What is Cyborg Anthropology?

Humans are surrounded by built objects and networks. So profoundly are humans altering their biological and physical landscapes that some have openly suggested that the proper object of anthropological study should be cyborgs rather than humans, for, as Donna Haraway says, "we are all cyborgs now".

Cyborg Anthropology takes the view that most of modern human life is a product of both human and non-human objects.

How we interact with machines and technology in many ways defines who we are. Cyborg Anthropology is a framework for understanding the effects of objects and technology on humans and culture. This site is designed to be a resource for those tools.

Anthropology, the study of humans, has traditionally concentrated on discovering the process of evolution through which the human came to be (physical anthropology), or on understanding the beliefs, languages, and behaviors of past or present human groups (archaeology, linguistics, cultural anthropology).

Want to know more about this site? Click here for a short history.

CyborgCamp, a conference on the future of humans and technology, has been hosted around the US and Canada since 2008.

Recent Articles

• Governance Archaeology
• Cybersickness
• Indigenous Cybernetics
• Web Dérive
• Rhizomes
• History of Cybernetics
• Ratio Club
• History of the Term AI
• Metastable Systems
• Truth vs. Truthy
• Omotenashi and Japanese Service
• Mom Replacement Services
• Impulse Notion Muse Framework
• Cosmotechnics
• Regeneration
• Non Places
• Calm Technology
• Boundary Softening
• Human Scale Design
• Wisdom Weavers
• CyborgCamp
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Speech? - The Construction of Cochlear Implant Identity on American Television and the “New Deaf Cyborg”. Submitted by Pamela Kincheloe.
• Flow, Interaction Design And Contemporary Boredom
• Defining Cyborg Anthropology
• How Did We Get Here?

• Wearable Computing
• Mediated Reality
• Equipotential Space
• Diminished Reality
• Playground as Factory
• Device as Memory
• Borrowed Space
• Boundary Maintenance
• Affective Computing
• Digital Hoarding
• The Autistic Spectrum and Technologists
• Cybernetic Feedback in the Wizard Mindset
• Connective Obligation
• Internet As Surrogate Community
• Animal Cyborgs
• Tele-Cocooning
• Little Brother
• Mundane Science Fiction
• Uncanny Valley
• Psyber-culture
• Ambient Intimacy
• Networked Publics
• OpenStreetMap
• Lepht Anonym
• Haptics
• Geolocation
• Kowloon Walled City
• Consciousness Slum

Teaching/Learning Cyborg Anthropology

Watch the TED Talk!

A short talk introducing some of the concepts elaborated on in this site, including the second self, panic architecture and how technology is changing humanity.

Watch the talk here.

Read the Book!

What does it mean to have an online persona? How is technology changing the way we work, live and play? How do our tools influence the way we interact with the world? Technology is intertwined with almost every aspect of our lives.

This book is an appetizer for an emerging field of study, an inspirational starting point for designers, developers, researchers, students, and anyone who wishes to explore the symbiotic relationship between technology and culture.

Buy the book on Gumroad.

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Critical Theory

Traditional Anthropology

UX Resources

Articles

• Illuminating the Dark Geoweb
• Notes from a Mobile Encounter with James Whitley of GoLifeMobile
• Reputation, Community Management, and the Future of Branding
• MIT’s Futures of Entertainment 3 - Session 3: Social Media
• Building a House on Digital Ground - A Primer on New Media
• Category:Interviews

More...

• Soylent
• Hyperstition
• Data Flows and Crises in Online Reputation Economies
• The Fractal Production of Value
• The Automatic Production of Space
• Class Status and Instantaneity
• Physiological Effects of Computing
• Types of Reality
• Internet Addiction
• Instant Gratification
• The Backspace Generation
• Effects of Computing on Family and Family Life
• Gaming Addiction
• Insomnia

• Kids and Technology
• Teens on Social Networks
• Ethnography of Families and Technology
• Privacy and the Extended Self
• Netness
• Facebook
• Location Sharing
• Persistent Paleontology
• Mental and Emotional Effects of Computing
• Computing and Neurological Effects
• Revisiting Equipotential Space
• Animal Cyborgs

• Affective Computing
• Tangible Media
• Autism and Computer Communication
• Transmedia
• Fragmented Social Interchange
• Multitasking
• The Drive to Share
• Texting
• Machines as Pets
• Cyborg Botany
• Cybernetic Feedback in the Wizard Mindset

• Articles related to Cyborg Anthropology
• The Web is Shattering Focus
• Facebook and Attention Economies - Social Gravity and Interface Use
• Games, Time, and Surface Tension
• Non-Visual Augmented Reality
• Tamagotchi
• Online Bodies as Ghosts
• Cyborg Security
• Extended Nervous System
• Technologically Mediated Collaboration
• Schizophrenia and Ubiquity

• The Landscape of the Landline - A Compressed History of the Telephone
• Boundaries of Human and Machine - Where Does One End, and Another Begin?
• Tele-Cocoons
• The Technosocial Womb
• Frictional Interface
• Notes on Mobile Technology
• Technology is Opportunity
• H+ Elbow (maintained by Willow Brugh).
• Future Anterior

• Identity Crises
• Identity Production
• Hyperpresence
• Home Automation
• Heterotopia
• Hertzian Space
• Heavy Modernity
• Hapacity
• Film as Common Mythology
• Fractal Anthropology
• Fractal Self
• Friction and Interfaces
• Frictional Surfaces
• Cognisphere
• Ivan Sutherland
• Marly Roncken