Simulation and Augmentation: Issues of Wearable Computers
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Author
Ana Viseu. At the time of writing she was a doctoral researcher at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information Studies working on wearable computing; she has since held positions at Cornell, York University and the European University of Lisbon, and has published extensively with Lucy Suchman on the imaginaries of the informed body.
Citation
Viseu, Ana. "Simulation and augmentation: Issues of wearable computers." Ethics and Information Technology 5, no. 1 (2003): 17–26.[1]
Keywords
augmentation, body, embedded computing, digital, personal technology, physical, simulation, ubiquitous computing, wearable computer
Abstract
"As the physical and digital worlds interact, some fields of technoscience have started to shift from an approach emphasizing simulation — in which the physical is replicated in the digital — to one focusing on augmentation, in which the digital is utilized to enhance the physical. A good place to study the implications this shift has on the individual is the field of personal wearable technologies. Here, the body is not simply extended by information and communication technologies (ICTs), but also becomes their intimate host. This represents a new step in the conceptualization of the synergy between individual (body) and technology (environment), and also affects the ways in which the role and nature of each actor are defined. This paper explores some of the theoretical re-orientations underpinning the development of wearable computers and how these shape the relationship between body and environment."
Summary of the Argument
Viseu identifies two competing paradigms in the design of personal technology. The simulation paradigm, dominant in the virtual-reality research of the late 1980s and early 1990s, treats the digital as a separate world to be entered, and therefore treats the body as something to be left at the threshold. The augmentation paradigm, which she sees displacing it, treats the digital as a layer applied to the physical world, and therefore treats the body as the platform on which computation is mounted.
Her point is that this is not a neutral technical shift. Once the body hosts the technology rather than merely operating it, the boundary that made "user" and "device" separable dissolves — and with it a set of assumptions embedded in ethics, privacy law and design practice that depend on that separability. She examines the two dominant strands of wearables research of the period, the MIT Media Lab tradition of the personal cyborg and the ubiquitous-computing tradition descending from Mark Weiser at Xerox PARC, and shows that they distribute agency between body and environment in opposite ways: one makes the individual the locus of intelligence, the other the room.
Relevance to Cyborg Anthropology
The simulation/augmentation distinction remains one of the most useful analytic tools for reading any new personal technology, and Viseu's insistence that the choice between them is an ethical and political one — not merely a design preference — anticipated debates about smart glasses, fitness tracking and continuous biometric monitoring by more than a decade.
Related Reading
External Links
References
- ↑ Simulation and augmentation: Issues of wearable computers, Ethics and Information Technology. doi:10.1023/A:1024928320234
