to “question, problematize, overturn, revalue, announce, renounce, advocate, interrogate, affirm, deny, celebrate, critique”<ref>Pearson, Keith Ansell. Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition. Routledge: 1997.</ref> technology and the role it is going to play in our future. Some of the entries are very optimistic about our future, while others express grave worry as to the effects of these new technologies.
  
−
Not sociology, less quantitative analysis, more philosophy.
+
This book is partially descriptive and critical, but it is also fundamentally evocative, and is meant to actively sow new memes for productively thinking about and designing for the future: a future that we would actually want to live in. Katherine Hayles captures this sentiment quite well in explaining the rational behind her book, How We Became Posthuman:
  
 +
<blockquote>"If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend on for our continued survival"<ref>Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman, p. 5. in The Transhuman Condition: A Report on Machines, Technics, and Evolution. New York: Routledge, 1997. p.1.</ref>.</blockquote>
  
−
NOTABLE FEATURES OF THE DISCIPLINE
+
Is the the goal of this book to facilitate thinking about the objects that we hold and how they have transformed how we think, act and will evolve over the next century. It is a starting point for an examination of culture in flux.
  
−
 
+
==References==
−
 
+
<references/>
−
DIACHRONIC
+
−
Traditionally, the central unit of analysis in anthropology is the ethnography, a snapshot of how a culture functions as a whole (often with some recourse to the notion of the "structure" of a culture, a metaphor that is steeped in connotations of unchanging stability). In this sense, anthropologists often spend less time considering how a culture has changed over time and instead try to understand how the culture functions as a synaptic whole. Cyborg Anthropology seems different in this respect. Because technology and interface are changing so fast, cyborg anthropology is much more likely to note the changes over time in culture and use this diachronic analysis to understand the ramifications of our cybernetic condition. The rhizome (a cybernetic, feedback-looping, adaptive, decentralized network) is the metaphor that replaces static structure. Insofar as Cyborg Anthropology is studying phenomena that have very little cultural precedence, it seems to be inextricably tied to historical analysis and theories of interface r/evolution.
+
−
 
+
−
Actor Network Theory
+
−
 
+
−
Actor Network
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
Form and Content
+
−
 
+
−
Amber’s previous experience with dictionaries was what originally inspired the format of this book, but as the writing progressed other reasons for the format quickly emerged. This book is the offspring of the Cyborg Anthropology Wiki, an online database for those interested in the subject. For those unfamiliar, a wiki is a platform that allows multiple users to easily create and edit pages, which can lead to brilliant projects like Wikipedia.
+
−
 
+
−
2. Most books have a linear narrative and are meant to be read from cover-cover. We didn’t feel this was the best way to explain the various threads that make up Cyborg Anthropology. Linear narratives suggest a cohesive voice that is authoritatively explaining the subject matter
+
−
 
+
−
3. The editing process was facilitated by Google Docs and Skype, seemingly appropriate mediums for a book on how technology is changing our lives.
+
−
 
+
−
4.
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
This dictionary was primarily created on a closed-wiki devoted to Cyborg Anthropology, with many a session on Skype and Google Docs to supplement. A wiki is a unique creature. Rather than a linear narrative, a wiki is a node-based creature that mutates and evolves over time. We wanted the form to follow the content, and thus have tried to have the format follow the content of the book. Rather than a linear narrative that cohesively and absolutely explains cyborg anthropology, we have chosen to create a cloud of concepts orbiting around the various nodes that make up cyborg anthropology. This has been part of the writing process from the very beginning, with all of the articles having been written on a wiki devoted to Cyborg Anthropology.
+
−
 
+
−
Those who are interested in the subject can are invited to comment on and grow the entries over time. We have thus have tried to create a book that reflects the changes that our world is going through.
+
−
 
+
−
Talk about need for interdisciplinary scholarship and coming together to think about big issues.
+
−
 
+
−
Many of these concepts are
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
(good) These entries are meant as small synaptic snapshots that weave together a rizomic sketch of possible futures. They are not meant to be read from cover-to-cover, although you are welcome to do this if you feel so enthralled. We don’t want to claim to be objective. Besides this being an impossibility, there is no way to be objective about the future. (Include?) I think one of the values of anthropology and the anthropological mindset is the ability to walk the line between subjectivity and objectivity. To be able to understand the subject at hand as well as understand the cultural constructions that led that person to manifest in that space. The objectivity allows the anthropologist to see the subject or set of culture on a longer and larger time scale. Not as one incidence, or static system of set of ideas, but as part of a
+
−
 
+
−
We are not here to provide a bjectivity died with modernism. With the rise of postmodern ethics, there’s the loss of master narratives, but that doesn’t mean that we’re just stuck with purely subjective experience. The ideal compromise is to have an objectivity emerge out of a network of subjectivities, thus allowing for an emergent “postmodern objectivity”.
+
−
 
+
−
One of the major reasons for writing this book is to answer the polemical visons that often colonize the futurist discourse. Historically, the first futurists were religious prophets, and too many writers, thinkers, scholars and media pundits follow in this tradition by proclaiming the imminent techno-utopia or ecological apocalypse. This dynamic is also fueled by the formidable influence of Science Fiction in helping us think about our future. Regardless of the cause, we seek to mitigate these master narratives by providing a set of concepts to think about the role of technology in the future of humanity. Following Keith Ansel-Pearson, we wish to “question, problematize, overturn, revalue, announce, renounce, advocate, interrogate, affirm, deny, celebrate, critique” technology and the role it is going to play in our future. <ref>The Transhuman Condition : A Report on Machines, Technics, and Evolution (New York: Routledge, 1997 p.1</ref> Some of the entries are very optimistic, while others express grave worry. Hopefully by
+
−
 
+
−
This book is partially descriptive, but it is also fundamentally evocative, and is meant to actively sow new memes for thinking about the future. Taken another way--a kind of choose your own adventure vs. a visit again into the tired old narratives of dystopianism and technopositivism.
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
----
+
−
Why does this need to be studied?
+
−
 
+
−
future shock!
+
−
changing faster than we can objectify the changes
+
−
changing EVERYTHING
+
−
Technology has always been implicated in the question of what it means to be human, but since WWII and the proliferation of informatics disciplines this question has gained whole new horizons. Technology is radically changing the way we interact--faster than any other point in history.
+
−
 
+
−
Humans and technology have co-created each other since the beginning of humanity. A hammer extended the capabilities of the fist, and a knife extended the capabilities of the tooth. More recently, however, technology began to extend the capability of not only the body, but also the brain as well. The increase in technological development went hand in hand with the logarithmic increase in population. Because technology is expanding logarithmically, we no longer have generations to integrate new technologies into culture. Anthropologists and their methods of understanding cultures can help us grapple with these changes.
+
−
 
+
−
-----
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
We define ourselves as what’s closest to us. Lao Tzu defined human nature as nature itself.
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
Themes
+
−
 
+
−
If we were to categorize the entries in this book into a set of overarching themes, here’s what they would be.
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
Central themes:
+
−
Hayle’s Notion of Technogensis. We are created through our technology. (Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman). A symbiotic co-creation.
+
−
 
+
−
The cyborg operates at the borders of the self. It takes the cohesive individual subject that has played such an important role throughout history and explores where the self has become permeable and elastic through technological augmentation. The adaptation of these technologies doesn’t merely effect the border of the self, it derivatively affects many other pervasive concepts that we use to organize our world. The concept of place morphs into a concept of space with the widespread application of social media. The realm of the mind expands beyond the carbon substrate to silicon chips as we integrate memory into computers. The border of private and public is thrown into chaos with the voluntary creation of intimate online identities. Sometimes strange paradoxes emerge, such as in the case of media consumption. On one hand we live in a golden age of access to movies, shows, and music, while on the other hand we mind ourselves with our tailored private iPod that mitigates the diversity of the radio or broadcast television.
+
−
 
+
−
In Liquid Modernity, Zygmunt Bauman describes how technology is changing the individual, work and place, space and time, the private and the public and emancipation. Technology can bring the far near, and the near far. It can make the individual a part of a larger whole or feel completely isolated. Play and work blend together.
+
−
 
+
−
Embodiment,  transcendence (embodied and grounded in the world - vs. transcending to the realm of pure thought. And in a sense the Internet is about that pure thought - transcending space and time, and yet one of the first and enduringly popular applications of the internet is pornography, media depicting the most embodied experience we partake in.
+
−
Geography and the ability to move. Are we embodied in this particular area? Or are we able to go where ever we want?) I would argue that the former dichotomy of imagination and reality is blending into each other. There's this spectrum of human experience no matter how much technology there is. However, there is little work on sanity, cognitive expansion, and mental effects of technology. An increasing number of the populous is experiencing Future Shock. 
+
−
 
+
−
 
+
−
How to take elements from this book and apply them?
+
−
Is there a normative program underlying this book?
+
−
    -Are there ideals we are trying to express through these concepts (technological becoming and ecological awareness? Sanity and cognitive expansion? idealism with a dose of pragmatism?)
+
−
A nod to all the thinkers that inspired this endevour, perhaps a reading list of the best books and authors in this field
+
−
A note on how this book will not remain static and updates may be found on the wiki.
+
−
 
+
−
My other favorite quote is from Hayles' How We Became Posthuman, p. 5: If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend on for our continued survival.
+
−
 
+
−
((Douglas Adams “a nerd is someone who calls his friend up on the telephone in order to talk about telephones”. Technology doesn't just get adopted because it works; it gets adopted because people use it and it's made for humans. Keeping humanity in technology. The best interface is invisible. It gets out of the way and lets one live one’s life.))
+
−
 
+
−
A Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology
+
−
 
+
−
This book is meant as an overview of concepts related to the study of cyborg anthropology. It is a definition of a universe of ideas and new developments, concepts and ways of thinking in a quickly morphing world. This is not a book of methods, but a book of ideas.
+
−
Best, Amber Case
+
−
 
+
−
Thanks to [[Andrew Warner]] for help with this introduction.
+
  
 
[[Category:Book Pages]]
 
[[Category:Book Pages]]
−
[[Category:Marked for Editing]]
+
[[Category:Finished]]
  
 
__NOTOC__
 
__NOTOC__

Latest revision as of 05:07, 28 December 2011

Protocyborg-maggie-nichols.jpg

Introduction

This book is a dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology. In this introduction, we will familiarize ourselves with this strange discipline, characterize some of the salient features of the discipline, and provide some context as to the format of this book. Cyborg Anthropology, in short, studies the culture of new technologies that are re-defining our traditional notions of what it means to be human.

In April 2008 I began speaking about Cyborg Anthropology at conferences, and in May 2010 I created the Cyborg Anthropology wiki to help categorize and collect work related to the subject. Given Cyborg Anthropology's short history, this book is in the position of walking a thin line between a description of what this discipline has been and a manifesto of what the discipline should be. Despite my care in distinguishing my ideas from the scholarship that has come before me, these lines inevitably blur. I am not the holder of Cyborg Anthropology. Cyborg Anthropology is, and it is the right of everyone to be able to edit and contribute to its creation.

Its formal history is rather short. It was introduced as a formal subject of study in 1992 at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association.[1]

In their short presentation, Cyborg Anthropology was characterized "as an activity of theorizing and as a vehicle for enhancing the participation of cultural anthropologists in contemporary sciences”[2]. A conference on the discipline was hosted in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1993 which led to the collaborative book Cyborgs and Citadels. The Cyborg Handbook was published in 2001 as a reference book on the topic, and includes several essays on the field.

A preliminary sketch of the discipline is facilitated by looking at the two words that make up the name, “cyborg” and “anthropology”.

Anthropology, from the Greek “anthropos” (human being), is the study of humanity. There are four main branches of Anthropology, including Physical Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Archeology, and Lingustic Anthropology. Cyborg Anthropology falls most directly within Cultural Anthropology, but has intruiging links to the other branches of Anthropology as well. Cultural anthropologists seek to understand human cultures by immersing themselves in a culture and figuring out how each custom, ritual, institution, belief, profession, practice, and technology work together to form the complex whole we call “culture.” There have been entire libraries written on how to best undertake this task, but for now lets just say that the process tends to involve writing an “ethnography”, or a description of the culture based on interviews, careful observation, and questionaires. Historically, anthropologists would travel to exotic locations to do this research, but today anthropologists also write about cultures and sub-cultures much closer to home.

While Cyborg Anthropology is most closely allied with Cultural Anthropology, there are elements of the other branches of Anthropology that also inform Cyborg Anthropology. Archeology studies the material artifacts of a civilization--often a prehistoric civilization that lacked writing--and infers information about the culture based on these artifacts. Cyborg Anthropology diverges from Archeology in focusing on contemporary culture, but overlaps in its analysis of material culture as a means for understanding the less concrete elements of culture.

The other branch of Anthropology that offers intriguing links with Cyborg Anthropology is Physical Anthropology. Physical Anthropology studies the evolution of the human species in the context of our closest relatives, primates. Physical Anthropologists study the physical remains of various humanoids and uses this information to understand the culture, conditions, and evolutionary trajectory of hominidae. Many futurists have posited that technology is ushering a new era of human evolution by facilitating drastic changes to the human condition.# While we do not unequivocally endorse these arguments, they do highlight the pervasive ways in which technology is affecting our species. The prevalence of the evolutionary metaphor in talking about the role of technology in our lives implicitly challenges Physical Anthropology to join the discussion, and thus finds itself implicated in the project of Cyborg Anthropology.

The second major concept (and object of study) in Cyborg Anthropology is the cyborg. Broadly speaking, a cyborg can be defined as a system with both biological and artificial components. In one sense, the use of any tool that functions as an extension of one's abilities makes one a cyborg, but cyborgs are more narrowly understood to have physical technological prostheses. Thus in the narrowest sense, examples of cyborgs would include people with pacemakers, insulin pumps, or bionic limbs. In the broadest sense, the whole human-technological apparatus could qualify as a cyborg system (and since the border of a cyborg system has no inherent limits, the entire ecosystem could qualify as a cyborg). The narrowest sense of cyborg does not let us grasp the various combinations of biological beings and technological artifacts, while the broadest conception runs the risk of being so vast that the discipline cannot be defined. Couldn’t one call a neanderthal with a rock a cyborg? What about a swarm of bees and their vast architectural creations? Doesn’t any interaction with technology basically qualify as Cyborgs? The rest of this book will complicate and interrogate this definition, exploring the many permutations of the concept.

Given the elasticity of the concept, we will do our best to historically situate the cyborg through the actual history of the term and the discipline of cybernetics, both of which find their temporal home in post-WW2 America. This does not preclude applying the concept of the cyborg to other periods in history, but does focus our analysis to contemporary culture and avoids anachronistic projections.

The term cyborg was originally coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in a paper about the advantages of human-machine couplings for surviving in space.[3] The authors presented a case for humans augmenting their physiology to better adapt to the vicissitudes of outer space, including taking specialized drugs and using hypnotherapy. The idea was that if humans adapt to outerspace rather than taking their environment with them, they could avoid “being a slave to the machine” and be “free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel".[4].

The cyborg in popular culture is a cinematic concept. Works such as the Wizard of Oz, Metropolis, Robocop and Terminator are frequently referenced when the term Cyborg is mentioned in conversation. Cyborgs were also explored through different works of Science Fiction (although this tradition goes back to works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). However, became a topic of widespread scholarly interest with the publication of Donna Haraway’s essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” in 1985. It is here that the theoretical force of the concept of the cyborg really took shape. Haraway identifies the cyborg as a border creature, a non-entity that rejects the very notion of essentialization. The cyborg operates at the borders of the self. It takes the cohesive individual subject that has played such an important role throughout history and shows where the borders have become permeable and elastic through technological augmentation.

Another way to think about cyborgs by breaking down the term itself. “Cyborg” is short for “cybernetic organism”. For most, “cybernetics” is vaguely familiar concept that seems to have survived merely as a buzzword prefix, but the story of is through the discipline of Cybernetics. Cybernetics was a discipline that was pioneered in 1946-1953 during the Macy Conferences. The Macy Conferences were a series of conferences in which scholars from seemingly disparate fields came together to form a new meta-science. At these conferences the concepts of feedback loops, information, and systems were brought together to understand a wide range of phenomenon, from brains and computers to weapons and rats.

Besides the ubiquitous prefix “cyber”, Cybernetics has seemed to slip into the cracks of historical obscurity, but it’s basic assumptions are still found in the set of disciplines now called “Informatics”. Informatics include the disciplines of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Bionics, Information Technology, Nanotechnology, Genetics, Artificial Life, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and the variety of sub-disciplines within these larger fields. The common link lies in the pervasive concepts of information, systems, and feedback loops, and their corresponding implicit metaphor of organism as machine, machine as organism, and everything understood as information. Every time someone says “I’m not wired for this type of work”, or “One second, my phone’s thinking”, they are propagating an extended metaphor that was incubated at the Macy Conferences. These metaphors can be useful in understanding certain processes and technologies, but they must be carefully scrutinized and discussed to keep the horizons of our future open.

The fields that make up Informatics are at the forefront of researching and implementing the technologies that are forming our cyborg condition--technologies like genetic engineering, brain-computer interfaces, smart phones, and prosthetic limbs. By grounding the cyborg in Cybernetics we avoid studying all technology--a monumental task for any discipline--and also trace a specific history in a field where history is often overlooked in the excitement for future technologies.

Anthropology and Methodology

The central unit of analysis in Anthropology is the ethnography, a snapshot of how a culture functions as a whole (often with some recourse to the notion of the "structure" of a culture, a metaphor that suggests unchanging stability). In this sense, anthropologists often spend less time considering how a culture has changed over time and instead try to understand how the culture functions as a synaptic whole. Cyborg Anthropology seems different in this respect. Because technology and interface are changing so fast, cyborg anthropology is much more likely to note the changes over time in culture and use this diachronic analysis to understand the ramifications of our cybernetic condition. The rhizome (a cybernetic, feedback-looping, adaptive, decentralized network) is the metaphor that replaces static structure. Insofar as Cyborg Anthropology is studying phenomena that have very little cultural precedence, it seems to be inextricably tied to historical analysis and theories of interface r/evolution.

Under this view, Cyborg Anthropology studies humankind and its relations with the technological systems it has built, specifically modern technological systems that have reflexively shaped notions of what it means to be human. But this still leaves the question of why the discipline needs to exist. If you find yourself reading this book, you probably have a good idea of why we should be thinking about how technology affects our lives. Humans and technology have co-created each other since the beginning of humanity. Katherine Hayles calls this dynamic “techno-genesis”, and it is the idea that humans and technology mutually define each other. A hammer extended the capabilities of the fist, and a knife extended the capabilities of the tooth. The increase in technological development went hand in hand with the logarithmic increase in population, leading to the proliferation of new technologies we see today.

With a basic understanding of Anthropology and cyborgs, we can start to understand why the resources of anthropology should be utilized to understand our technological condition.

1. Science erases it’s own culture in its efforts to strive toward perfect objectivity. There is nothing wrong with attempting to stay as objective as possible; after all, a surgeon should not practice in a sewer just because perfectly sanitary conditions do not exist. But this dynamic leaves little room for self-reflexive thought on how __________. Because we no longer have generations to integrate new technologies into culture, we need to use the tools of Anthropology to scrutinize our current condition.

2. The cyborg operates at the borders of the self. It takes the cohesive individual subject that has played such an important role throughout history and shows where the borders have become permeable and elastic through technological augmentation. The adaptation of information technologies doesn’t merely affect the border of the self, it derivatively affects many other pervasive concepts that we use to organize our world. Concepts like place, rootedness, cognition, consciousness, privacy, and many others are being challenged and reformed at an accelerated pace. To examine these pervasive changes we need to carefully study how technology is affecting all facets of our emerging techno-culture, a task that this book hopes to contribute to. 


Form and Content

This dictionary was primarily created on a closed-wiki devoted to Cyborg Anthropology, with many sessions on Skype and Google Docs to supplement. A wiki is a unique creature. Rather than provide a linear narrative, a wiki is a node-based platform that mutates and evolves over time. We wanted the form to follow the content, and thus have tried to have the format follow the content of the book. Rather than a linear narrative that cohesively and definitively explains Cyborg Anthropology, we have chosen to create a cloud of concepts orbiting around the various nodes that make up Cyborg Anthropology. This book is not meant to be read linearly, but rather to be browsed at one's whims, just as one would scroll through an RSS feed. These entries are meant as small synaptic snapshots that weave together a rhizomatic sketch of possible futures. They are not meant to be read from cover-to-cover, although you are welcome to do this. We don’t claim to be objective, because there is no way to be objective about the future. Despite postmodernism’s warnings of the decay of master narratives, we are not stuck with purely subjective experience. In our compromise, a certain objectivity emerges out of a network of subjectivities, thus allowing for an emergent “postmodern objectivity.”

One of the major reasons for writing this book is to respond to the polemical visions that often vitiate discourses on the future. Historically, the first futurists were religious prophets, and too many writers, thinkers, scholars and media pundits follow in this tradition by proclaiming the imminent techno-utopia or ecological apocalypse. This dynamic is also fueled by the formidable influence of Science Fiction in guiding our thinking about the future. Regardless of the cause, we seek to mitigate the stark polarities of these master narratives by providing a set of concepts to think about the role of technology in the future of humanity. Following Keith Ansel-Pearson, we wish to “question, problematize, overturn, revalue, announce, renounce, advocate, interrogate, affirm, deny, celebrate, critique”[5] technology and the role it is going to play in our future. Some of the entries are very optimistic about our future, while others express grave worry as to the effects of these new technologies.

This book is partially descriptive and critical, but it is also fundamentally evocative, and is meant to actively sow new memes for productively thinking about and designing for the future: a future that we would actually want to live in. Katherine Hayles captures this sentiment quite well in explaining the rational behind her book, How We Became Posthuman:

"If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend on for our continued survival"[6].

Is the the goal of this book to facilitate thinking about the objects that we hold and how they have transformed how we think, act and will evolve over the next century. It is a starting point for an examination of culture in flux.

References

  1. ↑ Dumit, Joseph. PhD, and Davis-Floyd, Robbie. PhD. Cyborg Anthropology. PDF. Also see Davis-Floyd, Robbie and Joseph Dumit (1998) Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots. New York: Routledge.
  2. ↑ Downey, Gary Lee, Joseph Dumit, eds. (1997) Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences, Technologies and Medicines.
  3. ↑ Clynes, Manfred and Kline, Nathan. Cyborgs and Space. Astronautics, Sept 1960. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2962194/Cyborgs-and-Space-Clynes-Kline Accessed Jan 2011.
  4. ↑ Ibid.
  5. ↑ Pearson, Keith Ansell. Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition. Routledge: 1997.
  6. ↑ Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman, p. 5. in The Transhuman Condition: A Report on Machines, Technics, and Evolution. New York: Routledge, 1997. p.1.
Retrieved from "http://cyborganthropology.com/wiki/index.php?title=1_Introduction&oldid=5843"