Modified: Living as a Cyborg 0815364016, 9780815364016

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”: The Overdetermination of Cyborgization
A Quarter Century of Cyborgization
Meanings of Modification
Overdetermination and Cyborgology
Cyborg Ex Machina?
Notes
References
About the Authors
Part 1 Being a Cyborg Is My Job
1 Modifeyed: Why Priveillance Is More Important to Our Cyborg Future Than Privacy
A Childhood Exploring
“Privacy” is Surveillance
The Right to Keep Differences Truly Private
References
2 The Avatars of alpha.tribe
Introduction: The Metaverse, Avatars and the Multiplied Self
Alpha, Xia, Alpho, Grapho and Amina…
Notes
References
3 Tanks, the Shield of Achilles, and Social Cyborgs
About the Author
4 Experiments With Cyborg Technology
Introduction
Experiment 1
Experiment 1 – Rationale
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 – Rationale
Comments
References
5 The Body Vehicle: An Argument for Transhuman Bodies
Evolving Human
Stages of Transformation
Transhuman Bodies
Threshold of Knowledge: A Transhuman Practice
Conclusion
References
6 When I first Saw Jesus, he was Cyborg
References
Part 2 Being a Cyborg for My Health
7 Pers. ex.
About the Author
8 Infusiones/Infusions: Estampas Itinerantes en Mi Tratamento de Cáncer/Itinerant Portraits in My Cancer Treatment
El animal que llevamos dentro/The Animal Within
Descabellada/”Descabellada”
Yo, cyborg?/I, cyborg?
About the Author
9 To See With Eyes Unshielded: Perceiving Life as a Partible Cyborg
Glasses
Cane
Screenreader
Reflections
References
10 “Don’t Mess With My Heart Device, I’ll do it Myself.”
In Which Karen and Marie Interview Each Other
About the Authors
11 Becoming an Accidental Cyborg Feminist Socialist
Notes
About the Author
12 The Ghost in the Biome
About the Author
13 “Cyborg” “Mom”
Notes
About the Author
Part 3 Imagining Myself Cyborg
14 Cyborgian Episteme as Queer Art-science
Prolog
Bare Life and Radical Knowledge Potentialities
Rigour, Errors, and Queer Knowledge
Concluding the Status Quo, Skewing the Norm
The Art-Science Disciplinary Matrix in the A-S/S-A
Reference
15 Computer Kid
References
16 Seven Ghosts: Critical Confessions of a Psyborg Mind
Ghost 1
The ‘Imitatio Dei’
Ghost 2
The Ectoplasm
Ghost 3
The Division
Ghost 4
The Echo
Ghost 5
The Breath
Ghost 6
Phantasmagoria
Ghost 7
The Abnormality
Artwork Description
About the Author
17 A Mundane Cyborg: The Smartphone, the Body, and the City
Cities and Phones Shaping Cyborgs
Making Appointments with Cyborgs Outside Phone Booths
Performing as a Mundane Cyborg with a Smartphone
Seeing Transfigurations in Urban Streets or Subways
Vulnerable to Breakdowns
References
18 To Be Transhumanist, Or Not To Be
A Transhumanist Manifesto
Preamble
Part I: Biology (w)as Destiny
Part II: Hacking Destiny – The Transhuman Cyborg
Part III: Disembodied Augmented Intelligence
Conditions:
Non-discrimination with regard to substrate
Emotional Intelligence
Minimize Suffering
Conclusion:
On Manifestos and Dilemmas
19 On Cultural Cyborgs
Coda
References
Part 4 Performing My Cyborgness
20 Waiting for Earthquakes
About the Author
21 My Cyborg Performance as a Techno-Cerebral Subject
The Neuroscientific Theater
The Experiments
The Cyborg Constitution
The Screening
The Cyborg Experience
Intentionality
Biomechanical-Physical Experience
Relaxation
Paradoxes of Control
Returning to the Morphological Wholeness
Notes
References
22 A Song for the Universe in the Dialect of Terran Cyborg Companions
To the Ooankali and Other Creatures of the Universe
About the Author
23 Modulating
About the Author
24 Zombies, Cyborgs and Chimeras: Alternate Anatomical Architectures
Uncertain, Anxious and Obsolete
Neither/Nor
Excess, Extrusion and Indifference
Zombies and Cyborgs
Neither Birth Nor Death
Circulating Flesh
Fractal Flesh/Phantom Flesh
Inverse Embodiment/Endo Architecture
Alternate Anatomical Architectures
The Uncanny, the Creepy and the Catastrophic
From Third Life to Real Life
Skins as Screens
Bioart
Floating Signifier
Contestable Futures
About the Author
Part 5 Thinking Myself a Cyborg
25 I, Cyborgologist
26 Cyborg Empathy for the Age of (In)Difference
Cyborg Society
Field-diary 2006
Field-diary 2007
Field-diary 2017
Field-diary 2019
Cyborg Empathy
Cyborg Empathy for a Cyborg Society
References
27 Being a Cyborg in a Connected World Increasingly Mediated by Algorithms: From the Perspective of Two Brazilian Journalists
Robots Arise in Brazilian Journalism
Facebook and the Brazilian Election: Would it be ‘left-checking’?
Final Considerations
References
28 Social Challenges: The Serious Game of Digitalization
Found Imaginaries
Viral Challenges: Types and Variations
What Moves Us to Do These Things?
Serious Games
Between Digital Games and Distinctions
Rituals and Dis/Continual Convergences
Acknowledgments
About the Author
29 Disc/erning the Crisis: A Mundane Cyborg Throws Hope to the Wind
References
30 The Best Possible Now
Note
About the Authors
Artist's comment
Illustrations
Index

Citation preview

MODIFIED: LIVING AS A CYBORG

Building off the highly successful The Cyborg Handbook, this new collection of essays, interviews, and creative pieces brings together a set of compelling personal accounts about what it means to live as a cyborg in the twenty-​first century. Human integration with complex technologies goes back to clothes, cooking, and language, but has accelerated incredibly in the last few centuries, with interest spreading among scientists, coders, people with sophisticated implants, theorists, and artists. This collection includes some of the most articulate of these voices from over 25 countries, including Donna Haraway, Stelarc, Natasha Vita-More, Steve Mann, Amber Case, Michael Chorost, Moon Ribas, Kevin Warwick, Sandy Stone, Dion Farquhar, Angeliki Malakasioti, Elif Ayiter, Heesang Lee, Angel Gordo, and others. Addressing topics including race, gender, sexuality, class, conflict, capitalism, climate change, disability, and beyond, this collection also explores the differences between robots, androids, cyborgs, hybrids, post-​, trans-​, and techno-​humans, offering readers a critical vocabulary for understanding and discussing the cyborgification of culture and everyday life. Compelling, interdisciplinary, and international, the book is a perfect primer for students, researchers, and teachers of cyberculture, media and cultural theory, and science fiction studies, as well as anyone interested in the intersections between human and machine. Chris Hables Gray is the author of Postmodern War, Cyborg Citizen and Peace, War and Computers. He is a Continuing Lecturer and Fellow at Crown College, University of California at Santa Cruz. Heidi J.  Figueroa-​Sarriera is a community social psychologist and Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Her research area is focused on digital technology and the transformations of everyday life, subjectivity, and embodiment. Steven Mentor is a Professor of Critical Thinking, English and American Literature, and Writing at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California. His current research includes cyborgs and climate justice, climate fiction, and new models of online and hybrid learning.

MODIFIED Living as a Cyborg

Edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera, and Steven Mentor

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera and Steven Mentor to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-​0-​8153-​6400-​9  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​8153-​6401-​6  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​351-​10783-​9  (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK Cover image: “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray

Chris Hables Gray: With love to Jeanne White, my sweet heart. Heidi Figueroa-​Sarriera: A la niña de mis ojos, Alejandra Sofía/ To the apple of my eyes, Alejandra Sofía. Steven Mentor: To my dear wife Margann, midwife extraordinaire, knower of much, teller of some; and to my father Ramon, a guy you would buy a used car from.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements  Introduction: “You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!” The Overdetermination of Cyborgization  Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera, and Steven Mentor

xi

1

PART 1

Being a Cyborg Is My Job 

23

1 Modifeyed: Why Priveillance Is More Important to Our Cyborg Future Than Privacy  Steve Mann

25

2 The Avatars of alpha.tribe  Elif Ayiter

34

3 Tanks, the Shield of Achilles, and Social Cyborgs  Anonymous

46

4 Experiments With Cyborg Technology  Kevin Warwick

50

viii Contents

5 The Body Vehicle: An Argument for Transhuman Bodies  Natasha Vita-​More

58

6 When I First Saw Jesus, He Was Cyborg  Gill Haddow

68

PART 2

Being a Cyborg for My Health 

75

7 Pers. ex.  Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone

77

8 Infusiones/Infusions: Estampas Itinerantes en Mi Tratamento de Cáncer/​Itinerant Portraits in My Cancer Treatment  Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera

80

9 To See With Eyes Unshielded: Perceiving Life as a Partible Cyborg  Miranda Loughry

92

10 “Don’t Mess With My Heart Device, I’ll Do It Myself.” In Which Karen and Marie Interview Each Other  Marie Moe and Karen Sandler

101

11 Becoming an Accidental Cyborg Feminist Socialist  Michael Chorost

108

12 The Ghost in the Biome  Steven Gulie

114

13 “Cyborg” “Mom”  Dion Farquhar

123

PART 3

Imagining Myself Cyborg 

137

14 Cyborgian Episteme as Queer Art-​science  Clarissa Ai Ling Lee

139

Contents  ix

15 Computer Kid  Amber Case

149

16 Seven Ghosts: Critical Confessions of a Psyborg Mind  Angeliki Malakasioti

156

17 A Mundane Cyborg: The Smartphone, the Body, and the City  165 Heesang Lee 18 To Be Transhumanist, Or Not To Be  Nikola Danaylov

178

19 On Cultural Cyborgs  Audrey Bennett and Ron Eglash

183

PART 4

Performing My Cyborgness 

191

20 Waiting for Earthquakes  Moon Ribas

193

21 My Cyborg Performance as a Techno-​Cerebral Subject  Melike Şahinol

197

22 A Song for the Universe in the Dialect of Terran Cyborg Companions  Lissette Olivaries 23 Modulating  Lucian O’Connor 24 Zombies, Cyborgs and Chimeras: Alternate Anatomical Architectures  Stelarc

212 217

225

PART 5

Thinking Myself a Cyborg 

241

25 I, Cyborgologist  Chris Hables Gray and Bob Thawley

243

x Contents

26 Cyborg Empathy for the Age of (In)Difference  Sandra P. González-​Santos 27 Being a Cyborg in a Connected World Increasingly Mediated by Algorithms: From the Perspective of Two Brazilian Journalists  Silvia DalBen and Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno 28 Social Challenges: The Serious Game of Digitalization  Ángel Gordo 29 Disc/​erning the Crisis: A Mundane Cyborg Throws Hope to the Wind  Steven Mentor

247

254 263

271

30 The Best Possible Now  Donna Haraway, with Nada Miljkovic

282



302

Artist’s Comment  Julia C R Gray

Illustrations  Index 

306 312

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank our wonderful contributors. Also we thank:  Provost Manel Camps, of Crown College, UCSC for permission to use Donna Haraway’s talk to his students and much other support; Mariana Viada who works with Moon Ribas; Zackary Hables Grayson and Jeanne White who helped with editing and transcribing. Finally, we are sincerely grateful to Erica Wetter, who championed the book at Routledge and Emma Sheriff, our wonderful Routledge editor who worked through quarantine to keep it on schedule and bring it to print.

newgenprepdf

FIGURE 0.1  “Cyborgs Are

Us” by Julia C R Gray

“YOU ARE A CYBORG; DEAL WITH IT!” The Overdetermination of Cyborgization Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera, and Steven Mentor Cyborgs matter to Terran worlding. Donna Haraway, 20121 Pull on the new flesh like borrowed gloves and burn your fingers once again. Richard K. Morgan in Altered Carbon (2003: 29)

A Quarter Century of Cyborgization Humans alive today, especially those reading this book, are the most modified in history. Modified by culture(s) that morph daily. Modified by incredible prostheses (smart phones, drones, artificial organs and limbs, vaccines) and extraordinary technologies (genetic engineering, nanotechnology). Modified by a rapidly transforming (degrading, actually) environment poisoned by our very success in extending our lives, our numbers, our bodies, our human culture to every corner

2  Chris Hables Gray et al.

of the Earth. Every new wave of change we catch exhilarates at first, and then burns as we wipe out on its unexpected consequences. So “Pull on the new flesh” and feel the burn. Or, put another way, it is technological mutilation treated with a new prosthesis creating a new mutilation… over and over until we run out of time, out of world.2 Sixty years ago, when Manfred Clynes coined the term cyborg (cybernetic-​ organism) for a NASA conference on modifying humans for space, cyborgs already existed.3 Since then cyborgs have proliferated in every way imaginable. But at first, while the technoscientific basis and reality of cyborgization grew more and more visible, the term was relegated to science fiction. It wasn’t until Donna Haraway seized the cyborg for activist theory (“A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s”) that the idea became ubiquitous in many corners of academia, high tech, and mainstream culture.4 Now, 35  years later, her essay still stuns the reader with its prescience. Relentlessly refusing all simple dichotomies (hope vs despair, technophobia vs technophilia, machinic vs organic, automaton vs autonomy) it maps out the dilemmas of this massive technoscientific transformational process humanity is perpetuating, dragging the rest of the living world kicking and screaming and sixth-​great-​extinction-​dying behind it. We humans are not just cyborging ourselves; we are modifying every corner of the world, throwing life profoundly out of balance. By turning the last remnants of wild nature into marketable meat, we’ve inflicted ourselves with a series of deadly xenoviruses, the newest of which (COVID-​19) has caused the pandemic we currently labor under. This comes as no surprise to Donna Haraway, trained in biology and philosophy, who has long warned about such dangers, as she does in her contribution to this book. I think that loss is real and accelerating, and there will be no status quo ante. There will be no going back to a prior state. The new equilibrium points will be different, and they will be worse in all kinds of describable ways. I’m talking biologically right now. So I  think that extinction is real and accelerating, and anyone who thinks that there’s a techno fix is in a state of abstract denialism,… (this volume, p. 299) But many of us are not surprised. Anyone involved in science, or studying science, or campaigning for the environment for that matter, should have seen the current pandemic, and the many horrors that will follow, coming. Humans are part of nature, a large driver in the immensely larger world of ecological interconnectivity, but often imagine ourselves apart from it. It is a dangerous illusion, these nonexistent binaries:  nature-​culture, human-​animal, organism-​machine. It is only beyond these binaries, in complex systems such as cyborgs, where we will again find harmony, or as the scientists call it, homeostasis. So we lean on Haraway again

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  3

in this introduction, and she inevitably pops up throughout this book, for her influence on living cyborgs is as strong as it is on cultural theory. And, fittingly, her contribution ends this collection of cyborg reflections as well. Twenty-​five years ago, when The Cyborg Handbook (CYHB) came out, we were gratified to get a fair number of positive reviews and as the years passed, the CYHB continued to be bought and used. But there were also some critical reactions and our favorites were those that snarked in the best graduate school-​honed cuts that the “cyborg was just so… so… so out-​of-​date.” For these reviewers the cyborg was an intellectual plaything, or at best, a tool for scholars in the humanities that had inevitably grown dull with use and needed to be supplanted by something bright and shiny and new. “Hybrid” maybe, or “posthuman”? But the category “cyborg” was created to answer scientific and engineering questions, and it also turned out to be very useful historically and even politically. This is different than being a fetish (in the anthropological if not sexual sense) for pomo cult studs. It is because of its origins in cybernetics, space sciences, medicine and engineering that it became a common trope in science fiction, where it has thrived since first coined. After all, it is happening. Humans have indeed gone from tool makers to machine inventors to cyborgs. And not all of us are the same kind of cyborg. Just as there is a proliferation and continuing elaboration of human tools and machines, there is an expanding variety of cyborgs.5 Allison Muri argues in her insightful history of the conditions that made cyborgs inevitable that… … the history of the cyborg in the early modern man-​machine is based on these two related facets of techno-​bodies. First, is the mechanistic view of the body as an engine composed of multiple parts, seen today as rather unremarkable:  surgical procedures such as inserting stents in arteries to maintain unimpeded blood flow, or prosthetic limbs, or the replacement of organs, derive from a mechanistic understanding of the body’s visible part as mechanisms within a system or engine. Second, the view of the mind or consciousness as a series of electrochemical reactions derives from a mechanistic or materialistic understanding of the fine particles within the body. (2007: 84) This early modern framing, the man-​machine with his (certainly his) body electric, did empower medicine and computer science with fruitful analogies. It also became central to economic thinking, where zombie just-​so stories of cyborg models drove neo-​liberal capitalism to unparalleled political dominance around the world (Mirowski 2001). Meanwhile, in more and more businesses, humans and machines are being ever more intimately integrated, producing what Chuck Piazza (2011) labeled networked cyborgs, an adaptable intelligent cyber-​socio organization. This could be empowering for the individual workerborg, but usually it is not.“We are an Extension of the Machine” argues an anonymous Amazon

4  Chris Hables Gray et al.

Worker, not as a celebration of this fact. Another Amazon Worker comments, “We are disposable.” These are linked. Workers are in the end “interchangeable”…. (Anonymous Amazon Worker 2018) Of course, this is true of almost all workers in modernity and, even more, in postmodernity. Machines and humans working together mean smart systems and intelligent cogs, but cogs many workers remain. The cyborging of work and workers has not transcended the old dichotomies of owners/​workers, well paid and ill paid, controller and controlled, far from it. This theme in countless science fiction works from Metropolis to Total Recall to The Windup Girl echoes the Romantic criticism of technology without justice encapsulated in Shelley’s defense of poetry: without imagination to change how we frame and deploy science and technology, we simply add new and inhuman, Frankensteinian capabilities to those already abusing their powers. The poet warned us in 1821: We have more moral, political and historical wisdom than we know how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought, is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes. There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government, and political economy, or at least, what is wiser and better than what men now practice and endure. But we…want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life: our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave. It was the author of Frankenstein, Percy’s wife Mary Shelley, who facilitated the publication of this warning decades after the poet had died. Each, in their own way, was compelled to interrogate the growing enslavement of humans to our works. So, the roots of human-​machine integration are deep. This intimacy did not start with the word cyborg. People born way before 1960 still fit the definition of cyborg, vaccine recipients in particular. Edward Tenner points out that even George Washington was a cyborg, since his last set of dentures had a hinged gold spring to work together the gold plates of hippo ivory teeth. Not that he could eat, drink, or speak with comfort, but he was a real cyborg. Washington himself was never vaccinated, having survived smallpox, but he did mandate the Continental Army be inoculated, despite vaccine bans declared by the Continental Congress and others (Tenner 2003: 264).

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  5

Vaccines are particularly interesting from a cyborg point-​of-​view. They have been modifying humans for hundreds of years, and now (quite technically according to Manfred Clynes) vaccines make most of us something most of us feel is monstrous: a cyborg. What is revealed is 1) we are already ‘borged, and 2) the big issue is how you are modified, and why. Unsurprisingly, considering the centrality of human-​technology relations to society today, specific labels, and broader terms subsuming the cyborg altogether, have also proliferated. One of the first was symbionts, which Donna Haraway herself used in the introduction to the CYHB. Then there is chimera. Hybrid is another, as is the recently popular (and somewhat nonsensical) “posthuman.” Less off-​putting and confusing than transhuman, it means even less since we are a long way from moving on from the human. Rather, the “human” sides of our cyborgian selves keep asserting themselves. So cyborgs are more and less vulnerable to flesh-​destroying threats like self-​driving cars malfunctioning, or if not vaccinated against, viruses such as COVID-​19. And the computing parts of our hybridity, our social media selves, are just as vulnerable to viruses that circulate in cyberspace, threatening our money, our information flows, our digital sociality, recreating our memories and our very identities. Created, one must remember, by human, all too human actors. There is a great deal of useful academic analysis of cyborgization.6 We use it often ourselves, and it certainly comes up in many of the reflections collected here. It undergirds much of our understanding of cyborgization. But not all. For many of us the realization that we are ‘borg has profoundly changed who we are and what we do. It changes how we live. Academic thinking brings to light important knowledge about cyborgian existence; nevertheless it isn’t merely academic. It is personal, and therefore political. By naming our status we understand ourselves a bit better: “Know thy cyborg self.”7 But we also re/​create agency by shaping our identity, as every choice to name oneself does. As important as the many scientific and technical developments of our cyborgization are, even more crucial is how we apply them to ourselves, how they help us reshape our selves. Yes, you are a cyborg. But what type of cyborg? Who decided? And who decides on the next modifications? So for Modified, we have made a choice to focus on the actual lived experiences and personal interpretations of taking on a cyborg identity.8 What does it portend that from ubiquitous and integral tool use humans developed an increasing array of ever more complicated and linked machines and have now moved to a new relationship to our tools and machines: intimate integration, often symbiosis? To begin to understand what this might mean, we ought to listen to the lived experiences of those who understand themselves as cyborgs. So this is certainly NOT an academic text. Ok, we admit it, some of the contributions are a tad academic, so let us say semi-​academic.9 It is good stuff, cyborg theory from self-​conscious cyborgs:  primo, high grade, 99% pure postmodern

6  Chris Hables Gray et al.

enlightenment. But most of these texts are more personal, and not from academics actually. Each has its own voice. In the traffic between academic abstraction and lived experience, these cyborgs flip the script; the examples proliferate and generate theories, and meanings.

Meanings of Modification This book’s focus is on how cyborgization is being lived. Hence, the five sections we have chosen: Being a Cyborg is My Job; Being a Cyborg for My Health; Imagining Myself Cyborg; Performing My Cyborgness; and Thinking Myself a Cyborg. Who goes where is often somewhat arbitrary. Social scientists perform, philosophers do bench science, and artists theorize. But we think this crude mapping makes sense. Cyborgness is often lumpy, unevenly distributed on its organic or machinic substrate, but we come to the realization we are ‘borged each in our own way. For some people, this realization came through work. The first contributor to the cyborg “jobs” section, is one of the first conscious cyborgs, Steve Mann. He is the prolific founder-​inventor of wearable computing, an activist techno-​artist, and an insightful theorist of the technoscientific transformations of contemporary society. In “Modifeyed:  Why Privellance is more Important to our Cyborg Future than Privacy” he writes on the cyborg implications of Veillance Society (an invaluable concept he articulated originally) from his perspective as someone who has been profoundly modified for decades. He also likes to invent new words to go with our new realities. Elif Ayiter lives at least half her existence in Second Life as an avatar designer, and the other half as an academic in Istanbul. Her “The avatars of alpha.tribe” focuses on her digital life, its beauties, and other revelations. Explaining the ways such a modified embodiment can expand a person, psychologically and sociologically, is one of the important gifts this reflection offers but it is also proof that identities can be aesthetic wholes. War is an endeavor that has been profoundly transformed by cyborgian innovations. An anonymous officer in the U.S. Army with a speciality in armor, has written about what it means to be part of a social cyborg such as a tank and its crew. His meditation on the long relationship of war and technology, called “Tanks, the Shield of Achilles, and Social Cyborgs,” is at home with the wisdoms of both ancient mythology and postmodern instruments of violence. Another early scientist-​cyborg is Kevin Warwick. He is famous for his self-​ experimentations with various implants, which he chronicles in his contribution, “Experiments with Cyborg Technology.” He has, with the collaboration of his wife, pioneered implant intercommunication revealing practical, ethical, and social issues that will be bedeviling humanity for some time. Transhumanism is a woefully misunderstood and incredibly diverse techno-​ social movement. While libertarian billionaires trying to spend their way to immortality have garnered much of the publicity around transhumanism they are

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  7

not the main story. Transhumanism is more about seriously working to harness technology to extend and better human life, so it also includes strong social democratic and other diverse political currents. One of its major lights has been, from its beginnings in Extropianism, the charismatic Natasha Vita-​More. Author of the “Transhuman Manifesto” in 1983, she has recently become an active bench scientist studying memory resilience in simple multicellular beasties who have been cryonically frozen and thawed. This work informs her contribution, “The Body Vehicle: An Argument for Transhuman Bodies.” Perhaps the greatest number of people who have been cyborged in complex ways are medical patients. One of the few people to study this dynamic is the Scottish sociologist of medicine Gill Haddow. She reflects on how her understanding of cyborgization has been shaped by her work in, “When I First Met Jesus He Was a Cyborg.” Her story is a chorus of various voices that cry out some of the many different ways humans respond to profound medical cyborgizations of the heart. More and more people pursue mental and physical health through cyborg modifications. These are people whose cyborgization goes significantly beyond vaccination. Sandy Stone wrote about her transition from male to female and how she fell in love with her prosthesis in The Cyborg Handbook (1995). She remains profoundly modified, as she explains here in a very personal statement (“Pers. ex.”) that rejects simple and safe thinking. Heidi Figueroa-​Sarriera had been theorizing cyborgness for many years when her own breast cancer took her on an embodied engagement with the realities of cyborg healing. Her successful treatment is described in “Infusions/​Infusiones” using an autoethnographic approach to connect her personal experiences to a wider cultural and social context. Using text and images, Heidi has crafted an extraordinary chronicle of an intense personal, and technological, journey. While going blind, Miranda Loughry has developed a fascinating rapport with the technologies that help her navigate an increasingly obscured world. Her relationship to cyborg technologies is incredibly sophisticated, combining a hopeful openness and a grounded pragmatism with a careful attention to technological and biological realities. She shares what she has learned in “To See with Eyes Unshielded: Perceiving Life as a Partible Cyborg.” Marie Moe and Karen Sandler are hackers with heart implants, who have campaigned for better security and regulation of their cyborg hardware in their respective countries.They contrast and compare their experiences in ‘ “Don’t mess with my heart device, I’ll do it myself.’ In Which Karen and Marie Interview Each  Other.” In shaping our complex futures, nothing is more important than claiming agency over our own complicated, indeed modified, bodies, as Karen and Marie have modeled for us. Michael Chorost has already written one of the very best books on being a cyborg, Rebuilt (2005), about his relationship to the cochlear ear implants that make it possible for him to hear. He has had a complicated relationship to the idea

8  Chris Hables Gray et al.

of the cyborg over the years. His intimacy with powerful technologies and potent politics has led to him “Becoming an Accidental Cyborg Feminist Socialist.” A former Apple engineer from near the beginning, Steve Gulie has Parkinson’s and has a controllable brain implant to ameliorate his symptoms. But the implants are not a cure and he is dying. His original brain implant operation was chronicled (with video) in Wired (Guile 2007). Now he exposes his mind in his very personal essay on becoming a “Ghost in the Biome.” Dion Farquhar is a poet and teacher who had to become a cyborg mom to birth her two boys. In her contribution “Cyborg” “Mom”, she updates her perspective on reproductive technologies, first published in the classic The Other Machine: Discourse and Reproductive Technologies (1996).Weaving a story that is both deeply personal and academically sophisticated, she tells of how in her case human choice mobilized the technologies that made it possible to attain the family she desired. Cyborgology is not just about understanding cyborgs; it is about making them. And they are made first in our imagination. In “Cybogian Episteme as Queer Art-​science” Clarissa Ai Ling Lee discusses art, science and the role of the cyborg, based on her field work in South East Asia exploring the relationships between culture and technology. Her tale is how one’s personal identity, philosophical commitments, and academic practices combine in all aspects of her life. Amber Case, a well known AR (Augmented Reality) programmer/​hacker and techno-​theorist whose Ted Talk on cyborgs is iconic, explains how she has always been a “Cyborg Kid.” Her nostalgic/​anti-​nostalgic look at the technologies she grew up with is a master class in cyborg memoir: which prosthetics, which technologies enliven? Which deaden, and why? She writes, “If our history as a species was all about humans alongside tools, then we need to remind ourselves that there are tradeoffs when we take the physical experience of the tool away.” (this volume, p. 154) The Greek architect Angeliki Malakasioti has created “Seven Ghosts: Critical Confessions of a Psyborg Mind.” She visualizes, from her own consciousness out, how she thinks herself, knows herself, cyborgian. Based on her deep readings of cyborg theory, her fascination with the idea of the uncyborgable, and her professional training in that hybrid discipline of architecture, Angeliki manifests in digital 3D images the hauntings our cyborgization gives rise to. Being a cyborg in Seoul is urbanologist Heesang Lee’s story. In “A Mundane Cyborg: My Smartphone, My Body, and My City” he moves from the everyday evolution of making appointments to the disappearance, appearance, and transformation of technologies, bodies, and cities. He asks, “When did bodies without smartphones come to be seen as abnormal and deficient?” A personal debate on whether “To Be Transhumanist, Or Not To Be” is offered by Nikola Danaylov. A  controversial figure in transhumanism, not an unusual status actually, Danaylov is the host of the Singularity Weblog and has interviewed many leading futurists, engineers, and scientists.

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  9

To end this section, activist academics Audrey Bennet and Ron Eglash reflect “On Cultural Cyborgs” from their experiences fostering generative justice projects combining technological and political innovations in neglected communities around the world. Their fieldwork involves collaborative projects of both technological and cultural sophistication to catalyze new ways of thriving, and new ways of theorizing our possible futures. The contributions by artists (and others) whose cyborgness is performed as an integral part of who they are, start with the well known performance artist Moon Ribas. Her “Waiting for Earthquakes” reflects on the implants that made her body an instrument for monitoring seismic activity. Nowadays when our planet seems to be in open rebellion, connecting the body to the Earth is a vital but risky exercise. Following the earthquakes’ pulses raises uncertainties  about the limits of the terrestrial welcome to humanity. But it also invites us to think, perhaps, of other ways of moving harmoniously and melodically with the rest of the natural environment. Melike Şahinol is a Turkish researcher who became a participant observer cyborg during her research on brain monitoring technologies. “My Cyborg Performance as a Techno-​Cerebral Subject” explains how science is often performative. Şahinol takes us into the fascinating phenomenology of the cyborg experience. From the living cyborg the issue of who has control acquires centrality, as do the paradoxes nurtured in the relationships inside/​outside, subjective/​ objective, and cause/​effect. Her experience also implies that the assumptions that transparently divide imagination, brain activity, and behavior are diluted and at the same time intertwined in a strange and tense collaboration between the organic body and inorganic artifacts used in the process of embodiment. The Chilean academic, artist and activist, Lissette Olivaries, has many different personas, such as the cyborg from the future named Coco Rico. Her animal activism is for humans as well as dogs and mice and pigs and many other endangered creatures. Performing cyborg helps free herself to sing “A Song for the Universe in the Dialect of Terran Cyborg Companions” as she explains. Lucian O’Conner has written a very personal account of his life in “the cybernetic closet” called “Modulated.” This is a self-​portrait of great delicacy, that illuminates the saving grace digitality can sometimes bestow on those in real need of connection and intricate self-​reflection. But it also shows a trajectory that points to the adaptive dimension of the evolutionary process. In this experience, the social adaptive process assumes human-​device coupling with a clear focus on survival despite all adversity. The last offering in this section is from the famous Cypriot-​Australian artist Stelarc. His compelling overview of his incredible body of work is entitled “Zombies, Cyborgs, and Chimeras:  Alternative Anatomical Architectures.” As someone who has often risked his life in his powerful experimental performances, his admirable commitment to going deeper into the future, beyond the mere “meat machine” and things as they are, cannot be doubted.

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Thinking oneself cyborg is what academics do. It can be a graphic story, as is “I, Cyborgologist” where Chris Hables Gray tells, through the art of Bob Thawley, the story of his cyborg existence from 1950s vaccinations to editing this book. From Mexico City, Sandra P. González Santos advocates for “Cyborg Empathy for the Age of (In)Difference.” She looks beyond the “circuit-​flesh” to interrogate the larger picture, cyborg society. As a science and technology scholar in Mexico she is perfectly situated to look at the economic and political networks extending from the so-​called first world into the working-​class districts of the whole world. And from there, she makes a powerful argument for empathy. Silvia DalBen and Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno address the connected cyborg world from their perspective as Brazilian graduate students recently introduced to cyborgology. Their contribution is “Being a Cyborg in a Connected World Increasingly Mediated by Algorithms.” Their focus on algorithms through a case study of automated (with AI) journalism writing allows for a deeper, and richer, analytic that engages processes more than objects, possibilities more than inevitabilities. Angel Gordo, a social psychologist in Madrid and editor of Teknokultura, a preeminent science studies forum, shares his most recent research in “Social Challenges:  The Serious Game of Digitalization.” Also a contributor to The Cyborg Handbook, his research is intimately intertwined with his own personal relationship to technology, in this case looking at the impact of social media viral culture and its initiation rites while raising young children of his own. Steven Mentor offers “Disc/​erning the Crisis:  A Mundane Cyborg Throws Hope to the Wind” to reflect on the interface of frisbees, disasters, and cyborgology. He describes the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the shock of a San Francisco suddenly without power and on fire, and as important, the loss of digital information as an augmentation of the body. As in other selections (see Amber Case, above) the subject is which technologies enliven, en-​courage? When cyborged humans face disasters such as climate chaos (and as we write this, COVID-​19), which tools render us the most resilient, the most courageous? The last chapter, appropriately, is Donna Haraway’s. She explains, in a discussion with undergraduate students, facilitated by Nada Miljkovic, that in “The Best Possible Now” how being awash in urine is not a bad thing. Urine is a signal; urine is information. As she said in her forward to the CYHB: “Whatever else it is, the cyborg point of view is always about communication, infection, gender, genre, species, intercourse, information, and semiology.” (1995: xiv) Because these reflections are so varied in style and origin, they do not follow a consistent format nor is there a common bibliography although they are all indexed together. They don’t even use the same English, as both British and American variations are honored. It is a chorus called heteroglossia. Images of “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray knit the text together on a different level. Her sculpture includes six sections, painted internally with cyborg images, which

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  11

both hide and expose the complex meanings this book strives to address. Her comments on her art precedes the Illustrations listing and the Index. This is what this book is. Why this book is requires understanding why cyborgization.

Overdetermination and Cyborgology Psychology has lagged behind conceptualizing the body and subjectivity in its more intimate and organic relationship with technological devices. (La psicología ha quedado rezagada a la hora de conceptualizar el cuerpo y la subjetividad en una relación más íntima y orgánica con los aparatos tecnológicos.) Heidi Figueroa-​Sarriera (2017: 11) Heidi Figueroa-​Sarriera is right, we don’t understand what is happening to us. Humans have biologically evolved toward prosthesis, and turbo charged this ongoing modification process through culture and technoscience. Hence, relentless iterated prosthesis: thesis, antithesis, synthesis –​prosthesis. Evolution is always churning:  mutation, natural selection, sex, artificial selection, culture, participatory selection. But there is a tension here, the cancer of over-​success, billions of humans crowding their way to a sixth mass extinction, possibly including ourselves. And on the personal level, the tension of constant transgression.10 This is why there are so many cyborgs, so many human-​machine hybrids.They are generated by human fecundity, biological and technological. And because there are so many reasons for cyborgs. Everywhere one cares to look cyborgs are proliferating: implants, chimera pigs with human pancreas, biohybrid robots with meat muscle driving metal bones, optogenetics, Wolverine, cyborg bacteria, new vaccines… Cyborgs are overdetermined. Overdetermined is one of those rare graduate school concepts/​clichés that is actually useful. It refers to situations where there is way more causality than necessary. So one must look “upstream”, in this case to evolution, to understand the emergence of cyborged humanity. In human evolution, to ‘borg is massively overdetermined. Edward Tenner understands why cyborgization is overdetermined. It is the result of the basic relationship humans have to technology: When we use simple devices to move, position, extend, or protect our bodies, our techniques change both objects and bodies. And by adopting devices we do more. We change our social selves. In other species, natural selection and social selection shape the appearance of the animal. In humanity, technology helps shape identity. Our material culture changes by an unpredictable, dialectical flux of instrument and performance, weapon and tactic. (Tenner 2003: 29)

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Looking at this proliferation of cyborgian developments, it is clear that a cyborg epistemology helps explain cultures as/​and technocultures. It is an open question, in science fiction and in point of fact, whether we can harness and direct our new, massively augmented human/​machine powers to create a sustainable human/​ecosystem balance, or whether these new powers simply overwhelm our primate brains, societies, and narratives. Many other creatures are tool users: backstroking otters breaking open abalone on a stone nestled in a furry belly, chimps using sticks to collect ants or even fashioning spears to impale bush babies (galagos). But humans are tool makers. Other creatures are builders:  termites, ants, bees, beavers, birds. But we transform ecosystems. We are reshaping the very biosphere, although not just (or even mostly) for the better. Certain ants use aphids to farm fungus, transforming then into living “cookers.” But we have massively domesticated thousands of species, remaking them into what we want to see, eat, work with and cuddle. And we have domesticated ourselves. We have evolved to be tool users, tool makers, builders, transformers, and domesticators. The evidence is our bodies. Consider proprioception. Shut your eyes and gently touch the tip to the back of your head.That you can do this effortlessly is thanks to your very developed sense of proprioception. The body maps that your brain uses to coordinate interacting with reality easily expand to encompass not just tools in your hand or clothes on your body, but even the car you are driving. Proprioception is behind phantom limb syndrome. All creatures with nervous systems seem to have some form of body mapping. And, for tool use, this map must extend beyond the biological body as it does for an otter and the chimp. But our powers of proprioception are way beyond those of our primate cousins, as experiments by Dr.  Atsushi Iriki on Japanese macaque monkeys demonstrate. (Blakeslee and Blakeslee 2008: 138–​ 162). Human cyborgization is grounded on how the human body has evolved to foster not just tool use, but the integration of tools into our body-​systems. It is a process that is speeding up, driven now more by culture than biology. Cyborgization is embodied accelerationism, biology allowing culture to drive perpetual and transformational inventions of new levels of human-​artifact intimacy. Cyborg modifications are growing more sophisticated, more common, perhaps most visibly in many aging first world people. But cyborgization is more than what happens to individuals. There is no doubt that the concept of the cyborg has gone beyond specifically engineered organisms for extreme conditions such as living in space. This isn’t about the subservience of machines to humans or a partnership between machines and organisms; it is a symbiosis. Our common language is called cybernetics. Since the turn of the century this process has gotten wilder and wilder, faster and faster. We now have nanobacteria, engineered yet-​still-​organic leaves, modified cells of blood and bone and brain, bionic ears to hear the buzzing of tiny biocopters pollinating in place of the dying bees, worm yarn to knit organs and pigs making human blood. Scientists, engineers, universities and corporations

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  13

rush to create and sell artificial eyes, hearts, blood, kidneys, bones, pancreas… really everything organic in the human body. The 21st Century Postmodern War system has become a macabre dance of drones and other cyborg soldier systems battling for dominance.11 Meanwhile, tinkering with the basic language of life, genetic technoscience aspires not just to copy and improve all life, but to add to it with totally engineered forms authored by teams of human researchers and their helper-​computers. New transformative sciences like optogenetics and sonogenetics, where genetically modified brains are made curable (and controllable) by light or sound, sprout like fecund aliens from labs around the world. Inevitably, in the midst of humanity’s first truly global pandemic, the proliferation of the xenovirus COVID-​19, we lean into modifying ourselves, seeking the latest test, praying for an effective vaccine, connecting to community digitally as we isolate our flesh. We seem to expect that cyborging will save us. But what will that look like?

Cyborg Ex Machina? We want to make Google the third half of your brain. Sergey Brin, co-​founder of Google Sergey Brin said this while explaining the new search feature that guesses what the users want (Yarow 2010). This is the eventual goal of surveillance capitalism, to go from collecting and selling some of our behavioral surplus to shaping all our behavior for profit. In her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshanna Zuboff (2019) cites “the chief data scientist for a much-​admired Silicon Valley education company” who told her: The goal of everything we do is to change people’s actual behavior at scale. We want to figure out the construction of changing a person’s behavior, and then we want to change how lots of people are making their day-​to-​day decisions. When people use our app, we can capture their behaviors and identify good and bad. Then we develop “treatments” or “data pellets” that select good behaviors. We can test how actionable our cues are for them, and how profitable certain behaviors are for us. (Zuboff 2019: 297) Humans using machines that are designed by humans and machines to change the very material actions and decisions of humans; this is what we have been studying since we coined the term “cyborgology” while working on The Cyborg Handbook. What have we learned in thirty years living and studying the cyborg phenomena? The process that produces cyborg political technologies follows the cyborg epistemology proposed in 1995 by us:  Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, Prosthesis. Rinse and repeat. The dynamic is beyond dialectical. As the monetization of

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culture overwhelmed so much in the twentieth century, attempts were made to limit corporate dominance in the form of anti-​monopoly legislation, lobbyist limitations, and campaign finance reform. But corporations arguably “borged” so that beginning in the 1980’s, they sought to make resistance to their agenda futile, as the meme would have it. That these efforts to rein in the Borg corporations (themselves interlocking with governmental regulatory structures, so that much of the FDA becomes prosthetic to Big Pharma, for example) are utterly failing has created deeper critiques, especially those coming from the twenty-​first century “movement of movements.” They have led directly to privatization software, decentralized networking strategies, DIY (do it yourself) and DIT (do it together) projects from the global to the most local. This praxis of theory is also based on a long practice of grassroots democracy, affinity groups and consensus, feminist process, and revivified community. There is much to celebrate in the possibilities of human-​machine cooperation and reinvention. But other alternative knowledge systems can make use of the same tropes. Al Qaeda (“the net” in Arabic) is a perfect example, with its cyborg suicide systems, decentralized command and control with media linkages and high levels of secrecy. It is also a reflection in an asymmetrical (as in war) mirror of the information-​intensive high-​tech cyborg combat systems of the U.S. and NATO (Gray 2005). The causality of culture, especially technoculture, is never simple, binary, or ever fully understandable or controllable. Identity politics are about the ultimate freedom, deciding who you are.Within reason. You can’t make yourself 20  years younger just because you want to be and a court so ruled in the Netherlands in 2018. And what of “passing” from one supposed race to another? One person’s freedom can be another’s insult. Claiming identities is a crucial part of expanding liberty through society, as the current wave of non-​binary and even unfixed identities expands sexual and gender freedoms. So, clearly, techniques and rules for “owning” one’s cyborg identity are inevitably prefigurative, shaping cyborg society through individual choices, not theories. Technologies transform identity directly, in some cases via sexual reassignment surgery. It will only become more so. “Normal” will not be enforceable because abnormal is already overdetermined; the new norms are cyborg norms, with new challenges and new con-​fusions. Cyborg medical technology moves from legitimizing narratives of “returning to normal” to enhancement, from restoration to augmentation. If not enhancements for oneself, enhancements for one’s child. Life extension, unsurprisingly, is also a very popular idea. Realizing we are cybernetic organisms overall is the organizing conceit behind these apparently diverse technocultural developments. All this variation is indeed common among species. Humans are actually unusually uniform genetically, are surprisingly similar biologically, and so the proliferation of cultural identities strikes an interesting balance. If and when homo sapiens evolve into another species it might well be along a homo sapien cyborg to

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  15

homo cyborg sapien to cyborg homo sapien to any number of proliferating possibilities. If we survive long enough to evolve.12 If we don’t survive, neither will nonhuman cyborgs. When not modified humans, cyborgs are always modified by humans. This includes the Earth itself, a kind of cyborg Gaia (Haraway 1995). Hannah Osborne (2018) updates the idea of Earth as Gaia in specifically cyborgian (homeostasis/​self-​regulation) with important feedback effects on human consciousness. Meanwhile the author of the Gaia concept (with Lynn Margulis), James Lovelock, has written that the only likely solution to the climate crisis may be cyborgs. But he imagines cyborgs to be more like robots who need humans and other organic life to help keep Gaia from burning up. His fantasy of humans kept like pets in gardens who are (to quote Richard Brautigan) “all watched over/​by machines of loving grace” is in sharp contrast to countless cyborg narratives that imagine humans desperately attempting to face climate chaos and an increasingly inhospitable world. Simple things like growing food become ever more dire as cyborged and engineered agriculture attempts to outpace the viruses that attack genetically modified plants, leading inexorably to the future shown in Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Windup Girl; films like The Martian prefigure Earth’s climate collapse by imagining a human (in new configurations with his technology) trying to survive on Mars. Indeed, if climate chaos and global warming are the product, as Havelock claims, of evolution, then this evolution’s arc may be one of intense cyborgian irony. Consider:  the first cyborg was designed to live “freely” in space and on other planets, and many of the early cyborg tales imagine humans more and more cut up and distributed into/​around cybernetic technologies in order to survive life-​threatening environments such as the deep sea, or failed nuclear reactors, or postmodern war scenarios. The same industrial systems, deployed carelessly and without thought to the organic substrate upon which these systems preyed and depended, that helped create the stars-​bound space cyborg, are also helping destroy this planet, making it increasingly hostile to organic life and necessitating cyborgian adaptation in order for humans to survive. Future disasters promise more and more extreme cyborgizations, not fewer. At the end of her forward to the CYHB, Donna Haraway (1995: xix) quotes the slogan of Elisabeth Bird of the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska—​Cyborgs for Earthly Survival—​and remarks that she thinks the CYHB would contribute to that. So we hope for this collection. We have here thirty-​six self-​conscious cyborgs claiming their right to interpret themselves. Cyborg citizens. For Earthly Survival. Haraway has famously urged us all to “stay with the trouble.” In her contribution to this collection she has added an admonition to “stay with the complexity.” Crucial advice. Our lives, cyborged or not, are indeed complex and troubled. But they are our lives and we shall live them as well as we can. We will fight for more than mere survival.

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At many protests over the last 40  years one could often hear the chant, “Another world is possible!”True enough.This world could be worse.There could be dictators even worse than those that blight the world now. There could be wars even more horrible, with biological or nuclear weapons used. There could be an even more devastating pandemic than COVID-​19. It is no great news that “Another World is Possible!” We need to realize that a better world is possible. As Donna Haraway advises, we should work for the “Best Possible Now.” I care about building the best possible nows. I’m interested in the best possible now. I think that gives us the best possible chance for possible futures. But what I  am really committed to is a thick and robust and sustaining present. (this volume, p. 300) There is no going back. As Norbert Wiener warned us 70 years ago, “We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves.” (1950/​1989:  46) Humanity must move forward by changing ourselves into a cybernetic organism that can live in a more balanced relationship with the rest of nature. A  relationship that doesn’t just stop the degradation of the environment, this sixth great extinction, but rather works to restore the vibrancy and complexity of the biosphere. And how do we know if we have achieved this? Politically? Self-​regulation. Biologically? Homeostasis. Aesthetically? Harmony. These are the lessons of COVID-​19 and of the cyborg. Cyborgs are systems that are alive: you, civilization, Gaia Earth. Living systems strive to achieve equilibriums but they do not survive in stasis. It is thrive or die. The future of cyborgs, of humans and our technologies, is not yet written. The next chapter of human-​machine symbiosis will produce monsters, and models, solutions and new dilemmas, some dreamt of in the cyborg lives assembled here, some beyond imagining … yet. Chris Hables Gray, Steven Mentor, Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera Santa Cruz, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico In quarantine. April 1, 2020

Notes 1 This epigraph ends the paragraph of poetry/​philosophy below. Donna Haraway’s work is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is relentlessly logical and beautiful but difficult to parse because of its lapidary intricacy, like Pietra dura, Renaissance mosaics of precious stones. Particular sorts of historically situated machines signaled by the words information and system play their part in cyborg living and dying. Particular sorts of historically situated organisms, signaled by the idols of labor systems, energetics, and communication, play their part. Finally, particular sorts of historically situated human beings, becoming with the practices and artifacts of technoscience, play

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their part. Characterized by partial connections, the parts do not add up to any whole; but they do add up to worlds of nonoptional, stratified, webbed and unfinished living and dying, appearing and disappearing. Cyborgs are constitutively full of multiscalar, multitemporal. multimaterial critters of both living and nonliving persuasions. (2016, 104–​105, italics in original) 2 The mutilation-​prosthesis dynamic was first explained by Davis-​Floyd and Dumit,  1998. 3 Technically, a cyborg is an “exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously.” (Clynes and Kline 1995: 30–​31). In practice the term refers to all sorts of complex biological and machinic mergings and other systems combining the living and the dead, the invented and the evolved, flesh and metal. Cyborgs are not particularly new in imagination or reality. Prosthesis go back to antiquity (Draycott 2018) and in mythological dreams, much further. Clynes defined cyborg for a paper he wrote with his mentor Nathan Kline, who was a famous psychiatrist known for his advocacy and development of pharmacological treatments such as Thorazine. Kline experimented with LSD and there are persistent rumors that he worked closely with the CIA in the MKULTRA project from his base in Rockland State Hospital. 4 See Gray 2001 for a discussion of NASA’s reticence to use the term cyborg after 1963. Later (somewhat rewritten) versions were called “Cyborg Manifesto.” 5 The most important question about cyborgization isn’t whether or not you are a cyborg, but what kind of cyborg you are. What kinds are there? So many! And generated through many different schema. We put forward a framework of cyborg “types” ourselves in 1995 which were mega, semi, multi, omni, neo, proto, cultra, hyper, retro, and meta. Also in the CYHB: Manfred Clynes explained Cyborgs I, II, III, IV, and V. The art historian Jennifer González distinguished between machine and organic cyborgs (monsters and transgenetic constructions). Mark Oehlert divided comic-​book cyborgs into controllers, bio-​tech integrators, and genetically produced. The sociologist Monica Casper described technomoms and cyborg fetuses while her colleague Linda Hogle wrote about living cadavers and neomorts. David Hess defined the low-​ tech cyborg. And two of the editors, Gray and Mentor, riffed on possible neo-​, proto-​, multi-​, ultra-​, semi-​, hyper-​, retro-​, pseudo-​, mega-​, and meta-​cyborgs in their analysis of the Cyborg Body Politic. Steven Mentor (2010) introduced the very important concept of the “mundane” cyborg and Andy Clark (2003) the “natural born” cyborg. Finally, Elizabeth Borst (2009) put forward the most sophisticated schema we know of, looking at the aspirations, origins, and modes (prosthetics, telematics, genetics) to explain utopian, dystopian, udopian, dependent, enhanced, reconstructed, connected, virtual, interactive, transgen, tribrid, and quadbrid cyborgs. No doubt there are many other possible categorizations. 6 Starting with Donna Haraway, the cyborg has been used for a great deal of theoretical heavy lifting. We refer to a number of the more rewarding exertions in this introduction. 7 The transgender character Nomi in the Netflix show Sense8, directed by the Wachowskis, has a tattoo on her arm with the Greek version of this phrase. 8 Modified came out of discussions about a follow-​up to The Cyborg Handbook with our publisher Routledge. But we soon realized that fun as the title Bride of Cyborg Handbook was, an update was not in order. There is so much good scholarship already published

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about cyborgs that is available, putting it between covers seemed like a waste of time. But what did emerge as an interesting project was collecting fresh first person accounts of what it means to be a cyborg now. 9 We owe this term to one of our very insightful readers. Our thanks again to both of them, and our editors at Routledge, for their support… and criticisms! 10 “Thesis, anti-​thesis, synthesis, prosthesis. And again” is the cyborg epistemology we introduced at the end of our introduction to CYHB (Gray, Figueroa-​Sarriera, Mentor 1995:  13). We would add, “not necessarily in that order.” Manfred Clynes talked of “participant evolution” (Clynes 1965) and Gray (2001) explains it as “participatory selection.” 11 Consider the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command’s “Mad Scientist Initiative” that organizes conferences such as 2018’s “Bio Convergence & Soldier 2050” with leading futurists, scientists, and practitioners (actual soldiers) discussing the utility, and ethics, of possibilities such as super intelligence, mining complexity in biology, DNA usefulness in military environments, enhanced reasoning through targeted neurostimulation, engineering resilience to bioweapons and similar bleeding edge high tech postmodern weaponizations of science. 12 Human genetic uniformity and possible human futures are discussed in Gray 2018.

References Anonymous Amazon Worker (2018) “Amazon Diaries,” The Guardian, Nov. 21. https://​ www.theguardian.com/​ u s-​ n ews/​ 2 018/​ n ov/​ 2 1/ ​ o ur- ​ n ew- ​ c olumn- ​ f rom- ​ i nsideamazon-​they-​treat-​us-​as-​disposable Blakeslee, Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee (2007) The Body Has a Mind of its Own, Random House. Borst, E. M. (2009) Cyborg Art: An Explorative and Critical Inquiry into Corporeal Human-​ Technology Convergence, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. https://​hdl.handle.net/​10289/​3976 Casper, Monica (1995) “Fetal Cyborgs and Technomoms on the Reproduction Frontier:  Which Way to the Carnival?” Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 183–​202. Chorost, Michael (2005) Rebuilt:  How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, Houghton Mifflin. Clark, Andy (2018) “We Are Merging With Robots.That’s a Good Thing,” New York Times, August 13. https://​www.nytimes.com/​2018/​08/​13/​opinion/​we-​are-​merging-​with-​ robots-​thats-​a-​good-​thing.html —​—​—​ (2003) Natural-​born Cyborgs: Minds,Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence, Oxford University Press. Clynes, Manfred E. (1965). “Foreword” to  Cyborg:  Evolution of the Superman, Daniel S. Halacy, Harper and Row, 1965, 8. Clynes, Manfred and Nathan Kline (1960; 1995)  “Cyborgs in Space”, Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 29–​34. Clynes, Manfred and Chris Hables Gray (1995) “Interview,” Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​ Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 43–​54. Corbyn, Zoë (2019) “Are brain implants the future of thinking,” The Guardian, Sept. 22. https://​www.theguardian.com/​science/​2019/​sep/​22/​brain-​computer-​interfaceimplants-​neuralink-​braingate-​elon-​musk

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  19

Davis-​Floyd, Robbie and Joe Dumit (1998) “From Technobirth to Cyborg Babies” in Robbie Davis-​Floyd and Joe Dumit eds., Cyborg Babies, MIT Press: 256–​282. Draycott, Jane, ed. (2018) Prosthesis in Antiquity, Routledge. Dumit, Joe and Robbie Davis-​Floyd, eds. (1998) Cyborg Babies, MIT Press. Farquhar, Dion (1996) The Other Machine: Discourse and Reproductive Technologies, Routledge. Figueroa Sarriera, Heidi (2017) El sujeto imaginario en la Era Digital. Proyectos post(idenitarios), Ediciones CIESPAL. González, Jennifer (1995) “Envisioning Cyborg Bodies: Notes From Current Research,” Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 267–​280. Gray, Chris Hables (2018) “Post-​ sapiens:  Notes on the Politics of Future Human Terminology,” Journal of Posthuman Studies:  Philosophy, Technology, Media, vol. 1, no. 2: 136–​150. —​—​—​ (2005) Peace,War and Computers, Routledge. —​—​—​ (2001) Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age, Routledge. Gray, Chris Hables, Steven Mentor and Heidi Figueroa-​Sarriera (1995) “Cyborgology: Constructing the Knowledge of Cybernetic Organisms,” The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 1–​14. Gray, Chris Hables and Steven Mentor (1995) “The Cyborg Body Politic: 1.2,” The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 453–​468. Guile, Steven (2007) “A Shock to the System,” Wired, March 1. https://​www.wired.com/​ 2007/​03/​brainsurgery/​ Haraway, Donna (2012) “Awash in Urine,” Staying with the Trouble:  Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press: 104–​116. —​—​—​(1985) “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” Socialist Review. —​ —​ —​(1995) “Cyborgs and Symbionts,” Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​ Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: xi–​xx. Hess, David (1995) “On Low-​Tech Cyborgs,” Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 271–​378. Hogle, Linda (1995) “Tales From the Cryptic: Technology Meets Organism in the Living Cadaver,” Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​ Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 203–​217. Lovelock, James (2019) Novacene: The coming age of hyperintelligence, Allen Lane Press. Kane, Patrick (2018) “Being bionic: how technology transformed my life,” The Guardian, Nov.15.https://​www.theguardian.com/​technology/​2018/​nov/​15/​being-​bionic-​howtechnology-​transformed-​my-​life-​prosthetic-​limbs Lambert, Jonathan (2018) “Should Evolution Treat our Microbes as Part of Us?” Quanta Magazine, Nov. 20. https://​www.quantamagazine.org/​should-​evolution-​treat-​ourmicrobes-​as-​part-​of-​us-​20181120/​ Mann, Steven (2001) Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer, Toronto: Doubleday. Mentor, Steven (2010) “Mundane cyborg:  the beginnings.” Mundane Cyborg blog. July 4. http://​cybunny54.blogspot.com/​2010/​07/​mundane-​cyborgs-​beginning.html Morgan, Richard K (2003) Altered Carbon, Del Rey. Mirowski, Philip (2001) Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, Cambridge University Press. Muri, Allison (2007) The Enlightenment Cyborg: A History of Communications and Control in the Human Machine 1660–​1830, University of Toronto Press.

20  Chris Hables Gray et al.

Oehlert, Mark (1995) “Form Captain America to Wolverine: Cyborgs in Comic Books, Alternative Images of Cybernetic Heroes and Villains,” Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 219–​232. Osborne, Hannah (2018) “Gaia Hypothesis: Humans have fundamentally altered Earth’s self-​regulation system,” Newsweek, September 18. https://​www.newsweek.com/​ gaia-​earth-​self-​regulation-​altered-​human-​awareness-​1119921 Piazza, Charles F. (2011) Virtues of a cyborg workplace:  The ethical challenges of managing a dispersed workforce, doctoral dissertation for The Union Institute and University, Cinncnati, Ohio. Reddington, Sarah (2016) “Cyborg and autism:  Exploring new social articulations via posthuman connections,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, vol. 29, no. 7:  882–​892. https://​www.researchgate.net/​publication/​301700957_​Cyborg_​and_​ autism_​exploring_​new_​social_​articulations_​via_​posthuman_​connections Schlich, Thomas (2018) “The ‘bionic men’ of World War I,” CNN, Nov. 8. https://​www. cnn.com/​2018/​11/​08/​opinions/​schlich-​world-​war-​i-​prosthetics-​x/​ Shelly, Percy Bysshe (1840) “A Defense of Poetry,” in Essays, Letters from Abroad,Translations and Fragments, London: Edward Moxon. Stone, Sandy (1995) “Split Subjects, Not Atoms: or How I Fell in Love With My Prosthesis,” in Gray, Mentor, Figueroa-​Sarriera, eds., The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge: 393–​405. Tenner, Edward (2003) Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology, Knopf. Wiener, Norbert (1950/​1989) The Human Use of Human Beings, Houghton-​Mifflin. Yarow, Jay (2010) “Sergey Brin: ‘We Want Google To Be The Third Half Of Your Brain’,” Business Insider, Sept. 8.  https://​www.businessinsider.com/​sergey-​brin-we-​wantgoogle-​to-​be-​the-​third-​half-​of-​your-​brain-​2010–​9?IR=T Zuboff, Shoshana (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Public Affairs.

About the Authors Chris Hables Gray is the author of Postmodern War, Cyborg Citizen and Peace, War and Computers. He is a Continuing Lecturer and Fellow at Crown College, University of California at Santa Cruz, an Adjunct Professor in the Technology, Society and Culture Department of the Tandon School of Engineering of New York University, and he is the Educatiefilosoof for the Watershed Project, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera is a community social psychologist and a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Her research area is focused on digital technology and the transformations of everyday life, subjectivity, and embodiment. She co-​authored several books on cyberculture and cyborgs, and published articles on the cyborg imaginary, the domotic environment, new forms of community and gender issues, among others. Her latest book is Imaginarios de sujeto en la Era Digital. Post(identidades) contemporáneas (Subject’s Imaginaries in the Digital Era. Contemporaries Post(identities) published in 2017 by CIESPAL, Quito. Steven Mentor grew up in Western Massachusetts in a town where a law on the books forbade going to church without a gun. His Catholicism lapsed early on when his first communion wafer did not produce the “god is inside of me” feeling he later got with certain ingestible substances. He read early and often and everything, including cereal boxes,

“You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!”  21

the Bible (for his Kindergarten teacher, to her amusement), and a bag of books from neighborhood girls that taught him the joys of sentimental literature (Little Men! The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore!) and popular science (Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X). Early on he suspected that gender was policed, that rock and roll was all right, and that dancing was all by itself a form of rebellion. He learned that throwing a baseball was the cure for too much reading, and that reading created social permission for escaping the family and its discontents. He graduated from U Penn the year Philadelphia shook from fears of a Bicentennial poor people’s march and dropped out of Stanford English graduate school because he was learning too much from his new tribe of Stanford anti-​apartheid nonviolent feminist anarchist activists. He teaches English to the working class of Silicon Valley, and they teach him everything else. His academic interests include mundane and literary cyborgs, festivals and utopian exchange, climate fictions, the affective catastrophe of climate pedagogy, and suddenly, teaching at a distance during a pandemic. He thinks it is too bad that things fall apart just as the Gnosis is about to really kick in; he strongly feels that nonhuman life should be represented powerfully in any human gathering that presumes to “govern” the human impacts on said life. He feels extraordinarily lucky to have had this particular life, and grateful for his cocktail of DNA and Irish Catholic big family culture, shaken by intellect and passion, and served up with a twist.

PART 1

Being a Cyborg Is My Job

1 MODIFEYED Why Priveillance Is More Important to Our Cyborg Future Than Privacy Steve Mann

I’ve been a professor for over 20  years, during which time my students and I  founded many successful companies on the principles of “HuMachine Intelligence” (H.I.) (Minsky, Kurzweil, and Mann 2013), i.e. cyborg technologies, including human-​in-​the-​loop  A.I. Cyborg technology is probably the single most important advancement to human civilization, but it is being threatened by a new kind of surveillance that calls itself “privacy”.This newspeak “privacy” is perhaps the single largest threat to not just cyborg technology, but to democracy itself.

FIGURE 1.1  Smile!

A Childhood Exploring My current work in wearable computers and related areas can be traced directly to my childhood fascinations. In the 1960s my parents and grandparents taught me how to make things, and how to invent new things like underwater musical instruments.They taught me how to measure things in inches, feet, hands, hand spans, finger breadths, cubits, and “Steves” (units of my own height). These ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman units of measure, combined with daily Bible readings, left me with the idea that the human body itself could and should be used as an existential sort of ruler with which to more

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deeply understand and measure the world. One palm (i.e. 3 inches) equals four digits (4 “fingers”), so a finger is 3/​4 of an inch. Three palms equals one hand span, and two hand spans equals one cubit, and two cubits equals one yard. These units were not very accurate, especially considering that I  had not grown up to adult size yet, but I certainly developed a high degree of proficiency in working with fractions (e.g. a 3/​8 drill is half the size of a 3/​4 drill, etc.) and doing arithmetic in my head: 12 inches equals one foot, so there are 4 palms in a foot, and three hands in a foot, so a palm is 3/​4 of a hand.While not as accurate as measuring the world in millimeters or angstroms, it gave me a more fundamental understanding of the existential nature of the world, and of my place in it. My father would sometimes call one of his associates at work, and be told “He’s smelling cloth and will call you back when he’s done.”When I asked my dad what “smelling cloth” meant, he said that means measuring cloth, which is done by holding the cloth to your nose, and then pulling it along your nose until your arm is fully outstretched, and then grabbing it again where your nose is and pulling it out again, while counting the number of times you do this in succession. The distance from the nose to the end of the outstretched arm is called a “yard”, and cloth is sold by the yard. A yard is 2 cubits or 3 feet or 4 hand spans or 9 hands or 12 palms or 36 inches or 48 fingers. I liked the way these ancient units of measurement were designed around carefully chosen numbers that worked easily for mental arithmetic. This taught me about highly composite numbers (numbers with lots of divisors) which are: 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 120, 180, 240, 360, and so on.That’s why there are 60 seconds (not 10 or 100) in every minute, and 60 minutes in every hour. That’s also why there are 360 degrees (not 100 or 1000) in a circle. It meant that mathematics was a part of my own body. This meant that mathematics felt as if it was a part of me, and I became naturally adept at math since the age of 3 or 4. My father worked at Cambridge Clothes (Coppley, Noyes & Randall Ltd.), a men’s clothing manufacturer founded in 1883. This meant that I had lots of cloth to “smell”, and I  sometimes tried to make my own clothes. My grandmother taught me how to knit and sew, and I became quite proficient at making clothes, and also at making things out of cloth. My father’s childhood hobby was building radios. Back in the days of large console and table radios, he built one of the first pocket radios, a radio you could wear. The French word “portable” comes from the Latin word “portare” “to carry”. The French word “porter” means “to wear”, “carry”, or “bear”. Unsurprisingly, I also developed a childhood obsession with things like radios that were wearable, and began to experiment with making cloth out of wires, and sewing wire into clothes. My mother was rather upset when she found me trying to run fine wire through the sewing machine, but my grandmother had an older and more rugged “Singer” sewing machine that made experimentation a bit easier. My grandfather taught me how to weld, and while looking at the world through the welding glass, darkly, I had a vision of how people could see better

Why Priveillance Is Important  27

using machines. I envisioned a wearable television station using cameras to sense the world and redisplay it so that I could see perfectly while welding, without exposing my eyes directly to the bright light. It was this childhood vision that inspired me to later invent HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging now used in billions of smartphones (http://​wearcam.org/​hdr.htm). My childhood fascination with television led me to begin collecting old television sets that people were throwing in the garbage. When I was about 8 years old, I was taking apart TV sets and fixing them, and soon people in the neighborhood came to me with TV sets to fix, and I ended up starting my own radio and TV repair business. I also wanted to see the otherwise invisible television signals, so I devised a way to convert some old television receivers into oscilloscopes. It took a while to get this right, and the first one I made overheated. My father got me an old broken RCA Cathode Ray Oscillograph that was being thrown away. The time base (sweep) was broken so it could not plot or draw graphs as a function of time. But there was a dot on the screen that could only move up-​and-​down (not left-​to-​r ight). I wanted to see the invisible radio wave from a police radar gun, so I pushed the oscillograph from left-​to-​r ight on my workbench, while it was connected to the Doppler radar signal. The oscillograph was housed in a large steel cabinet, so it produced a strong radar return, and as I moved it from left-​to-​right, I could see the radio wave on the screen very clearly as a function of the position of the oscillograph’s metal housing. I had discovered something I thought was quite important. I could see (and photograph) radio waves in such a way that they were aligned perfectly in space (rather than merely in time, as on a normal oscilloscope). I  called this invention the Sequential Wave Imprinting Machine (S.W.I.M.) because it sequentially imprints radio waves on the eye or on film, giving rise to a “real reality” in which one could see what is really present all around us, but otherwise invisible. So it is a phenomenological augmented reality machine. I soon replaced the heavy oscilloscope SWIM with a row of light bulbs on a stick with an antenna or microphone that I could wave through the air to see and photograph radio waves and sound waves.

FIGURE 1.2  SWIMwaves

28  Steve Mann

I also discovered I could use the SWIM for video feedback to see, and photograph a surveillance camera’s ability to see. I called this Metavision (which later became the name of a company I  co-​founded with one of my PhD students, Raymond Lo). A meta-​conversation is a conversation about conversations. A meta argument is an argument about arguments. Metadata is data about data. Likewise, Metavision is the vision of vision, i.e. seeing sight (such as seeing a camera’s ability to see, and recording a camera’s ability to record), and more generally, sensing sensors and sensing their capacity to sense (Mann 2018).

FIGURE 1.3  Metavision

Back in the 1970s, I was particularly fascinated by the relationship between the workings of the body and its relationship to its surroundings. I built many different kinds of sensors to explore what was happening inside my body in relation to what was happening around it. Using miniature cathode-​ray tubes that were originally designed as camera viewfinders, I made a wearable oscillograph so I could see my cardiac (heart) waveform, as well as my brainwaves for biofeedback while exercising. I called this “Quantigraphic Self-​Sensing” because the wearable oscillograph allowed me to quantify, graphically, various physiological phenomena. I also had a childhood dream about a device that was a radio, television, telephone, music player, health monitor, camera, and computer all in the same device, which I built various prototypes of, to varying degrees. All these youthful projects were about extending my ability to experience, to know, the world. I continued with this work during my undergraduate schooling and after that I was accepted to MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and brought these inventions there to found the MIT Media Lab’s wearable computing project, as its first member. See my website, http://​wearcam.org/​nn.htm for more details. While at MIT, a number of companies became interested in my inventions and I was flown back and forth between MIT and Silicon Valley, California, where I spent quite a bit of time “inventing the future” as they used to call it. In 1996 I presented my “body of work” to the people at WiReD magazine, and WiReD’s

Why Priveillance Is Important  29

Kevin Kelly took a keen interest in my Quantigraphic Self-​Sensing invention, and he began to write about the “Quantified Self ” as a social movement.

FIGURE 1.4  Steven

Mann

About 10  years later, my students James Fung (now with Google) and Chris Aimone, and I, along with others, founded a company on the main floor of my principal residence, which quickly expanded to take up most of the building, before moving to a larger space. We raised $28,800,000 to make the Muse, a product now sold in Best Buy stores all across North America and on Amazon. com, known as “The King of Wearables” (BetaKit), the “#1 in wearables” (PC Retail), and “the holy grail for mindfulness” (Taylor 2018). Today there are many of us, so-​called “cyborgs”, who use technology to improve our lives. It can even be argued that most of us are cyborgs of a sort, i.e. most of us have used human-​made technologies to improve our lives. I am not interested in empowering others to watch me, but the technologies don’t just

30  Steve Mann

“look” in one direction. Self-​awareness technologies depend on the same science and engineering that enables surveillance, after all.

“Privacy” is Surveillance There has been a recent trend to install surveillance cameras in locker rooms where people change clothes and are naked. Officials doing so used to be forced to resign and were even imprisoned. But in 2007 the “Privacy Commissioner” in the Canadian province of Alberta, ruled that the Talisman Centre in Calgary can continue to use locker-​room video cameras as long as only staff or police can view the recordings (Fraser 2007). The Westside Recreation Centre, also in Calgary, defends its use of locker room cameras as long as the images are kept “secure” (Frakes 2016). This shows how “security” itself can become another form of surveillance (Mann 2014). What we see here is a new definition of “privacy” in which it is okay for police and staff and other officials to watch people, as long as the people are protected from being watched by each other. Social media companies have created a similar kind of “privacy” in which they offer governments and businesses (for a fee) the ability to spy on people, while protecting individual users from spying on each other. In olden times, when we went away on vacation, we might leave our house keys with neighbors and ask them to check up on our house now and again, to make sure the pipes are not freezing and bursting, or to keep a lookout for burglars. Now we might install surveillance cameras and rely on an alarm company or the police. Anyone who’s tried to photograph a police officer, or who’s even merely tried to wear a camera-​based seeing aid in the presence of a police officer, will be able to tell you how violent and law-​breaking the police can get when being watched through any form of technological prosthesis. In my own experience, I’ve been physically assaulted by police officers as well as security guards, simply because I  have been wearing a computerized seeing aid, not even recording anything. The reason that they broke the law to attack me was, allegedly, that they were trying to protect the privacy of other people, although I suspect that they were law breaking for selfish reasons, perhaps to evade accountability, or to maintain their monopoly on sight. We now live in a world of ever-​increasing one-​sided surveillance combined with an ever-​increasing degree of secrecy. There are many different veillances:  surveillance (oversight), sousveillance (undersight), and dataveillance. But surveillance is unique in that it is the veillance of authority, i.e. the veillance with which there can be a monopoly on sight, to prohibit the other forms veillance, or to destroy evidence gathered from differing viewpoints (Reyes-​Velarde 2019). In this sense, surveillance is the veillance of hypocrisy. The opposite of hypocrisy is integrity, and thus sousveillance (an opposite of surveillance) might be regarded as the veillance of integrity.

Why Priveillance Is Important  31

We can see a parallel here between surveillance and this limited concept of “privacy” being offered by authorities. Both aim to prevent individual people from watching, while both also allow authorities to continue watching the people who are prevented from watching. Both call to mind Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon” (Bentham 1791), a prison building in which individuals cannot see each other or see the guards, but all individuals are visible to the guard towers (whether occupied or not) at all times. Our society has become a modern Panopticon in which governments and corporations (or shall I call them “covernments” and “gorporations”?) can watch us, while they offer us ways of preventing us from watching each other. It is therefore hard for us to conclude anything other than the fact that privacy, defined in this manner, is just another form of surveillance. Privacy used to mean an individual’s right to informatic self-​determination, including the right to share information with peers without any government or corporate eavesdropping.This Orwellian newspeak “privacy” seems to have come to mean a government or organization’s right to spy on everyone while giving them an illusion that they have some right to manage how they share information with their peers. I propose a new concept: priveillance. Priveillance is the ratio of surveillance to sousveillance, i.e. in support of a person’s right to see and understand their world, while being relatively free of surveillance. Priveillance includes the right to film the police explicitly, and the right to wear a computational seeing aid while walking home and not be physically assaulted by a police officer that you happen to walk past. Priveillance puts people first, and prioritizes personal vision over the ability of buildings and lamp posts to “see”. I believe that priveillance is far more important than either kind of privacy, and that perhaps priveillance is the single most important element of a liberal democracy. Certainly, priveillance is a requirement for any kind of free cyborg citizen existence!

The Right to Keep Differences Truly Private We’re all different.That’s what makes us human.When you’re an obvious “cyborg” such as I am, people will sometimes ask “are you disabled?” All of us, as humans, are differently abled, i.e. have different abilities, and many use technology to help overcome some of our weaknesses. As we age the vast majority of people will be using technologies in these ways. Aging confers disabilities that technologies can counter. These differences make us no less human, and with the right technologies we can hide our weaknesses and function well in the world. It should not be necessary for any of us to disclose our weaknesses, lest others (whether government or corporate or individual), at best, think less of us, and at worst, exploit these weaknesses to their advantage.

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In fact, that’s true privacy in the traditional sense, i.e. the right to personal secrecy in a universe of state and corporate secrecy. All around us we’re seeing the emergence of smart cities, smart buildings, smart streets, smart cars, and an Internet of Things That Think (IoTTT). Yet my 7 year old daughter, in response to my being physically assaulted for wearing a computerized seeing aid, asked: “Why do cars and buildings ALWAYS have the right to wear cameras, but people sometimes don’t?” (Mann et al. 2015, original emphasis). Indeed, we built a self-​driving mobility scooter that has dozens of cameras, radar, lidar, sonar, microphone arrays, and SWIMs with power trenography on it. We have operated it in numerous establishments and as yet, have seen zero opposition to it. Cameras and other sensors are welcome when they’re on “things”, even when those “things” are operated by people.

FIGURE 1.5  Moveillance

Nobody questions Moveillance™ (Mobile/​ Motor sensing, in the same way “Motel” means “Motor Hotel” or “Motown” means “Motor town”). Nobody questions Things That Think. It is time to stop questioning People That Think, and start supporting priveillance. In a crucial law article, future Supreme Court Justice Brandeis and a colleague Samual Warren, defined privacy as “the right to be let alone” (1890). In a world where the only sensing is sensors on people, you’d still have privacy whenever you were alone. In this way, sousveillance is the far lesser threat to real privacy than surveillance that intrudes upon us even when we’re alone. If the walls can have ears, so too must people. Please, whether you are a conscious cyborg or not, defend your right “to be let  alone!” and consider joining with me (http://​wearcam.org/​letter.htm) in

Why Priveillance Is Important  33

creating a world that gives people the same rights to see and understand our world that buildings, cars, and other things enjoy.

References Brandeis, Louis and Samuel Warren (1890) “The right to privacy.” Harvard Law Review, 4/​ 5: 193–​220. Bentham, Jeremy (1791) Panopticon;The inspection house.... Reprinted and sold by T. Payne. Frakes, Natasha (2016) “Calgary rec centre reassures members after security breach.” CBC News.. Fraser, David (2007) “Cameras can stay in Talisman’s locker room, says commissioner.” CBC News, Mar 22. Mann, Steve (2018) “Phenomenological Augmented Reality with the Sequential Wave Imprinting Machine (SWIM).” IEEE GEM2018: 1–​9. Mann, Steve (2014) “Personal safety devices enable ‘suicurity’.” IEEE Technology and Society, 33/​2:14–​22. Mann, Steve, R. Jenzen, M.A. Ali, and K. Nickerson (2015) “Declaration of veillance (surveillance is half-​truth).” IEEE GEM2015: 1–​2. Minsky, Marvin, Ray Kurzweil, and Steve Mann (2013) “Society of Intelligent Veillance.” IEEE ISTAS: 13–​17. Taylor, Chris (2018) “Muse 2 review:  The world’s best meditation tech just got even better.” Mashable, Oct. 30. Reyes-​Velarde, Alejandra (2019) “Vallejo officer on leave after video shows him pulling a gun, detaining a man filming him.” Los Angeles Times, Feb 05.

About the Author Steven Mann holds numerous academic and cooperate appointments. He is a prolific inventor, writer, and artist.

2 THE AVATARS OF ALPHA.TRIBE Elif Ayiter

Introduction: The Metaverse, Avatars and the Multiplied Self Metaverses are persistent, collectively shared, real-​time online worlds that use the metaphor of the real world, but without its physical limitations. Access is by the creation of three dimensionally embodied avatars through which the human being behind the keyboard attains not only a visually tangible existence in these worlds but also has the opportunity to create entirely novel personas, indeed a whole bevy of personas if they want. Each avatar is visible to all other users. Complex interactions within this communal virtual space are achieved through scripted means, such as text-​based communications (both communal and private), gestures, animations and, although not used extensively, voice-​based communication. It is important to note that in their fundamental conceptions metaverse worlds are almost the diametric opposite of gaming worlds. Unlike gaming worlds where the player is guided very strictly by the rules of the platform, metaverses have no system defined rules whatsoever. You, as an incomer, are on your own to do as you please. In other words, instead of joining an already pre-​existing game, the developers of these worlds ask the newcomer to build their own ‘game’ –​be that a peaceful solitary existence or the hectic life of a glittering socialite. However, in either case and everything in between, you will literally have to build that life object by object, its utensils, its habitat, its domicile and not least the visual embodiment of its protagonist –​the avatar. In his 2009 article Richard Bartle distinguishes between three different types of collective, persistent online spaces that he calls ‘Dorothy Worlds,’ ‘Alice Worlds’ and ‘Wendy Worlds.’ While the first two are worlds in which user experience is determined by the scripted rules and limitations of the game platform itself, metaverses are ‘Wendy Worlds’ that are explicitly about user-​created content in

The Avatars of alpha.tribe  35

which everything originates from the input of the user and almost nothing, outside of the bare basics upon which such content can be placed, is provided by the developers of the environment. (Bartle 2009: 105–​117) A very important component of this user created content is the actual avatar, since a metaverse resident not only creates the world that is inhabited, they also make the inhabitants, the avatars. They can have an identity that is a close extension of someone’s physical self but it can also be an imagined being –​indeed one human being can manifest many inhabitants. While the basic avatar is a human of any sex, avatars can have a wide range of physical attributes, and may be clothed or otherwise customized to produce a large variety of humanoid and other forms. Avatars may be completely creative or representational. Furthermore, a single person may have multiple avatar accounts, i.e. ‘alts.’ Also, a single resident’s appearance can vary at will, as avatars are very easily modified. Given that they visually portray an inhabitant and enable visual communication, Suler (1996) and Jeffrey and Mark (1998: 24–​38) contend that avatar appearance is crucial for identity formation in virtual worlds. What should be noted however is that it takes time and immersion for such an identity formation to occur. Bartle expresses it as follows: Avatars are dolls, characters are simulacra, but neither are people. The final level of immersion –​the one which makes virtual worlds wholly different to anything else –​is that of the persona. A persona is a player, in a world. That’s in it. Any separate distinction of character is gone  –​the player is the character. You’re not role-​playing a being, you are that being; you’re not assuming an identity, you are that identity; you’re not projecting a self, you are that self. If you are killed in a fight, you don’t feel that your character has died, you feel that you have died.There’s no level of indirection, no filtering, no question: You are there. (2004: 155) ‘Alt’ avatars are the second, third, fourth, […] avatars that are owned by a single human being. Creating an ‘alt’ involves creating a new account with the metaverse service provider. To do so one creates a new email address to which the unique metaverse account will be linked. Thus, once the email account has been created all that remains is to re-​join the metaverse under a new name. From all this it follows that an alt avatar is not simply an avatar who is dressed differently, but rather what is happening is the creation of a whole new identity. The popularity of alt avatars is explained by Tom Boellstorff, who has noted that most alt avatars are created to perform in full isolation since they are usually created for distinct reasons, such as the pursuit of concentrated creative activity, the management of funds, or the testing of new design work. Solitary sightseeing and exploratory activities are also reasons that Boellstorff gives for the creation of alt avatars. Such avatars can be defined as private alts through whom a resident

36  Elif Ayiter

seeks to escape the social network temporarily in order to accomplish a specific task in an uninterrupted manner (Boellstorff 2008: 128–​134). Although they are private, most residents will not hesitate to acknowledge their existence, however they will not give out their names since this would take away from the overall efficiency of the agent who has been created for a particular reason that necessitates solitude and anonymity. The willing acknowledgement of an alt’s existence changes when it comes to a ‘social alt,’ since this is a being whose raison d’être is distinctly different from that of a ‘private alt’ described above. Since social alts are created to operate as independent entities, in most cases an individual who has social alts will not disclose that such a multitude of creatures of his or her own creation even exist, since such a revelation might make them appear to be appendages of the main avatar rather than their own discrete persons. Needless to say, ‘social alts’ are by far the more intriguing since, just like the main avatar, they are created to live independently rather than serve some pre-​ determined function that is dictated by specialized needs. Social alts fully engage in all social interactions, albeit differently than those of the main avatar. According to Boellstorff they operate in such a way that “the more fundamental personality of the real person is still driving in the background but filtered through a different surface persona” (2008: 132). Social alt avatars may equally be created with the aim of exploring the multiple ‘selves’ that are embedded within the psyches of their owners; so they may exhibit pronounced differences in behaviour and outlook. In some cases, social alt avatars will have entirely autonomous lives, moving in social circles that can be similar or very different from those of the main avatar. However, equally common are shared social lives between the main avatar and any number of his or her social alts. The appearance of the social alt avatar is especially significant when it is considered next to the appearance of the main avatar. Typically, but not invariably, the main avatar is designed to look like, or at least be the idealized version of, the real-​life persona. Conversely, social alt avatars can manifest in vastly different shapes of both sexes. They can also be androgynous and may possess non-​human attributes. Often these deviations from the physical attributes of the human being behind the keyboard are so pronounced that virtual world residents often refer to their social alt avatars as a ‘costume’ or a ‘mask,’ thus emphasizing the difference between their real life selves and the alternative persona they project through the social alt (Bartle 2004: 133). Furthermore, social alts can also be expert shape shifters, manifesting many diverse forms within a few hours, or even minutes. In short, avatars carry the potential for becoming creative entities/​beings in their own rights; and through the multiple identities that a single individual may acquire through them are now also becoming the players of a game that has been ongoing for many hundreds of years, subjectively. Here is the tale of such a group of social alts who are the virtual extensions of the author of this essay.

The Avatars of alpha.tribe  37

Alpha, Xia, Alpho, Grapho and Amina…

FIGURE 2.1  Alpha Auer

The play of my many selves is brought about through the encounters of five entities –​my biological self, represented by my main avatar Alpha Auer, and four alternative virtual personas of my creation  –​alt avatars, as they are known in the metaverse. These are my five fashion designer ‘selves’ who jointly operate a clothing enterprise in Second Life (SL), known under the brand name of ‘alpha. tribe.’ Each designer pursues his or her own line of creative inquiry independently of the other four, resulting in distinct types of output that are marketed under the name of the actual creator avatar, emphasizing the fact that the store is operated as a cooperative of five autonomous designers. Through this rather complex set-​ up I wish to investigate whether the consistency/​singularity/​indivisibility of the creative self is in fact a given, or whether this entire notion should be challenged. Although they did end up becoming the participants in a game of creativity, bringing about a psychic system of avatars was not a deliberate act that I planned for future art making purposes from the onset. In the summer of 2008, a parting of the ways with some close friends in the metaverse left me to my own devices. I knew of alt avatars, however, up until then I had not felt the need to create such autonomous personas. Suddenly being alone in a world of strangers, I decided that a good way to circumvent loneliness and ennui would be to create my own play companions.

FIGURE 2.2  alpha.tribe

apparel created by Xiamara Ugajin

38  Elif Ayiter

I will now let my main avatar Alpha explain how her first three alternative identities, Grapho Fullstop, Xiamara Ugajin and Alpho Fullstop came into being: I did not use to have them –​alts I mean. I was way too engrossed with my life and all of the countless events that would make every day hilarious. I was having a riot and there really was not much time for introspection. And in the end, I think that alts are all about introspection, an inward journey. At least that is what they are to me. Something changed over the summer. I still do not know why, it is not something that I can understand or change. And at that point the alts started to materialize. In the end an utter manifestation of my loneliness. First came Xia, or rather Xia came first in the sense that she started to live in the metaverse, started to develop an independent identity before the other two did. However, technically she is actually the last one to have been rezzed (rendered into reality). Grapho and Alpho actually came before her. But Xia has spent some considerable time as the only active avatar and consequently she is the only one of the three who has managed to acquire a more or less tangible personality. As of yet the others are far more ephemeral. Grapho has not really even lived yet. Something that needs to change since he is quite likely to be the most important one, the one who will probably end up leading me deeper in my inward journey. And maybe that is indeed why I keep putting off hanging out with him. Alpho has been around more than Grapho and I am beginning to get a glimmering of an understanding about her. She is antisocial. Beyond that, I cannot yet know for sure. I have an instinct that she might be quite cruel. At least sometimes. Or self protective rather. Cruel for self protection. They are all me. It shocked me when I realized that Xia was me. She is so different to what I perceive as ‘me.’ Nonetheless she is me. And so are the others. I am at the point where I  am feeling them as separate persons. They are standalone entities with different pre-​occupations and thoughts. Which is very strange. They originated from some part of me, surely they are me? But, it is definitely not how this all feels, how the game is progressing here. And, funnily enough, meeting with them, hanging out with them, is proving to be yet another incentive to stay in SL. Perhaps maybe even the strongest one? Grapho, I am in awe of. Xiamara, I do not like. She is such a madam! Self-​assured! Bossy! Never puts a foot wrong. Not a hair out of place. But it is Xia that I should probably be taking a really good close look at since, according to the laws of projection, in her are embedded my deepest personality flaws. So ingrained that I probably have a hard time recognizing them in myself and so mirror them onto an entity whom I do not like? So, how horrifying is that? But, in all likelihood still very true… The one that I do like is Alpho. I even like the goofy way she stands around and then bursts into that freebie female power walk –​so purposeful! She is the only one that I have given my own shape to amongst my alts (although I have distributed quite a few of them to customers in the shop –​but that is another story…). But inherited shape notwithstanding, she is someone else entirely. In fact, if anything, her separateness I recognize more than all the others. And as for Grapho, he intimidates the living daylights out of me I have to admit, but I do like him as well. And I very clearly see him as his own person. A stranger, in fact.The

The Avatars of alpha.tribe  39

others are separate and yet not strangers. Grapho however, is a stranger whom I have yet to get to know. I guess, this is what it was like to play with dolls when I was a kid? I really can’t remember. What it is definitely like is hanging out with my animals. Distinctly separate entities. Alpho is telling me about all these things that I had no idea even existed. She knows so much I do not know. She is courageous. She is resilient. She is self sufficient, she is her own company, her own entertainment. I am so lucky to have found her… She is also a cypher who does not want to be known. My friend, my sister alone. This is Alpho Fullstop. Of all my avatars she is the one that I love the most. However, unlike Xiamara whom I know well enough not to like, Alpho I do not know at all. Being with Alpho is like being with another person; one who takes you to places and gives you insights that turn out to be huge revelations. Alpho is a furry, an animal avatar, an identity change that happened gradually. It came out of the very mysteriousness of her being. In Real Life I have a very close affinity to animals –​but again, no matter how I may identify with them and love them, there still remains a mysterious gap in my understanding of them. This brings with it respect, and respect is something which is also key to my relationship with Alpho.

FIGURE 2.3  Alpho

Fullstop

Alpho came into being when Alpha had temporarily left the metaverse, having become overwhelmed by some unfortunate events –​one of which was also my mother’s death in Real Life. Instead of bringing Xia back into the world, Alpho was born and became a traveller alt who wandered the metaverse in search of content for me to write about on a well known SL blog, an activity I was much occupied with at the time. She startled me again and again (and still does, to this day). One such time was when the following post materialized on the Alpha blog. I hesitate to say that Alpha was the one that wrote it –​it is so unlike how she usually writes, from which I conclude that Alpho must have had a hand in this. And in any case it is her tale: One evening she was playing Alpha’s piano, when she sensed that

40  Elif Ayiter

someone was listening to her. There were no avatars nearby –​only an alt avatar in the distance whose owner was known to usually be away from the keyboard: Feelings of not belonging … There is a woman playing the piano. You probably cannot hear the notes but you see her from far away. She is playing Claire de Lune. It takes a long time for the notes to emerge, she has to start over and over, from the very beginning. Little did she know it at the time, but it turned out that she was giving a recital to an audience of only one. I suppose she did have an inkling of sorts… That sense of knowing when someone else is there… Over a distance of hundreds upon hundreds of miles. She was born as a man. Made her appearance clad in those unsightly black shirt and jeans, hair combed sideways, staggering onto Orientation Island. That was one year ago. She/​he did not need to hang around there, after all, his/​her human knew her way around SL. She teleported to the mainland, stood lost at an info hub. And then he/​she was discarded. Until quite recently. She is an odd one, this woman who was born as a man. It is taking her quite some time to find herself, to figure out who she is. She rarely talks, she has no friends to talk to anyway. Belongs only to one group and that one out of sheer necessity.

FIGURE 2.4  alpha.tribe

FIGURE 2.5  Alpha Auer

apparel created by Alpho Fullstop

and Grapho Fullstop play a dress up game of identical twins

The Avatars of alpha.tribe  41

I, on the other hand, am Alpha. I have friends. I belong to groups. I even have a real virtual job, writing for one of the most prestigious blogs of SL. And then, of course, there is my life’s work, my building. I am Alpha Auer, Resident of SL. Not a mere cipher. I have an identity. But do I really? If all of this is so cast in stone, so indisputably real, then who is she? Why is she around even? Why is she the one giving nocturnal recitals? Why is she haunting my human imagination? Filling my dreams with her unreality? We do not belong. Neither of us –​neither here nor there. Meanwhile, she will continue to play the piano. Sometimes. When I was a child I knew a wolf. We lived on the outskirts of the city, and somehow this cub made it into our garden. For months and months all I could do was to leave food for her, knowing that she would eventually venture forth in the cover of darkness. In time she approached me. She never became fully domesticated but she was there, on the periphery. There was even love in her beautiful yellow eyes, or so at least I thought. And that is ultimately how we do belong. In the affection we perceive in alien yellow eyes. For a time. Although Xia, Grapho and Alpho were created for emotional reasons, as playmates, there did come a point where I  wanted to take things further with them. They were independent agents, mostly engaged in solo wandering in SL. But, I wanted to bring them together. I actually wanted to put them to work!

FIGURE 2.6  alpha.tribe

apparel created by Alpha Auer

My years in the metaverse had made me realize what a huge impact appearance had upon virtual identity. So, although I had never created avatar apparel before, I now wanted to do so, knowing that creating a virtual identity through avatar appearance was one of the most challenging fields of metaverse design. I also wanted to add a further twist to the challenge:  I decided to split my ‘designer self ’ between my alts who, I felt, had personalities that were differentiated enough for them to be able to pursue distinctly individuated design strategies. Once the alts start interacting within a parameter, such as a joint design venture, it really all starts to happen. No longer are they lost and disjointed entities wandering the grid but suddenly they now have to learn to live with one another;

42  Elif Ayiter

they have to make up some kind of a psychic Gestalt, whilst still retaining their identities. And what better opportunity than to be engaged in design work, given that they are all parts of a designer to begin with? One good example would be the actual shop itself. I initially designed it very much along my usual lines –​dark shiny surfaces, stark geometries… It is what comes naturally to me –​or should I say the Alpha part of me? Who is, of course, the predominant partner here, the one very much in control. Stuck in her ways with all of that. Tenacious and obstinate! So along comes Xia, and after hanging out there for a day or so, she starts putting down huge red flowers all over the place. Now, I, Alpha, have yet to put down a huge red flower anywhere –​Real or SL! And yet… What are all those floral shawls that I tirelessly buy and never ever wear, all in aid of then? Only Xia and I have been designing so far. Alpho and Grapho are still waiting for their turn. Alpho’s output I am really looking forward to. Hybrids? Half animal, half humanoid beings? As for Grapho? He already has some strange ideas. Such as designing an avatar made out of the anatomical illustrations of Grays Anatomy, for example. And Xia? Well, she is sticking to the floral theme, as far as I can tell. She has worked for almost a full week on an avatar made entirely out of flowers that she has called ‘Monsieur Labisse’ –​after a French surrealist painter whom my mother liked a great deal. Well my mother liked him –​I, Alpha, cannot stand the guy’s paintings. And yet, here is Xia, paying tribute to a painter whom Alpha does not care for at all? How weird is that? But then (thankfully) she has another one in the works and this one she wants to base on Rousseau, who is a favourite of mine as well. So, again, if I am such a dark/​shiny surfaces person how come I love Rousseau? Ah… But Rousseau is dark too isn’t he? Don’t let all of that foliage fool you for a second… And so, of course, is Labisse. So, one way or another I  can see an undercurrent of me, both in her and in Alpha, but two very different ways in which it materializes. One is the one I already know, that I have worked with all of my life –​‘my style,’ if you will. The other one is very unfamiliar to me. This was the beginning of a very bizarre journey indeed. And a good one too, I think. Looking back on it, I note the importance of ‘play’ as a crucial factor driving how the avatars came into being and how they then became the designers of alpha.tribe, and how they have managed to hold me captivated some ten years after they first came into being. Not as adult games, but as pure play, in the sense of children’s play –​the essentiality of make believe and the creation of paracosms1 complete with their inhabitants. However, ‘play’ also brings with it a conundrum when it comes to “experimenting with the consistency/​ singularity/​ indivisibility of the creative self,” which is how I formulated this adventure at the start. How does one become unselfconsciously embroiled in play (since otherwise it won’t work, the spell will

The Avatars of alpha.tribe  43

be broken) whilst maintaining a self-​aware stance toward a psychic system that one has not only created but is also a part of? An answer may reside in the literary oeuvre of the master of the game himself, Fernando Pessoa.2 Pessoa published his extraordinary writings under different names –​most notably Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Bernardo Soares and Alvaro de Campos. He said these were not mere pseudonyms, since it wasn’t just the names that were fabricated. They were discrete personalities, with biographies, points of view, appearances and literary styles that differed from Pessoa’s. Theirs were the names of invented others, whom their creator called ‘heteronyms,’ the co-​travellers of a voyage of self-​discovery, or self-​invention which he explained as “to pretend is to know oneself,” an existential circumnavigation that would not end until Pessoa did.

FIGURE 2.7  alpha.tribe

group photograph with Alpha (front), Xiamara (right), Alpho (top) and Grapho (left)

‘Pretending’ was actuated through the heteronyms, and was given expression through the texts that they authored, to which Pessoa did not claim ownership of: Whenever he feels a personality well up inside, he quickly realizes that this new being, though similar, is distinct from him –​an intellectual son, perhaps, with inherited characteristics, but also with differences that make him someone else… As the helpless slave of his multiplied self, it would be useless for him to agree with one or the other theory about the written results of that multiplication. Although Pessoa insisted on the autonomy of the heteronyms, he did acknowledge that he was the owner of the overall literary system that came about through their writings, when he divulged that he may have been only contributing “…

44  Elif Ayiter

to my own amusement (which would already be good enough for me),” in this way also defining his creative act as ‘play.’ This acknowledgement is tragically furthered when he expresses the deep loneliness out of which these alternative selves have sprung to quench his thirst for companionship, for playmates, saying “given the dearth of people he can get along with, what can a man of sensibility do but invent his own friends, or at least his intellectual companions?” When my alts came into being during a time of loneliness I had not yet heard of Fernando Pessoa. I  was therefore very moved and also very startled by the similarity of his quest to mine when I finally found him. In the intervening years I was lucky enough to make wonderful new friends in SL, which should have obliterated the need for self-​generated play mates. However, my alt avatars are still very much around. And not only the original cadre of three – newcomers have also been added to the fray –​so I seem to be following in the footsteps of Pessoa who had some 50 more heteronyms in addition to the well-​known ones who wrote much of his output. What needs to be clarified here is that unlike Pessoa’s pantheon of heteronyms, which were only present in his mind’s eye and were therefore embedded into his own organism, the adult paracosm that consists of Alpha and her alt avatars embedded into a virtual world, is one half of a cybernetic organism that comes about through a merger of my own physical self with these beings that have arisen out of my body, but that are not a biological part of me. Yes –​the avatars are a product of my own imagination.The crucial difference however is that these imaginary persons have become incarnate through electronic means, have become manifest as discrete beings who reside in a digital world that is disconnected from my biological self. They have thus become the non-​human component of a cyborg conjunction that finds it’s raison d’être in a complex ‘play of selves’ in which human and non-​human fuse into a whole persona very much in the manner that Richard Bartle has described: A persona is a player, in a world. Any separate distinction of character is gone –​the player is the character. You’re not role-​playing a being, you are that being; you’re not assuming an identity, you are that identity; you’re not projecting a self, you are that self. If you are killed in a fight, you don’t feel that your character has died, you feel that you have died. There’s no level of indirection, no filtering, no question: You are there. (2004, 155) I do not have a ready, plausible answer as to why it would be so compelling to play with one’s ‘many selves,’ in the metaverse or out of it. Why is it so fascinating to create these cybernetic organisms that amalgamate our biological bodies with externalized electronic beings of our own creation, to the extent where the borders between biological and digital vanish? But it is clearly engrossing, given that there are plenty of others who are just as fascinated by their avatars as I am by

The Avatars of alpha.tribe  45

mine. It could have to do with a remembrance of solitary childhood play sessions during which we interacted for hours with our dolls and teddy bears. After all, it is very similar to that. It could be the joy of having found one’s way back to that self-​reliant imagination-​invested state of innocence.

Notes 1 A paracosm is a detailed imaginary world involving humans and/​or animals, or perhaps even fantasy or alien creations. Often having its own geography, history and language, it is an experience that is developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time: months or even years. http://​cyborganthropology.com/​Paracosmic_​Immersion 2 Fernando Pessoa (1888–​1935) is one of Portugal’s greatest poets, whose modernist work gave Portuguese literature European significance. The quotes used in this text come from Richard Zenith’s 2001 book entitled The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, Grove Press, New York, pg: xi, xvii, 3, 4, 39.

References Bartle, R. A., (2009), “Alice and Dorothy Play Together,” in Third Person, Harrigan, P., Wardrip-​Fruin, N., (eds), MIT Press, Boston, pp: 105–​117. Bartle, R., (2004). Designing Virtual Worlds, New Riders Publishing/​Pearson, New Jersey, pp: 155–​165. Boellstorff, T., (2008), Coming of Age in Second Life:  An anthropologist explores the virtually human, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, pp: 128–​134. Jeffrey, P. and Mark, G., (1998), “Constructing Social Spaces in Virtual Environments: A Study of Navigation and Interaction,” in Höök, K.; Munro, A.; Benyon, D. (eds): Workshop on Personalised and Social Navigation in Information Space, March 16–​17, 1998, Stockholm (SICS Technical Report T98:02), Swedish Institute of Computer Science, pp: 24–​38. Suler, J. and Beiswenger, M., (eds), (1996), “The Psychology of Avatars and Graphical Space in Multimedia Chat Communities,The Psychology of Cyberspace,” Chat Communication, Ibidem, Stuttgart, Germany, pp: 305–​344. (1999, article originally published in 1996).

About the Author Elif Ayiter is a faculty member at Sabanci University Istanbul, Turkey. She can be reached at: [email protected]

3 TANKS, THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES, AND SOCIAL CYBORGS Anonymous

FIGURE 3.1  M1 Abrams

Battle Tank

The first lesson young soldiers learn as they train to be tankers is that modern tanks do not care which persons they kill. Living in and around tanks is often as dangerous to the crew as it is to enemy soldiers or noncombatants. The second lesson tankers learn is that modern tanks do not work unless one is a member of a team. Only a tank crew can make the tank serve its purpose. Operating a tank singlehanded will only kill the wrong persons –​likely oneself. Small missteps are repaid harshly to the crew in the form of lost fingers, smashed feet, and shattered elbows. Larger missteps are lethal, even to those inside. Tanks, and their tankers, create a social cyborg that is, at best, a feral beast.The beast metaphor is misleading and obscures the moral relationship between crew and tank.Tanks, unlike cats and dogs, do not grow and breed of their own accord. Our societies create tanks –​like other human technology –​a clear expression of social power and collective value. By submitting to the tank, as a member of the crew, one submits to this social power. A means in service to an end.

Tanks, the Shield of Achilles, and Social Cyborgs  47

There are many illustrative stories of the crew’s subordination; here is one from my first year on a tank that was nearly physically lethal to a crew member and morally disastrous for me. Before a crew goes to war in a tank, they go to gunnery to prove their skill. Training on the gunnery range has a certain guiltless pleasure and its share of misery. The tank gets to exercise in the flower of its wrath and glory. Cannon and machine guns employed on wooden targets. Crews competing only against the clock and compatriot crews in the exercise of skill. The weather and grind of dozens of crews working through the paces heap misery. Hastings Range at the U.S. Army’s Fort Benning in Georgia is the setting for my story. Every company of tanks has its Achilles –​a tank commander and his crew that seem peerless –​but that was not my place at the time. I was a young Lieutenant at his first gunnery and it was Georgia in August.The heat and my lack of experience was compounding the miseries and the pleasure faded to moonshine glory. It was the kind of heat and misery that can make a person not really care about questions of life and death, as the crew member loading the main gun  –​my loader –​was soon to demonstrate.The most dangerous spot inside a tank is behind the breech of the main gun. Twelve tons of steel that will crush anyone foolish enough to stand behind it when the main gun fires. That night, during a timed engagement in which we were trying to beat the clock and Achilles, my loader managed to wrap the intercom cable from his helmet around the warhead of a round as he loaded the main gun. Incredibly, he managed to load the round and close the breech. However, the wrapped cord prevented him from clearing the path behind the breech. He realized his mistake, but, dedicated to the task and social cyborg, laid down on the breech and announced to crew that the gun was ready to fire. Had we pulled the trigger, he would certainly have been killed by the tank. Only a moment’s luck and a casual glance alerted me that he was not where he should be. I stopped the engagement, reset the breech and corrected the fouled cable, but noted the near miss with a bit of a shrug and a knowing laugh. My loader was merely fulfilling his purpose. He, like all of us in our misery and pursuit of moonshine glory were merely means to the collective goal set by Cactus Jack –​the name of my first tank –​and his crew. A soldier’s relationship to technology has always been instrumentalizing. Consider the last bit of W.H. Auden’s “Shield of Achilles”: The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestus, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-​slaying Achilles Who would not live long.

48 Anonymous

What does it mean to create, and be the Iron-​hearted Achilles in a social cyborg? I am not sure but it seems there are moral considerations around creating an Iron-​ hearted tanker that are underdeveloped and relate to the moral considerations around creating an Iron-​hearted combatant in any role. Arguments that a modern day Hephaestus must consider before creating tanks, armies, or sanctioned torture regimes. At the center of my experience as a tanker is, I think, a discussion of a “mere means” (treating someone as “merely means” which Immanuel Kant argued was immoral) objection as it applies to the tanker and other social cyborgs. But I should be clear what I mean by that. I am, so far, a stark, raving Kantian. This means that for me the charge that there are “merely means” problems does not clear very easily at all and is rooted deeply in the practice of tanking, and I think, war more generally. Some more poetry to understand what I mean: This is my rifle, there are many like it, but this one is mine /​Without me it is nothing, without it I am nothing. I know the pride this bit of verse is supposed to invoke. I have felt it with the tools of my service –​Cactus Jack my first tank is a perfect example. The tools become part of your identity and your identity becomes rooted in performing a task –​the fetishistic glory in being the peer of the peerless Achilles. For some, it is a horror to contemplate finding yourself with such pride and identity in a well-​worn tank and well-​drilled tank crew. The beast is a social cyborg that evokes horror. We most often think of tanks from the perspective of the intended victims –​enemy soldiers –​unfortunate victims –​noncombatants. But I know enough tankers to be confident in the fact that they too can die as persons before their physical bodies die. My loader did not care for his person anymore. The misery and the task –​ending the first and performing the second –​ were all that mattered. There is difference in scale, perhaps, between the tankers and their victims. But not a difference in kind. There is a deep-​rooted and double means violation here on the part of both the regime that creates tanks as a solution to an exception (against the tanker and the victims) and the tanker that offers herself up to the social cyborg. The pride she can feel in being the one who can do the necessary thing will come to center itself, as it does for others, in her tools and in the crew members she needs to make those tools work. Where I think this is important for us is that whatever Hephaestus (read: the political process we all participate in that produces standing armies) might say about the tank to justify it –​it’s not terroristic, but defensive; or, the victims –​ he is the dedicated and talented enemy that now threatens all we hold valuable. Hephaestus cannot clear the soldier of a “merely means” charge as it applies to tankers. Nor, can any tanker. Necessity is cold comfort in reflection, and even willing participation in such practice that degrades and brutalizes another in the kingdom of ends is not the sort of action that can meet the Kantian requirements that would alleviate the “merely means” charge. Beat back upon herself, as it were, the tanker can often look to the only thing she has left –​pride in the thing, in the tool, and in the task. And, as with most

Tanks, the Shield of Achilles, and Social Cyborgs  49

fetish, what starts as pride can easily move to delight. The end that conceivably justified the first time –​we need this tank to kill this man –​is slowly and surely abstracted away. This is a violation of Kant’s imperative in one’s own person. It seems to me a certainty that Hephaestus cannot, in principle, ever create these social cyborg beasts without instrumentalizing its crew. Because the means to that goal are always human, the kingdom of ends instrumentalizing its constituency.

About the Author Anonymous is an active duty officer in the U.S. Army. The views expressed in this paper are his or hers alone and do not reflect any official policy or opinion of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Army.

4 EXPERIMENTS WITH CYBORG TECHNOLOGY Kevin Warwick

FIGURE 4.1  Kevin

the Cyborg

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Introduction I have conducted two specific implant experiments to investigate the merger between humans and technology, thereby creating a cyborg.What I have attempted to do in this chapter is to give some indication of the experiments along with the reasoning behind the arrangement and my feelings which resulted. Both experiments describe work in which technology was implanted into my body by a doctor/​surgeon. In the second of these the technology was implanted into my nervous system during a two hour operation performed by two consultant neurosurgeons.

Experiment 1 On 24 August 1998 I became, as far as I am aware, the first human to have a Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) surgically implanted in my body as a form of identity. The implant was positioned in my upper left arm. The device transmits a sequence of pulses by radio which represent a unique number. The number can be pre-​programmed to act like a PIN number on a credit card. With such an implant in place the identity of the person involved can be interrogated by a computer. The device implanted in my experiment measured 22  mm by 4 mm in diameter and it was held in place by a couple of stitches. An RFID implant does not have a battery. Rather it consists of an antenna and a microchip enclosed in a glass capsule.The antenna picks up power remotely when near a larger coil of wire which carries an electric current. The power is employed to transmit by radio the signal encoded in the microchip. Because there are no moving parts, the implant requires no maintenance. Once it has been implanted it can stay there (see Foster and Jaeger, 2007). In the experiments carried out, my university building at Reading was set up as an intelligent building. At points in the building responses could be triggered when I was recognized. The RFID implant allowed me to control lights, open doors and be welcomed “Hello” when entering the front door –​it actually said “Hello Professor Warwick”. The reason for selecting my upper left arm for the implant was that we were not sure how well it would work. If the implant was not working well, possibly due to signal transmission problems, then if it was in my arm it could be waved around until a stronger signal was transmitted. It is interesting however that most present day RFID implants in humans are located in a similar place (the left arm), even though they do not have to be. In the James Bond film, Casino Royale, Bond has a similar implant in his left arm (Michael and Michael, 2014)! Before receiving the implant a number of technical questions arose such as how to sterilize the implant, whether it would migrate in my body and if it might break. But everything went well and technically the implant worked pretty much as hoped.

52  Kevin Warwick

Experiment 1 –​Rationale The experience was great fun. Walking around the office and having doors open for you automatically is fantastic. Then when the implant was removed a couple of weeks later I felt something was missing, doors didn’t open automatically for me any longer. There was a sense of loss. It was clear from the outset just how beneficial such an implant could be. It is a surprise that RFID implants have not been employed more widely especially in the form of passport information, where they could be useful for security purposes. Although in pets they do seem to have filled this role. There were a number of aspects which drove me to this experiment. At the time the ‘intelligent’ building at Reading could be triggered by a smart card but I simply wanted to see if it would work just as well with an implant. For me this made not only a technical step but more so a philosophical one. Up to that time implants of one type or another were generally used for therapy which this was definitely not. The device we had was not designed to be an implant but such things have appeared subsequently. Rather it was made of glass and actually broke very easily.The first one we tried to sterilize by boiling actually exploded. Clearly it was a relatively dangerous experiment to perform. Due to the fact that something could easily go wrong, such as an infection or a break up of the device when implanted, it was obvious to me that I had to do the experiment myself. There was no way that I could ask a researcher to take the risks. On top of this I wanted to actually see what it felt like to have such an implant when it was key to operating technology. I realized, in doing the experiment, that signals from inside my body were operating external technology. But these were merely programmed signals. My thought was, well why can’t we change the signals dependent on what’s going on in my body and hence change what happens externally? I considered trying muscular connections as are employed in some cases for amputee hand control, but these seemed extremely limited in functionality. Alternatively, cuff electrodes on the nervous system were a possibility for the next step but these would directly damage nerve fibres irretrievably. A better possibility appeared to be a BrainGate Utah Array consisting of 100 electrodes. This would have to be fired into my nervous system at high velocity, but might well cause less long-​term damage. Importantly though, if it was fired into the nerves in my arm, because it operates bi-​directionally, we would be able to carry out experiments with both motor and sensory signals. But a BrainGate had never been used in a human before, indeed the only report at that time that we could find described its use only in a chicken sciatic nerve! Clearly there would be risks attached.

Experiment 2 It took almost 4 years to set up the next experiment. Finally, on 14 March 2002 I  received my second implant. This time it was the first use of the BrainGate

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microelectrode array in a human.This event had considerably broader implications than in the first experiment, extending human capabilities for example. The array was implanted into my median nerve fibres during two hours of neurosurgery at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, UK, in order to test bi-​directional functionality. A stimulation current directly into my nervous system via the implant allowed (sensory) information to be received, while (motor) control signals were decoded from neural activity in the region of the electrodes. A number of experimental trials were successfully concluded (Warwick et al., 2003; Gasson et al., 2005). In particular: 1. Extra sensory (ultrasonic) input was implemented, extending my range of sensory perception. 2. Control of a robotic hand across the internet was achieved, with feedback from the robotic fingertips sent back as neural stimulation to give a sense of force being applied to an object (between Columbia University, New York, USA and Reading University, England). 3. A primitive form of telegraphic communication directly between the nervous systems of two humans (my wife Irena assisted) was performed. 4. A wheelchair was driven around by means of neural signals. 5. The color of jewelry was changed as a result of neural signals. In all of the above cases it can be considered that the trial proved useful for therapeutic reasons, e.g. the ultrasonic sense could be useful for an individual who is blind. Each test can also be seen as a form of enhancement beyond the human norm for an individual. The operation had to be planned, along with the subsequent experiments. I didn’t worry about the operation until the night before, but then it was far too late to do anything other than go through with it.There were some harrowing moments however, as the different people involved, including the surgeons, expressed their worries about what might happen if something went wrong, such as losing the use of my hand if my nervous system became infected. The main worries I personally had were that the experiment would not go ahead due to some University insurance issue, ethical refusal or other paperwork problem. But go ahead it did. During the more than 3 months that the implant was in place it was a tremendously exciting time. A team of 4 researchers and myself were involved on a daily basis in the lab setting up different experiments and then trying to get results. Sometimes we had problems and it didn’t work at first, but we stuck with it. For one experiment I  went to Columbia University in New  York and we connected my nervous system, via the internet, to a robot hand in England. I was able to control the hand and feel the force the hand was applying from another continent. As a cyborg with my nervous system extended over the internet I instantly became conscious of the sheer power offered to individuals with such an implant.What it means is that an individual’s brain and body do not have to be

54  Kevin Warwick

in the same place. In fact your body does not have to consist of arms, legs etc., it can be anything you want, maybe a building or a vehicle even. But the experiment that really blew my mind was when my wife also had electrodes implanted into her nervous system. In the laboratory we sent signals between our nervous systems. Every time she closed her hand, my brain received a pulse.We communicated telegraphically nervous system to nervous system.This will mean in the future when we have such connections between human brains; it will be a form of telepathy, thought communication (Warwick et al., 2004). It was for me a fantastic experience to be the first to experiment with a new form of communication. The BrainGate implant has since been used therapeutically in several tests involving paralyzed individuals. In each case the person cannot move their arms and hands, due to the paralysis, with the same implant placed in their motor cortex, they have been able to control the curser on a computer screen and operate such pieces of technology as a robot hand (Hochberg et al., 2006; Hochberg et al., 2012) and for one individual to regain some control over his own arm (Bouton et al., 2016).

FIGURE 4.2  Braingate

implant (displayed on a small coin for scale)

Experiment 2 –​Rationale There has not yet been any further experimentation using the BrainGate with regard to human enhancement as opposed to therapy. Perhaps it might be a big step for a person/​researcher to take, receiving an implant, when they are able bodied and do not ‘need’ the implant. When you are one of the first people to try an experiment such as this you have some idea about the risks that could occur, but mostly you do not because no one has done it before and you don’t know how the human body will react. Partly I  wanted to do this experiment because of the potential therapeutic benefits. For example, extra sensory input may be useful for blind people or direct neural control of a robot arm for an amputee. But I was even more interested and excited by the possibilities of practically experimenting with human enhancements. To look at the possibilities of going well beyond the human norm

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and actually experiencing that for myself.When I did the communication experiment with Irena it was a eureka moment. I actually felt and understood the signals from my wife. Every time she closed her hand (although for the experiment I couldn’t see that happening) my brain received an electronic pulse that it could make sense of. I believed firmly that we had successfully achieved the first step towards thought communication. Irena was skeptical about the possible results before the experiment yet she knew that it was important to try. She pushed us to get on with that part of the experiment, even though much paperwork was required in order to obtain ethical approval for her to be involved. It was certainly not the case that I forced her into it. Communicating as we did though is a very intimate act, which is not something I had even thought of beforehand. I was therefore very pleased that it was my own wife who fulfilled that part of the experiment with me.

FIGURE 4.3  Cyborgian

communication network

Yet when I think back to the operation for the surgeons to put the array in my nervous system, there were some very tense moments. It had taken 4  years of hard work to get to the operation itself yet it was also a research project for the

56  Kevin Warwick

surgeons with regard to implanting the array. At one point they put a tube down my arm and tried to push the array down the tube. But the array got completely stuck. They tried to pull it back, but it was completely jammed. For a moment we thought the operation would have to be stopped and the 4 years would have been wasted. But then a nurse suggested flushing the array down with a jet of water.That was what the surgeons did. It worked! The show was back on the road. Then when we did the different experiments there was little time to take in what was happening. It was a case of finalizing the planning, organizing and setting up an experiment, actually carrying it out and obtaining results and then immediately moving on to the next experiment. Every so often myself and the 4 researchers working on the project would have a get together to thrash out an issue or to re-​plan a particular part of what we were doing. Arranging a trip to New York and liaising with the researchers there merely added complexities that had to be dealt with. Occasionally though, when the results of a specific experiment were obtained, they had a dramatic effect that could not be imagined apriori. For example, it took 6 weeks for us working every day in order to train my brain to successfully recognize the stimulating pulses. Yet when we then made the connection with ultrasonic sensors my brain was able to understand the signals immediately. Essentially, the closer an object came, the more pulses my brain received. At one point, whilst I  was wearing a blindfold, a researcher quickly brought a board towards me. I  reacted immediately. It was a very scary feeling, something was coming towards me and I didn’t know what it was.

Comments The experiments described involved a sense of the unknown and gave rise to the excitement that goes with pure scientific investigation. They also evoked worries that the experiment might not go ahead or something might go wrong. Both experiments described, particularly the second one, involved a team effort in which each person had very different skills. Keeping the focus and yet enabling everyone to get something out of the project that they wanted was difficult. But when successful a sense of elation was achieved on an unparalleled level by all involved. The experiments showed that something was possible and led me to thinking as to what this might lead to. For example, with the second experiment, for me, the link up with my wife was the most profound part. We successfully communicated telepathically between our nervous systems. It is fantastic to conceive what this will mean for humans in the future when it is not nervous systems but brains that are linked up. Will it change completely how we communicate or will it not work? It is one thing to theorize and philosophize about the possibilities with cyborgs but it is quite another to actually carry out practical experimentation. Before you go ahead you cannot be sure what exactly is possible and what is not.

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I believe strongly that humans are extremely limited in their abilities, particularly in terms of brain functionality. Enhancing those abilities with technology is the most exciting research challenge facing us today. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to carry out the experiments that I have. It is not an opportunity that I would want to waste.

References C. Bouton, A. Shaikhouni, N. Annetta, M. Bockbrader, D. Friedenberg, D. Nielson, G. Sharma, P. Sederberg, B. Glenn, W. Mysiw, A. Morgan, M. Deogaonkar, and A. Rezai, “Restoring cortical control of functional movement in a human with quadriplegia,” Nature, DOI:10.1038/​nature17435, published online 13 April, 2016. M. Chiappalone, A. Vato, L. Berdondini, M. Koudelka-​Hep, and S. Martinoia, “Network dynamics and synchronous activity in cultured cortical neurons,” International Journal of Neural Systems,Vol. 17, pp. 87–​103, 2007. K. Foster and J. Jaeger, “RFID inside”, IEEE Spectrum,Vol. 44, pp. 24–​29, 2007. M. Gasson, B. Hutt, I. Goodhew, P. Kyberd, and K. Warwick. “Invasive neural prosthesis for neural signal detection and nerve stimulation,” International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing,Vol. 19, Issue. 5, pp. 365–​375, 2005. L. Hochberg, M. Serruya, G. Friehs, J. Mukand, M. Saleh, A. Caplan, A. Branner, D. Chen, R. Penn, and J. Donoghue, “Neuronal ensemble control of prosthetic devices by a human with tetraplegia,” Nature,Vol. 442, pp. 164–​171, 2006. L. Hochberg, D. Bacher, B. Jarosiewicz, N. Masse, J. Simeral, J.Vogel, S. Haddadin, J. Liu, S. Cash, P. Smagt, and J. Donoghue, “Reach and grasp by people with tetraplegia using a neurally controlled robotic arm,” Nature,Vol. 485, pp. 372–​375, 2012. M.G. Michael and K. Michael, “Uberveillance and the social implications of microchip implants: Energing Technologies,” IGI Global, 2014. K. Warwick, M. Gasson, B. Hutt, I. Goodhew, P. Kyberd, B. Andrews, P. Teddy, and A. Shad, “The application of implant technology for cybernetic systems,” Archives of Neurology, Vol. 60, Issue. 10, pp. 1369–​1373, 2003. K. Warwick, M. Gasson, B. Hutt, I. Goodhew, P. Kyberd, H. Schulzrinne, and X. Wu, “Thought communication and control:  a first step using radiotelegraphy,” IEE Proceedings on Communications,Vol. 151, Issue. 3, pp. 185–​189, 2004.

About the Author Kevin Warwick is Emeritus Professor at Reading and Coventry universities. His research areas are artificial intelligence, biomedical systems, robotics and cyborgs. Kevin is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the IET who has published over 600 research papers. His experiments into implant technology led to him being the cover story on the US magazine Wired. He achieved the world’s first direct electronic communication between two human nervous systems, the basis for thought communication. He has been awarded higher doctorates (DSc) by Imperial College and the Czech Academy of Sciences. He received the IET Mountbatten Medal, the Ellison-​Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine and presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. In 2014 he was elected to membership of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and in 2018 he was elected to the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences.

5 THE BODY VEHICLE An Argument for Transhuman Bodies Natasha Vita-​More

Consider the concept of human evolution where the physical and digital body functions as a sustainable system. The assemblage of biology with technology simulates an adaptive process where cells, molecules, and appended mechanisms perform in concert to continually regenerate the body.The process of renewal, restoration, and growth is necessary for resilience to the fluctuations of biology and the environment to effectively counter the gradual deterioration of physiological functions. Social engineering plays a large part in society’s acceptance of transformative interventions, including invasive measures to slow down and counter the effects of aging. The transformative human has developed a presence in society, identified by the physiological and cognitive adaption to computer interfaces and enhancements that have become everyday accessories. Further, the growing industry of life extension is directly relevant to transformative bodies, with the applications of gene therapy, stem cell therapy, anti-​aging interventions, and the mitigation of disease. Through these approaches, we begin to realize the transhuman as an alternative to the degenerative process of cellular breakdown and senescence of the biological human. The human body is a physical, cellular vehicle that transports persons from one location to another. When it ceases to function well, it is repaired. When it runs out of energy, it is regenerated.We depend on it.Yet, this dependence is often overlooked, and this physical, cellular vehicle is disregarded when it slows down, makes strange sounds, and its balance and steering mechanisms become weaker, until its engine eventually fails. The idea of a human body as a vehicle precipitates the architecture of functionality. Functionality is also a quality that computer software offers with a range of operations where the aim is to continue functioning as efficiently as possible. If there is a breakdown or glitch in the system, forensics locates the problem for speedy repair. If it has an outdated operating system, then the system is upgraded.

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One day there will be bodies that transport us across diverse substrates—​real time, virtual worlds, artificial and computational environments, while remaining autonomous. These bodies will be regenerative and ageless, parlaying personhood between biological and computational systems. Streamlined and adaptive, they will meet the needs of their users, who enjoy the physical world and virtual environments. Persons might desire a whole-​body prosthetic for enabling a longer lifespan as well as a docking system for transferring or uploading cognitive properties back and forth between the biosphere and digital environments. Because of its multi-​level usability, this body becomes a device that specifies a smooth interface by adjusting to diverse social activities and safeguarding moment-​to-​moment experiences that form human narratives and behavioral patterns. The transformative body is not unlike or in conflict with the classical human form or the idea of the future posthuman. It is a synergistic interpretation of the fundamental purpose of the biological body— whose ultimate value is to sustain life. From a scientific perspective, life is the state that distinguishes living beings as organic matter that function with a metabolism and growth, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. As a synergistic system, its mechanistic reactions provide energy for the vital processes that regenerate and sustain life. The synergistic system is presented in the poetic narrative “The Automorpher” (Vita-​More, 1997), performed at Electronic Café in Los Angeles. Scene IV identifies a mundane, age-​old bias toward aging, and unknown interventions to biology, where a vision of the synergistic, transformative body is played out. A door opened quietly, and she walked into the room her body smooth, supple Her shoulders held back, proud a glimmer in her eye and without notice she brushes her hair away “How old are you?” they asked, “How old are you?” A hesitation filled her as she quickly assessed “My augmentation is three years now my right hip five ocular implants just two weeks Age reversal nearly nine” She took a sip of water licking the droplets off her lips her eyes glimmering—​hair a shimmering sterling her outer sheath like mulatto warm bronze “How old are you?” they asked, “How old are you?”

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And when she turned to leave the room all eyes followed her form just to realize before she left She was not yet born

Evolving Human The scientific study of human evolution collects and dates “fossils by geologic strata, chemical tests, or radioactive-​decay rates requires knowledge of the physical sciences” (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.).This paleoanthropological process offers important clues about humanity’s ancient past. However, this somewhat linear approach to evolution—​that one stage of evolution brings about the next stage where the human was an inevitable outcome—​reduces the processes of adaptability and exponentiality. “This idea of inevitability runs deep in our societal assumptions, probably because it’s comforting—​a picture of a single, forward trajectory, [from Ape to Man] ending in modern humans as the crown of creation” (Neimark, 2012). It is evident that the final evolutionary human has not been reached, nor is its trajectory a fait accompli. Humans might be evolving without realizing the transition or understanding why it is occurring. An observation by Aubrey de Grey (2017, p. 5) addresses this topic of human evolution: Evolution has already shown its ability to extend maximum lifespan  –​a phenomenon of which the comparative longevity of humans vs. the closely-​related nonhuman primates (and the yet greater longevity of other mammalian species, such as the bowhead whale) is clear demonstration. There is no evidence whatever that evolution has run out of life-​extension ideas, even given its vastly more limited toolset than the techniques available to us. Evolution has not further increased human intrinsic lifespan for reasons already explained …. The existence of a detailed engineering plan proposed to arrest or reverse aging damage in humans using biotechnology presently available or already under development (i.e., SENS) is precisely a valid reason to think that such success can be achieved. Humans are actively changing with or without a pre-determined or engineered plan. Because there is no set of instructions, the future human might continue to be Homo sapiens or become an offshoot species. New environments could affect human attributes and genetic makeup. Mars colonists might eventually undergo bodily variation because of weak gravity and sunlight. Alternatively, speciation could arise without isolation and more rapidly with the advent of artificial general intelligence and molecular manufacturing, and where brain functions are maintained without fracturing or other deviation.

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An anticipated cohesiveness among the varied speculative stages of human variation, including cyborg, transhuman, posthuman, and upload is to first establish similarities between them. A  posthuman body could be an object-​based system, rather than a disembodied agency, which trajectory imbues a lack of unity and inclusivity among variants. For example, a transhuman is a transformative human in transition to becoming something other. It could be a posthuman, or not.That is yet to be determined. Nevertheless, in the linear paleoanthropological approach, and as a chronological order, a human comes first, then transhuman, and then perhaps the posthuman or upload. Thus, the late stage transhuman could be pre-​posthuman. In this sequence of events, the cyborg has symbolic and mechanistic value. Notably, the cyborg has a place in science fiction narratives, academic theory, and within a practice of human augmentation. It offers a way of considering a future human without having to attach this future to life extension, the singularity, or uploading, for example. Alternatively, the transhuman is deeply linked to life extension and the medical sciences and technologies that are developing anti-​aging therapies and employing the use of nanomedicine and artificial intelligence. It acknowledges unknown social and technological disruptions and applies foresight to assessing advantages and risks. Even though the transhuman arrived in literature prior to the cyborg, they share a similar attribute of augmentation. However, there is a practice to being transhuman, which is concerned with longevity and personal identity. Thus, the transhuman has a self-​defined goal—​a purpose, unlike the cyborg, which was assigned a purpose by its authors, which suggests a potential to be transhuman. In 1960, Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline developed the concept of the cyborg as incorporating “artificial autonomous homeostatic controls over organic process within an organism” (Clynes & Kline, 1960, p.  27) as a means for humans to adapt to space exploration. … According to Clynes, the cyborg is consistent with the transhuman concept of self-​directed participant evolution and life extension. For the cyborg, the limiting boundary is that of human nature, which must be overcome. At the time of its conceptual development, there was less concern over whether a self-​directed participant evolution was ethical, financially feasible, carbon-​ footprint free, or any of the numerous socio-​political issues that we face today in discussions concerning human enhancement and life extension. Clynes and Kline recognized that if space travel was a goal, humans would have to take an active role in their own evolution. When based on homeostatic functioning, the cyborg project becomes more viable in the domain of new media, where artists are investigating the relationship of the environment and life forms and digital works involving the engineering of human capabilities and computer calculation. (Vita-​More, 2012, p. 57)

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Modifications to the human body are historic. Ancient roots uncover physical changes developed due to diversity of environments and environmental instability. Adapting to the surroundings influenced the body form (bipedalism) as well as the brain’s complexity. While these changes evolved over a considerable length of time, research claims that Homo sapiens have not changed for the past 50,000 years. However, with research sequencing and deciphering DNA content, it is evident that evolution continues and may be accelerating rather than remaining static (McAuliffe, 2009). Are humans evolving at the genetic level? According to the Smithsonian Institute research, “new genetic mutations arise with each generation” causing “rare genetic variants in the protein-​encoding” (Schultz, 2012). To validate these claims, markers would need to be detected to identify recent evolution. Even with markers, these changes are not truly evolution but an individual adaptation. It may be that “[t]‌he relative importance of natural selection in shaping our species might be weak at present, but it has the potential to become stronger again in the future” (Stock, 2008).

Stages of Transformation The evolution of the transhuman as a substrate-​diverse vehicle may arrive in stages. A  late-​stage transhuman would be autonomous with the ability to exist within diverse substrates. Similar to the human body, this body would need energy-​efficient systems to function.To put this in perspective, the human body relies on mitochondria for energy, as well as a healthy microbiome that protects the body from germs and breaks down nutrients from foods. Thus, the microbial communities within the human body must be maintained by restorative factors (Langdon, Crook, & Dantas, 2016). If this process is unstable, the body breaks down and ill health ensues. Likewise, the substrate-​diverse body would require energy that could be generated from electricity, solar energy, chemical reactions, and/​or be self-​propelling. For the semi-​biological transhuman as a mid-​stage evolution, the body would be continually monitored for nanorobot efficiency as the bots intervene with cellular malfunctions, the central nervous system’s digital interconnectivity in extracting messages, the brains error correction system, instant replay, and memory fastidiousness, the sensorial expansion of micro and telescopic vison, auditory selectiveness, the skin’s proficiency in mutating instantly to environmental changes, the brain’s flow of data across substrates, and the mind’s ability to coalesce data without fracturing. All these functions require the joint effort of processes that engage semi-​biological and computational systems within the material world and virtual, computation, and artificial substrates.

Transhuman Bodies The aim of the transhuman body is to renew its system perpetually and evolve in an exponential rather than linear manner. Transhuman bodies form a collection

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of approaches that offer alternatives to this degenerative process of cellular breakdown and senescence. Human bodies that are responsive to a transformative process include hormone replacement therapy, implants, neuropharmacology, vaccines, and prosthetic body replacement parts. This early transhuman affords understanding of where the technological interventions might be heading, but not as strongly as the currents in research and development in the areas of artificial intelligence, genomics, computational neuroscience, and big data organization and management. The issue here is directly linked to the transhuman because the body can be enhanced, modified, and replaced—​part by part; however, the content within the brain—​memory and nervous system data—​must be intact and continuous to evidence personhood over time. The philosophical questions concerning identity in the digital era have been a topic of discussion for decades and continue. There is no single strategy. Until a person experiences existence in virtual, computational, and artificial substrates as a way of life and without a fractured personhood, the notion of uploading and diversifying over substrates remains conjecture. Nevertheless, within the transhumanist scope it must be discussed as a strategic process for developing theoretical approaches in discerning what could happen, what could go right, and what could go wrong. Outside the theoretical approach, the business of collecting and organizing big data, and implementing a policy for analyzing and storing information, is urgent. This is only one area of interest for the future human where organizing and managing such information is crucial for the long term. Another relevant link is the Google Brain strategy, which is concerned with deep learning AI (Frank, 2017). Although this deep learning aims to build a brain, it is relevant to the personal identity which must be preserved within and outside the biological sphere. Whole brain emulation, earlier known as mind uploading, is essential for the future preservation of storing memory. It is also a concept that would allow the human to be present in computation and other artificial environments, similar but far more advanced than the fields of gaming and virtual reality. A computer interface could augment a digital layer above the brain’s cortex in forming a metabrain (More, 2013, p.  450). This metabrain might provide a nano instant-​to-​instant data relay of neurological functions translated into zeros and ones, uploaded to a secure cloud and deposited for future use. Early renditions of the transhuman body were developed in 1996 and presented as “Primo Posthuman”, a transhuman in transition to potential later stages of evolution. This nascent whole-​body prosthetic was developed with a team of experts in the fields of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology, cryonics, stem cell cloning, and engineering. Building upon the similarities of the cyborg and transhuman, especially the self-​directed evolution, the prototype offered additional insights and explanations of the bodily enhancements and technologies that could bring them about. The most recent rendition of “Primo Posthuman” took place in 2013 with the video “Body by Design” (Vita-​More & McMahon,

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2013), and was updated in 2015 with focus on the issue of continuity of identity and renamed “Substrate-​Diverse Body”. This iteration explores the psychological elements of the transhuman, still using a non-​machine looking human form to better include the public in their understanding of where the integration of biology and technology is heading.

Threshold of Knowledge: A Transhuman Practice Constant research and observation are key to being knowledgeable about the evidence-​ based science and ethical technologies that are engineering future transhuman bodies. The industry and academics are continually generating articles on new advances in biotechnology and AI, but much of this is hypothetical. Knowing what is occurring within these fields through reliable sources is crucial to form any insight on trends. Opinions are interesting, but they are opinions based largely in biases. Reliable facts do not have bias. Three thresholds that are currently affecting the advent of transhuman bodies include: •

Nanomedicine:  Currently, nanomedicine is practiced in the pharmaceutical industry for drug delivery, vaccinations, cell therapy. “The benefits of nanomedicine can be divided into the advantages produced by nanotherapeutics, nanodiagnostics and nanotheranostics” (Stoakes, 2017). • Computational Neuroscience:  Currently in the theoretical and modeling stages. The goal is to construct a software model that will behave the same way as the original brain (Sandberg and Bostrom, 2008). • Artificial General Intelligence:  Currently, AGI is not possible. Narrow AI is largely available in all operating systems and task-​oriented technologies. Methods for AGI are currently of the symbolic-​AI paradigm or human-​ readable representations of problems (Goertzel & Pennachin, 2007).

Conclusion As scientific research attains each new threshold, knowledge evidences an intended or unintended action to mitigate biological complications with technology. Knowledge of the uses of technology to alter biology has revolutionized society and changed the way people think about their own bodies. It is a natural urge to desire well-​being, but this change in thinking must include advances in social awareness. While evolving with machines may not seem natural, neither did walking upright to our primate ancestors. Intelligence evolves away from hypercriticality and other cognitive biases and toward a greater awareness of the diverse options that lie ahead in the future. The implications of technology’s influence on thinking and behavior have become evident far beyond smart devices that enhance human mobility and

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cognition. Currents in genetic engineering, CRISPR, telomere therapy, stem cells, neuropharmacology, robotic AI prosthetics, and cryonics offer alternatives to biological processes. The presence of the health industry as an integration of varied sectors within the economic system has become a dominant force. According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global health and wellness market is over 3.7 trillion, with beauty and anti-​aging as the largest sector (2016). Social engineering plays a large part in the currents of society’s acceptance of interventions, including invasive measures to slow down and counter the effects of aging. Further, the innovation of smart devices has developed beyond activity tracking, as biomarker devices have become everyday accessories. Transhuman bodies form a collection of approaches that offer alternatives to this degenerative process. Instances of the transhuman are within society as prosthetic replacement parts are more seamless and adaptable with advances in robotics and narrow AI and haptics. This early transhuman affords understanding of where the technologies may be heading, but not as strongly as the currents in research and development in the areas of neuroscience and computer science and big data organization and management. Here the issue is directly linked to the transhuman because the body can be enhanced, modified, and replaced; however, the content within the brain—​memory and its emotive—​must be intact and continuous to evidence personhood over time. The philosophical questions concerning identity in the digital era, cloning, cryonics, and mind transfer or uploading, question the self as being the same over time and across substrates and has been a topic of discussion for decades. There is no single answer. Until a person experiences uploading or diversifying over substrates, the discussion is conjecture. Nevertheless, within the transhumanist scope it must be discussed as a strategic process for developing theoretical approaches in discerning what could happen, what could go right, and what could go wrong.The practice includes investigating one’s own data through analytics and laying a foundation for navigating one’s own transformation and organizing and managing such information for the long term.

References Clynes, Manfred E. & Kline, Nathan S. (1960). Cyborgs and Space. In Astronautics, p. 27. New York, NY: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. Comstock, J. (2016). CES 2016: Running list of health and Wellness devices. Mobile Health News. Retrieved from http://​www.mobihealthnews.com/​content/​ces-​2016-​runninglist-​health-​and-​wellness-​devices. de Grey, A. (2017). Rebuttal of Weinstein Submission by Aubrey de Grey. MIT Technology Review, p.  5. Retrieved from https://​www2.technologyreview.com/​sens/​docs/​ weinstein_​rebuttal.pdf. Encyclopedia Britannica. (n.d.). Paleoanthropology. Augustyn, A., Bauer, P., Duigan, B., Eldridge, A., Gregersen, E., … Zelazko, A.  (Eds.). Retrieved from https://​www. britannica.com/​science/​paleoanthropology.

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Frank, B.H. (October 23, 2017). Google Brain chief: Deep learning takes at least 100,000 examples. VB Summit 2017. Venturebeat. Retrieved from https://​venturebeat.com/​ 2017/​10/​23/​google-​brain-​chief-​says-​100000-​examples-​is-​enough-​data-​for-​deep-​ learning/​. Global Wellness Institute. (2016). Key Wellness Industry Stats & Facts. Retrieved from https://​www.globalwellnessinstitute.org/​press-​room/​statistics-​and-​facts/​. Goertzel, B. & Pennachin, C. (2007). Contemporary Approaches to Artificial General Intelligence. In B. Goertzel & C. Pennachin (Eds.). Artificial General Intelligence, pp. 1–​30. Berlin Heidelbert: Springer. Langdon, A., Crook, N., & Dantas, G. (2016). The effects of antibiotics on the microbiome throughout development and alternative approaches for therapeutic modulation. Resource document. Genome Medicine 8:39. Retrieved from https://​genomemedicine. biomedcentral.com/​articles/​10.1186/​s13073-​016-​0294-​z. Lorenzetti, L. (2016). The Biggest Health Care Companies in the Fortune 500. Research document. Fortune. Retrieved from http://​fortune.com/​2016/​06/​13/​biggest-​us-​ health-​care-​companies/​. McAuliffe, K. (2009). They Don’t Make Homo Sapiens Like They Used To. Reference document. Discover. Retrieved from http://​discovermagazine.com/​2009/​mar/​09-​theydont-​make-​homo-​sapiens-​like-​they-​used-​to. More, M. (2013). “A Letter to Mother Nature”. In M. More & N. Vita-​More (Eds.). The Transhumanist Reader:  Contemporary and Classical Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, p. 450. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-​Blackwell. Neimark, J. (2012). How We Won the Hominid Wars, and All the Others Died Out. Reference document. Discover. Retrieved from http://​discovermagazine.com/​2011/​ evolution/​23-​how-​we-​won-​the-​hominid-​wars. Sandberg, A. & Bostrom, N. (2008). “Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap”. In Technical Report, #2008–​3, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University. Retrieved from http://​www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/​brain-​emulation-​roadmap-​report.pdf. Schultz, C. (2012). Humans Have Been Evolving Like Crazy Over the Past Few Thousand Years. Reference document. Smart News. Retrieved from http://​www.smithsonianmag. com/​ s mart-​ n ews/​ h umans-​ h ave-​ b een-​ evolving-​ l ike-​ c razy-​ over-​ t he-​ p ast-​ f ew-​ thousand-​years-​147494375/​. Stoakes, S.F. (October 17, 2017).The Benefits of Nanomedicine. AZoNano. Retrieved from https://​www.azonano.com/​article.aspx?ArticleID=4654. Stock, J.T. (2008). Are humans still evolving? Technological advances and unique biological characteristics allow us to adapt to environmental stress. Has this stopped genetic evolution? Science and Society, doi:10.1038/​embor200863. Retrieved from http://​embor. embopress.org/​content/​9/​1S/​S51. Vita-​More, N. (1997).The Automorpher. Scene IV. Retrieved from https://​www.aleph.se/​ Trans/​Cultural/​Art/​concept.html. Vita-​More, N. (2002). Radical body design “Primo Posthuman” Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence. Research document. Retrieved from http://​www.kurzweilai.net/​radicalbody-design-​primo-​posthuman. Vita-​ More, N. (2012). Life Expansion:  Toward an Artistic, Design-​ Based Theory of the Transhuman /​Posthuman (Doctoral dissertation), p. 57. Plymouth, UK: University of Plymouth Press. Vita-​More, N. & McMahon, K. (2013). Body by Design. Retrieved from https://​www. youtube.com/​watch?v=vVG2MbpHd4o.

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About the Author Natasha Vita-​More is a professor in the Department of Graduate Studies at the University of Advancing Technology, and is also the Executive Director of Humanity+, Inc., which provides educational programs concerning the future of humanity. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Natasha Vita-​More at natasha@natashavita-​more.com, [email protected], and [email protected].

6 WHEN I FIRST SAW JESUS, HE WAS CYBORG Gill Haddow

The following story is inspired by true events. Seeing: It had been a long day. I  had spent months negotiating with the creators and maintainers to allow me to meet the cyborgs they create. In the present time, it was not uncommon to exist as a cyborg, but each was heavily shielded, protected and monitored. And here I was watching the cyborgisation process itself. Some say you should be careful what you wish for. I was standing amongst six of the creators and a few of the maintainers. Like them I was wearing the heavy armour necessary to protect the body during the cyborgisation process. The person to undergo the procedure was lying prone on the gurney, and knew what was about to happen to them. The fact that they would also know when it was happening, lying awake as the see saws, and toffee hammers were used to cut and screw the cybernetics into their bodies, well… they may have missed the crucial detail.The missed detail? That the cyborgisation process would be televised and they would be conscious throughout. It had only been a matter of time before the information and communication technology ecosystems that we lived in would eventually find their way into our bodies. Human bodies are now ‘at one’ with the cybernetic infrastructure. These are super-​cool, hyper-​real smart technologies converging bio-​, nano-​info-​ devices to be intelligent enough to function inside our bodies better than our organs can. Our brains did not need to leave our bodies to be uploaded into the mainframe. No! Our bodies needed to leave our brains. When I  first saw Jesus he was already cyborg. Of course, it wasn’t actually Jesus. He just looked like Jesus or maybe, a Jesus that I had seen in a photograph.

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He was a cyborg though. Human first, then cybernetically modified –​a proper human cyborg. It is not an android then, those robots that have been made to look human –​humanised machines, the goal of which is to make them artificially intelligent. No. Jesus was ‘old school’ cyborg human. He’d been a cyborg for longer than anyone else, or anyone he knew, for that matter. And he still looked like Jesus so you couldn’t actually tell that he wasn’t completely human. He was the first. The Moral Pioneer, Patient No. 1, whatever you wanted to call him. Finding: I had found Jesus. I was collecting the stories, the true stories, or is my story just another story about stories? Does it matter? I was heavily involved, perhaps even invested, in finding and meeting the cyborgs that exist all around us. How does it feel to be part-​human part-​machine every day? Day in, day out. Jesus lives and he shared his true story with me. From the outside Jesus looked the same as anyone else and it was only on the inside that things had changed. Not the ‘inside self ’ you understand. Not that ‘look inside yourself to find yourself ’ navel gazing reflexivity. The fact that Jesus was no longer fully and completely human, well, that was irrelevant. But then again, as a person (he was still a person, even though he was slightly less human in material terms) he had changed. He’d had to. Obviously cyborgisation came with perks and benefits, he said. A longer life, a better life. He told me how the creators and maintainers implanted modifications and he’d had them for so long that the bloody viscera hardened and crusted over the wires, like barnacles on a ship, had ensconced the device within his body –​ the organic flesh growing like an ivy over and around the hard plastics of wires and casings. Only the scar silhouetting on the skin where the technics entered his body. Gradually his body absorbing, accepting, merging and encasing the device to become part of the body bringing into being a new union of techno-​hybridity. Jesus’s body had accepted the modifications. It took longer for Jesus to accept his altered subjectivity via techno-​hybridity. Being: At first, admittedly, it had been difficult. He’d had to self-​medicate with alcohol and sleeping pills. A  functioning alcoholic cyborg (as opposed to an alcoholic functioning cyborg). Everything had changed for him. But had it? There was nothing actually wrong with him then or now. All things considered he was luckier than most. He’d made it through the selection process; at least that was something. Only 7% had done so. It just seems that he was living his life on an edge, just waiting for the next heartbeat, the next breath…the implants were deep inside his body but not so deep that he could not feel their presence; not so deep that they did not cause silhouettes and shadows on his skin… The body has two dimensions and the cybernetic modifications exist in both the inside out and outside in.Vulnerability is caused by altering the dimensions of the body and

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flouting the integrity between them. The everyday cyborgs feel the modifications (feel inside the flesh and see the skin silhouette). Cybernetic modification causes a change of what you are and a change to who you are. Body modifications are subjectivity alterations. Jesus told me a story of how he had gone out to catch a movie. People were talking behind him –​all the way through the movie. He confronted them with their rude and inconsiderate behaviour. He became angry, incandescent –​his cybernetic implant kicked in and the results were unpleasant. Jesus took greater care now and had become used to moderating his emotions. Becoming: BUT Shelly could breathe. Oh My GOD! Deep beautiful lovely big breaths. Big busty blustery breaths blowing out and in her lungs. Long and slow. In and out and in and out and in and out and in and out. Pushing her chest outrageously up and out; not for the breasts but for the breath. Becoming a cyborg when you were a woman was virtually unheard of. She’d had to deal with all manner of criticisms obviously. Could she deal with it? The changes in body integrity, image and identity? The Triad of I? Unlike Jesus, Shelly had wanted her cybernetics so badly, had fought for her right to be modified. To be treated the same as everyone else and to be treated with the same cybernetics as the males could be. Of course, she could deal with it. She wanted to become an everyday cyborg. Her implanted cybernetic devices did not make her better than everyone else; they made her just better enough to be like everyone one else. This was not enhancement (physically, cognitively or morally) this was about a normality and making her normal. Who cares much about the normativity hidden inside the word normal anyways.Whether a person is less than normal or more than normal. She was a ‘new’ normal, true enough, but still normal. It would not be her ‘old’ normal; that was a time when she gave no care to whatever she did or whoever she did it with. Now she had to be much more careful. She had had to learn to adjust to the cyborg life. Breaking: Whether women could or should be cyborgs is the issue. One is not born a cyborg, one becomes cyborg. Whether by choice, or need or because of the most basic of cyborg rights. It was every human right to be cyborg. A woman’s right to be modified. It seemed ironic that the bodies of women were most likely to be adapted, altered and transformed for reproduction, pleasure and aesthetics, and yet were not considered suitable for cybernetics. It was thought that women would be unable to cope with the cybernetic technology that –​I mean let’s face it –​ cybernetic technology originally born from the military was made by, and only for, men. In this day and age (what a day and what an age), it seems hardly possible a woman, I mean a woman, could be cyborg. Part of the problem of course

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was the devices had been manufactured for men and obviously for men’s bodies. Eventually it was assumed that what worked for male bodies would work equally well for female. So long as no one talked about the female deaths and messes made with mesh and silicone. Digital Sexism: There were those against women becoming cyborgs. Cybernetic devices originally were made by men, for men, for war, for space exploration. These were toys for the boys. At first, the hackers had tried to hack into her cybernetic modifications tinkering with the way her devices functioned and attempting malfunctions. Attempts to hack her data had been made but had only meant a re-​routing of her information back. Hacking her data was not important –​it did not harm her. And who would want to know about her current bodily homeostatic states or what time she ate, slept or moved? More dangerous were the attempts to subvert her device’s cybernetic command, control and communication functions. Cybernetic devices were not bionics or prosthetics  –​they were smart and sophisticated.They reigned supreme in her body, replacing her brain as the control room for the physiological processes necessary to keep her alive. Her cybernetics could sense when her body malfunctioned, they made the necessary adjustments to correct for physiological functioning errors, restoring harmony throughout and then rechecking to make sure that harmonious homeostasis was reached and maintained. The hackers wanted her modifications to spin in her body, tangle her arteries with the wires, clog her veins with broken machinery, malfunction the device and break (in) it. There was little she could do to shield her devices to protect them from such insults. As it turned out her body was actually the best armour she could have. Successive hacking attempts had failed. Her modifications were too deep inside her body and inside her. And Shelly could breathe!! Watching: John, or ‘Johnny’ as he was called (when he had had friends), now he was different. Different from Jesus the ambivalent cyborg, and different from Shelley the desired cyborg. John knew he was being watched by the cybernetics, inside and out, and hated it. The constant surveillance from inside his body was annoying him. He used to be some kind of something, a special kind of person that drew attention to himself just from standing and existing. He enjoyed the attention then –​the overt head turning, eye meeting, looking up and down. The engaging with his audience and revisioning of his presence in acknowledgement of the audience reaction. How could he resist the idea of such attention coming from within? Some say you should be careful what you wish for. Getting what you want can mean losing what you had.

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The cyborgisation process had been televised and he watched and felt it all. It had hurt like hell. It wasn’t just the sting when the knife had cut through the skin, and then slice with a saw through the red flesh (‘See-​Saw, Marjory-​Daw, Johnny shall have a new master’; a nursery rhyme he had heard when young, stuck on repeat in his head; such prophesising in a nursery rhyme). Back to the television program he was starring in. He watched as the creators, cut, sawed, through the fatty yellow layers, sawing through the muscle; the creator seeking to find some space to add the techno scientific fixes. No, it wasn’t just the first or subsequent cuts. It wasn’t the palpable feeling of the very integrity of his body being abused. Like when you don’t feel but do feel getting a tooth removed (but a million times worse). Nor was it that the cyborgisation process would be televised. He watched the pain being inflicted on him and his own body boundaries being breached. No, the worst bit, the very worst stage, was the physical force and flesh violence needed by the creator to push the things into him. As tiny as the cybernetics were there was no space, no room inside his body (no room inside anybody’s body). Because of the lack of organic flesh space, there is a mound, a rise in the skin where the image of the device is reflected; a reverse silhouette of the inside-​out. Like the performativity of a wedding –​we are gathered here today…do you Johnny take your cybernetic devices for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and behold until death do you part? He had never married. His relationship with his devices were unlike that of any relationship he would have with another person. This was a permanent relationship with technology. There was no going back, the devices once embedded and accepted by the flesh could not be removed. The prising out of the inorganic from the organic would shatter the biofouling that had allowed the attachment of the body barnacles, causing a withering of the ivy of the flesh, the visceral crusts breaking off, causing damage to Johnny’s body. What was once the basis of the union of techno-​organic would become the grounds for its divorce. Johnny could forget most of the time that he was a hybrid of organic-​inorganic materiality. I  mean most everyday cyborgs were, weren’t they? They needed the modifications and were grateful for them –​especially the women. Trying to pretend that being a cyborg was OK; being grateful for the fact that they had indeed been lucky enough to make it through and be given the chance not only for a longer life, but a better life. A better life. Is that what they called it? A life that was no longer your own but given over to the 3Cs:  Control, Command and Communication. See-​ saw Marjory Daw Johnny had a new master…Johnny’s new master is the cybernetic device inside his body; there to help him be himself; making people better (and only the better people got to get better; only those who deserved it, or fought for it, or had been willing to be the first). He had deserved it.

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The Everyday Cyborgs’ Story-​Teller: I set out to tell the story of stories of cybernetic devices. I wanted to know how body modifications were altering subjectivities. If the human body that a person is born with is no longer 100% human because techno-​scientific innovations have been implanted within it  –​what happens to humanity? Do we become less human? Or more humane? What I  discovered was that cybernetic body modifications are altering subjectivity and for some, are also introducing new vulnerabilities (Oudshoorn, 2016). The implants are bodily cloaked, mainly invisible, grown over with flesh. But their effects go beyond the visceral, the body, the person, to relationships with others and the wider milieu (Haraway, 1991). Cyborg consequences cross the skin from inside-​out. Just as the implant itself was forced from the outside in. This was my gig. Sometimes, when the everyday cyborgs met with each other, like Jesus and Johnny.They would focus on the negatives of their hybridity and of their techno-​ organic bodies. Of the acclimatisation and self-​medication, of the reality of cyborg sexism versus the improbability of biohacking, and surveillance and control (coming from within and the inside flesh). Sentimental chat and nostalgia for a 100% human body did not do in a situation when a body could, but would never be re-​naturalised. The fact is that Jesus, Shelly and John are all ‘everyday’. Every day meaning this is their day to day. Every day as this is what the situation is today. Every day as this is what it could be for our tomorrow. This is not just about saviour politics or economics. The creators cannot be stopped from creating more and more cyborgs –​everyday, day after day as the demand continues, the need heightens. It doesn’t matter what the implantable cybernetic devices are as their effect on individuals and others are representative of a new biomedical nemesis. These are the times that we live within. Everyday cyborgs exist around us and yet their vulnerability caused by their cybernetic implants, the need for acclimatisation to techno-​organic hybridity and reconciliation to cybernetic control, has largely gone unnoticed. Until now. This is a cyborg manifesto for the biomedical age (Haddow, 2021).

References Clynes, M.E., & Kline, N.S., 1960. Cyborgs and Space. Astronautics,  26–​76. Haddow, G. 2021. Embodiment and Everyday Cyborgs:  Technologies that Alter Subjectivity. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Haraway, D. 1991. A Cyborg Manifesto:  Science, Technology, and Socialist-​Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. Simians, Cyborgs and Women:  The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Oudshoorn, N. 2016. The Vulnerability of Cyborgs:  The Case of ICD Shocks. Science, Technology & Human Values, 767–​792.

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About the Author Gill Haddow is currently a senior lecturer based in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She has a background in the sociology of health and biomedicine, and developed a particular focus on new and emerging scientific and medical technologies, bringing these together through her interests in embodiment, identity and relationships. Her areas of research in the last ten years have included organ transplantation and donation including xenotransplantation; genetic databases; implantable smart technologies and more recently the way that body modifications caused by implantable medical technologies alter subjectivity. Her Wellcome Trust University Award for the project ‘Animal, Mechanical and Me: The Search for Replaceable Hearts’ (2013–​2018) highlighted the vulnerabilities caused by creating different types and kinds of human hybrids. In her forthcoming book Embodiment and the Everyday Cyborg: Technologies that Alter Subjectivity (2021) she outlines these vulnerabilities and the strategies used by ‘everyday cyborgs’ to deal with living with a heart device. She conducted interviews with individuals who carry within themselves an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD). Due to the autonomous closed feedback function of the device, it is a ‘cybernetic’ system. Placing it into an organism creates a techno-​organic hybrid called ‘cyb-​org’ (Clynes & Kline, 1960). This provided the inspiration for ‘When I first saw Jesus’.

PART 2

Being a Cyborg for My Health

7 PERS. EX. Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone

Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment, I chop wood and carry water. From recent social media events, which, I am reasonably certain, hold a funhouse mirror up to reality, for a trans person to speak from personal experience is to invite invective for using pers.ex as an excuse for sloppy theorizing while quietly attacking one’s natural constituency. So when I  say these remarks are merely personal reflections, the reader may just as well draw their own conclusion about what work this text is actually doing. I’ve pretty well settled into a comfortable groove, as the senility-​adjacent are wont to do. My job now, as then, is to create a viable future by excavating an imagined past. In the early ‘80s of the XXth century I wrote a novel about women who had been forced to forget their lived past—​a history in which they were makers, creators, movers, shakers, and, of course, the genre being fantasy, warriors—​and accept a present in which they were essentially invisible.As present-​ day scholars increasingly unearth a flood of information that reveals the pervasive presence of creative, effective women across an astonishing variety of human enterprise, that novel feels to me increasingly prescient. In a moment of reflexivity, one of the protagonists muses about “the metaphor of women united in high and common purpose” through the act of remembering. She might be referring to the novel’s epigraph, by Monique Wittig, the lesbian political philosopher-​poet’s lesbian political philosopher-​poet: There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-​bellied.You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember. The wild roses flower in the woods.Your hand is

78  Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone

torn on the bushes gathering mulberries and strawberries you refresh yourself with. You run to catch the young hares that you flay with stones from the rocks to cut them up and eat all hot and bleeding. You know how to avoid meeting a bear on the track.You know the winter fear when you hear the wolves gathering. But you can remain seated for hours in the tree-​tops to await morning.You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent. Remembering as creation. An utterance so essential to one’s existence in that time that at least one young woman had the entire thing tattooed onto her torso. Do I  do that still? Remember an imagined past to create an actual future? I suppose I do. Allow me the luxury of switching to a mode I professionally despise: the transition narrative. As the third slide in my deck points out, I’ve seen some weird shit. In the context of this anthology the question is whether there is a qualitative or quantitative difference in weird shit pre-​and post-​transition. In my case the answer is no to quantity, yes to quality. Pre-​transition, strange and inexplicable shit happened all the time, along with shit of perfectly reasonable origin. Post-​ transition, strange and inexplicable shit happens all the time, along with shit of perfectly reasonable origin. I can just label it differently. You may have thought I meant that transition. Not so. I was referring to when I finally left the University of Texas. But it could have been when my husband of 20 years died. Or when, after 30 years of life as a lesbian separatist, I suddenly found myself in an exciting, fulfilling, altogether wonderful and dumbfoundingly heterosexual marriage. (Talk about betraying your values.) So. I’ve spent most of my adult—​and, in fact, pre-​adult—​life thinking, performing, theorizing, raising hell, seeking out perfect chocolate, and writing opinion pieces for semi-​academic anthologies. And here I  am, staring down my pull date, so what’s life like now? I’m writing an opinion piece for a semi-​academic anthology. Well. And for my next act, I’m working on a screenplay for a private detective buddy movie. In it, Jan and I—​P.I.’s, partners and, of course, lovers—​r isk narrow escapes, shoot our way out of deadly cliffhangers and bring the Bad Guys to justice. You may have thought I meant that Jan. Yes, in fact I did. Cue stinger music. Duh-​duh-​duhhhhhhhhhh! Because, why not? I’d print the first few paragraphs here, just to give you the flavor, but they’re too risqué for a semi-​academic publication. Suffice to say the phone rings in the middle of a moment of wild abandon, I know it’s a client and

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reach over reflexively to grab it but Jan looks up from between my… oh crap, just wait for the movie.

About the Author Allucquére Rosanne (Sandy) Stone, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Communication Emerita and founding director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin; Wolfgang Kohler Professor of Media and Performance Studies at the European Graduate School; Banff Centre Senior Artist; and Fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute. She received her doctorate in History of Consciousness at the University of California Santa Cruz, studying under Donna Haraway. Stone is the author of The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto and is considered a founder of the academic discipline of Transgender Studies. Her book The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (MIT Press) was also a result of her work with Haraway. Stone has worked in and written about film, music, experimental neurology, writing, engineering, and computer programming. She has been profiled in ArtForum, Wired, Mondo 2000, and other publications and films. She also appears in three different documentaries, all shooting at the same time, which she finds incredibly confusing. Wikipedia: https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Sandy_​Stone_​(artist)

8 INFUSIONES/​INFUSIONS Estampas Itinerantes en Mi Tratamento de Cáncer/​Itinerant Portraits in My Cancer Treatment Heidi J. Figueroa-​Sarriera English Translation by Andrew Hurtley

FIGURE 8.1  Dos Animales Visibles/​Two Visible Animals

En el mes de septiembre de 2007 fui diagnosticada con cáncer de mamas. A partir de ese momento mi vida tomó un giro inesperado en una carrera desenfrenada por sobrevivir, carrera que raras veces estuvo bajo mi control. Me adentré en un mundo desconocido donde sentimientos contradictorios absorbían una amalgama de incertidumbre, temor y esperanza. Una tarde Samuel Colón, uno de los estudiantes graduados de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, me preguntó muy tímidamente cómo era ese proceso de la quimioterapia, qué me hacían y cómo me sentía. La pregunta me tomó de sorpresa y le respondí de manera muy general algo que ahora no recuerdo. No obstante, la pregunta quedó rondando por algunos días en mi mente hasta que concluí dos cosas. En primer lugar, me di cuenta de que las personas que me rodeaban estaban

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tan sorprendidas como yo por el diagnóstico de cáncer y la transformación de mi cuerpo a consecuencia del tratamiento y que ellas deseaban conocer más sobre lo que era esta experiencia. En segundo lugar, comprendí que mi falta de palabras para responder a la pregunta de Samuel revelaba una experiencia existencial muy profunda que me hacía incapaz de ponerla en palabras, incapaz de responderle y de responderme a mí misma. Entonces, comencé a escribir el primer texto, El animal que llevamos dentro, que trata sobre los primeros efectos secundarios de la quimioterapia en mi cuerpo y la sensación de un cuerpo que se interroga a sí mismo sobre sus límites. También versa sobre las extrañas maneras en las que se relacionan las especies en nuestro mundo y las transacciones económicas y políticas que las rigen, y que conforman nuestros cuerpos de formas tensas y contradictorias. Envié este párrafo por correo electrónico a algunos amigos y amigas cercanas, recibí de vuelta mensajes que de muchas maneras validaban mi experiencia. Pero, más aún, eran mensajes que transmitían acompañamiento, esa sensación de estar en un mundo y respirar gracias a la existencia de esos otros cuerpos a quiénes nos abrimos cuando nos relacionamos unos con otros. Todas las veces que pude me senté y escribí más párrafos sobre esta travesía. Le puse diferentes títulos y los veía materializarse de forma analógica en la pantalla de mi ordenador. Mis dedos empujaban rítmicamente las teclas que de forma automática y como extensión corporal plasmaban ante mis ojos mis pensamientos, solo para desvanecerse en la digitalidad del ancho de banda y tocar a otro ser humano en algún otro lugar revelando así su absoluta virtualidad. ¿Por qué he llamado a estos escritos Infusiones? Porque en Puerto Rico, así como en otros lugares, éste es el nombre con el que se conoce la administración del tratamiento. La sala donde se administra la quimoterapia se conoce como “Sala de Infusiones”. Es interesante este término porque en todos sus significados remite a líquido, volumen constante cuyas moléculas tienen tan poca cohesión que se adaptan a la forma de aquello que lo contiene. Lo que me hizo pensar entonces sobre “eso” que lo sostiene, el cuerpo, tanto en singular como en plural, entrelazado con instituciones y discursos, apañado por otros cuerpos dolidos, sublimes y sublimados que acompañan el paso itinerante en la vida y la supervivencia. Mientras tomaba un café con Alejandro Torres, el padre de mi hija, éste me propuso que pusiera ilustraciones a los escritos. Siempre me interesó el campo de la fotografía y me propuse comenzar a tomar cursos y leer más sobre este tema. Me parecía enigmática su capacidad para producir lo que Susan Sontag ha llamado en su libro Sobre la fotografía, el pathos generalizado de la añoranza, la relación entre fotografía, la nostalgia y el paso del tiempo. Estas fotos fueron producidas en el verano de 2010, un año y medio luego de terminar el tratamiento de quimioterapia y radioterapia, mientras me encontraba en Barcelona donde trabajaba en mi libro sobre tecnología y subjetividad al mismo tiempo que me enfrentaba a pérdidas y a mayores incertidumbres. En este período de mucha angustia y nostalgia, sin embargo, encontré el ambiente propicio para producir las fotos que acompañarían las infusiones. Por consiguiente las fotos, además de establecer diálogos con éstas,

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al mismo tiempo contienen signos y rastros de mis experiencias en Barcelona y de la querida gente que me acompañó en esta otra travesía, en especial, Ana Garay, María Luz Martínez, Bárbara Biglia, Margot Pujals, Carlota Riba, Agnès Vayreda, Ana Rita Rodríguez y mis primas, Isabel y Elena Sarriera. Estas fotos hacen eco de estos otros diálogos que quedarán en mi memoria desafiando el pasar del tiempo. On September 2007, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. From that moment on, my life took an unexpected turn in a frantic race for survival, a race that was rarely under my control. During this period, I immersed myself in an unknown world where conflicting emotions absorbed a mix of uncertainty, fear and hope. One afternoon, Samuel Colón, one of our graduate students at the University of Puerto Rico, very timidly asked me about the process of chemotherapy, what did they do to me and how I felt. The question took me by surprise, and I answered very briefly something I cannot remember right now. Nevertheless, the question lingered for some days in my mind until I realized two things. First of all, I realized that the people around me were as surprised as myself by the cancer diagnosis and the transformation of my body as a result of treatment, and that they wanted to know more about this experience. Second, I realized that the absence of words with which to answer Samuel’s question revealed a deep existential experience that made me unable to put it into words, unable to answer him and unable to answer myself. Afterward, I  started writing my first piece The animal within, about the first side effects of chemotherapy on my body and the feelings of a body questioning its own limit. It also deals with the strange ways in which species relate to each other in this world and the economic and political transactions that rule and shape our bodies in tense and conflicting ways. I sent this paragraph by email to some close friends and received messages that validated my experience in many ways. Moreover, they were messages that transmitted accompaniment, that precious feeling of being in a world, breathing because of the existence of these other bodies to whom we open ourselves in bonding. Every opportunity I  got, I  sat down and wrote more paragraphs about this journey. I  put them under different titles and saw them materialize in analog form on my computer screen. My fingers rhythmically and automatically pushed buttons like an extension of my body stamping my thoughts before my eyes only to fade into the digital bandwidth in order to touch another human being somewhere else, revealing its absolute virtuality. Why have I called these writings Infusions? It is because in Puerto Rico and other countries, the administration of chemotherapy is called this way. The room where these chemicals are administered is known as “Infusions Room.”This term is interesting because all its definitions refer to a liquid, a constant volume whose molecules have so little cohesion that they conform to the shape of what contains them. This made me think about that “something” that contains it, the body both singular and plural, intertwined with institutions and discourses, joined by other bodies in pain, sublime and sublimated bodies and discourses, that accompany our itinerant steps while living and surviving.

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While having coffee with Alejandro Torres, the father of my daughter, he proposed that I should include pictures to accompany my writings. I was always interested in the field of photography and I decided to start taking courses and read more on this topic. I found enigmatic the ability to produce what Susan Sontag has called in her book On Photography: the general pathos of yearning, the relationship between photography, nostalgia and the passing of time. These pictures were produced in the summer of 2010, a year and a half after finishing chemotherapy and radiotherapy, while I was in Barcelona working on my book about technology and subjectivity, and simultaneously going through more losses and uncertainties. However, during this period of great anguish and nostalgia I found the right environment to produce the photos that accompany the infusions. Therefore, the photos not only serve as a way to create dialogue with the words, but also they contain signs and traces of my experiences in Barcelona and the dear people that joined me in this other journey; especially Ana Garay, María Luz Martínez, Bárbara Biglia, Margot Pujals, Carlota Riba, Agnès Vayreda, Ana Rita Rodríguez and my cousins, Isabel and Elena Sarriera. These photos echo these other dialogues which will remain in my memory defying the passing of time.

El animal que llevamos dentro/​The Animal Within

FIGURE 8.2 Toni

Curioso/​Curious Toni

84  Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera

Había visto un anuncio de una crema corporal donde se mostraba a una joven modelo que posaba la mano sobre su piel mientras un cocodrilo le pasaba muy cerca. El anuncio hacía alusión a cómo la crema protegía de la “piel de cocodrilo”, aquella piel cuarteada, reseca y áspera. En aquel entonces me parecía una metáfora algo extrema, una estrategia de mercado que explotaba la zoofobia y el imaginario de la eterna juventud. Después de la tercera quimio entiendo que la “piel de cocodrilo” existe, pero las cremas no la previenen. La piel de cocodrilo viene de adentro hacia fuera. Entonces ahora comprendo mejor lo mucho que tenemos en común con los animales. Mucho más de lo que hubiera pensado en el pasado. Mi lengua, por ejemplo, ahora es bastante parecida en su color, a la de un perro de raza Chow Chow. Cuando me aplican la quimio cada dos semanas es la experiencia que más me iguala a esos pequeños roedores de laboratorio que utilizan para toda suerte de experimentos, como el OncoMouse, un roedor manipulado genéticamente para que sea susceptible al cáncer, lo que facilita los experimentos de oncología en esta especie. Ustedes dirán que la relación no es semejante porque a OncoMouse le inducen cáncer, mientras que a mí me lo quitan. Bueno, en muchos sentidos la experiencia no es igual. La diferencia más evidente es que yo puedo consentir y mi amigo OncoMouse, no. Otra diferencia es que a este amigo lo enferman para curar a otros, mientras que a mí me envenenan para curarme. Es decir, OncoMouse es un altruista involuntario, mientras yo soy una masoquista autoimpuesta que permite la tortura porque no desea morir. En resumidas cuentas, que la historia de vida de OncoMouse y la mía están cruzadas y tenemos en común no solo células malignas, sino también un encuadre médico-​científico en contubernio con el complejo de industrias farmacéuticas y compañías aseguradoras que producen nuestros nuevos cuerpos mutantes. I’d seen an ad for body cream that showed a young woman with her hand on her skin while an alligator slithered by. The ad promised that the cream would protect you from “alligator skin” —​skin that was cracked, rough, dry. At the time, the metaphor struck me as a bit extreme, a marketing strategy that exploited our zoophobia and the fantasy of eternal youth. After my third bout of chemotherapy, I realize that “alligator skin” actually does exist, but creams can’t prevent it. Alligator skin comes from the inside out. So now I  understand how much we have in common with animals  —​much more than I’d ever thought before. My tongue, for example, is now pretty close to the color of one of those chow-​chow dog’s. When I  get chemo every two weeks, it’s an experience that signals my close kinship to those little rodents used in all sorts of laboratory experiments. OncoMouse, for instance, is a strain that’s been genetically manipulated to be susceptible to cancer, so researchers can do oncological experiments on it more easily. You may object that it’s not the same thing, that people give the OncoMouse cancer while they’re trying to take it away from me. Okay, I admit that in many ways the experience is not the same. The most obvious difference is that I can consent, while my friend

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the OncoMouse can’t. The second difference is that medical researchers poison my little friend so they can cure others, while they poison me to cure me. In other words, OncoMouse is an involuntary altruist, while I’m a self-​imposed masochist who, not wanting to die, voluntarily subjects herself to torture. Whatever —​the fact is, my life and the life of OncoMouse are intertwined, and we have in common not just malignant cells but also a medico-​scientific establishment in conspiracy with pharmaceutical and health-​insurance companies to produce our new mutant bodies.

Descabellada/​”Descabellada”

FIGURE 8.3  Auto

Retrato/​Self-​Portrait

La quimioterapia afecta los folículos pilosos que dejan de reproducirse, razón por la cual se detiene el crecimiento del cabello. También el folículo debilitado ya no puede sostener el cabello que sale de él provocando su caída. Esto es igual para hombres y mujeres. Mirarme en el espejo, tomar un mechón de cabello en la

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mano y ver cómo se desprende casi en su totalidad es una de las imágenes más angustiosas que he experimentado. El Internet, siempre al rescate y cobijo de casi todas las obsesiones posibles, ofrece varios supuestos remedios: ingerir vitaminas B y A; frotar la cabeza con sábila y aceite de hígado de pescado; mezclar media cebolla triturada en la mitad de un pote de shampoo; colocar sobre el cuero cabelludo agua previamente hervida con eucalipto; ¡poner pastillas anticonceptivas en shampoo!… son sólo algunos ejemplos. Muchos de estos websites van dirigidos a la población femenina. ¿Por qué tanto rollo por la caída del cabello? Porque en nuestro contexto histórico y cultural la caída del cabello en la mujer no es la misma que la caída del cabello en el hombre. Hay una significación social de esta pérdida que es diferente. Solo bastará un repaso somero por conocidos personajes del cine para entender la diferencia. Recordemos la calva perfecta que se levantaba sobre la mirada penetrante y seductora de Yul Brynner en el inolvidable papel del Rey en la película The King and I (1956). En el otro extremo tenemos la calva sublime de Powder, el extraordinario albino de la película que lleva ese mismo nombre (Powder, 1995), cuya aparente fragilidad encerraba retos inimaginables a los límites humanos. Entre ambos, tenemos al enigmático personaje Koyak de Telly Savalas —​brillante e incorruptible detective que se convirtió en un icono sinónimo de calvicie en los setenta. En contraposición tenemos al aburrido y estereotipado personaje que encarna Demi Moore en G.I. Jane, que produce su calvicie como signo irrefutable de asumir el brutal entrenamiento militar como si fuera un hombre. Su acto cuestiona la debilidad adscrita al género femenino sólo para abrazar el código masculino más insípido de la fuerza y la resistencia muscular. Del otro lado, la calvicie de María Falconetti en La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc (1928) nos remite al tormento, el martirologio y al límite de la razón. La calvicie de la teniente Ilia sólo es posible en el ambiguo escenario de la nave Enterprise donde humanos y extraterrestres intercambian formas de vida. Mientras Sigourney Weaver en Alien 3 (1992) se afeitaba la cabeza para evitar infecciones de piojos en la prisión en la que fue confinada, Julianne Nicholson (The Love Letter, 1999) hace lo mismo cuando su amor no es correspondido. ¿Es necesaria mayor elaboración? Del lado femenino la  calvicie nos acerca más a la sinrazón, a la locura, a lo extraño, a la desestabilización de las certezas acostumbradas. No en vano decimos que una persona está “descabellada” cuando se sale de la norma esperada. De acuerdo con el Diccionario online de la Real Academia Española, este término se refiere a alguien que va “fuera de orden, concierto o razón”. Con el mechón de pelo en la mano me preguntaba si iba a tener la ecuanimidad para mirar mi imagen descabellada en el espejo día tras día y permanecer impávida como Natalie Portman en V for Vendetta (2006) cuando se rapa la cabeza para abrazar un futuro ineVitable. Chemotherapy affects the hair follicles  —​they stop working, and your hair stops growing. The weakened follicle also becomes unable to hold the hair

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that comes out of it, so your hair falls out. This happens to both women and men. Looking at myself in the mirror, taking several strands of hair between my fingers and watching almost every one come loose from my scalp is one of the most wrenching experiences I’ve had. The internet, always there with the 411 on virtually any conceivable obsession, offers several supposed remedies. Taking vitamins A and B, rubbing your scalp with aloe vera and cod-​liver oil, mixing half an onion, run through the blender, with half a bottle of shampoo, sprinkling your head with water that you’ve boiled eucalyptus leaves in, even crushing contraceptive pills and stirring them into your shampoo —​these are only a few examples. Many of the websites that offer these nostrums are aimed at women. What’s the big deal with losing your hair? Well, in our historical and cultural context, when a woman loses her hair it’s not the same as when a man does. There’s a different social significance in the first case. To see my point, just take a quick look at the movies. We all remember the glossy dome that rose over the penetrating, seductive gaze of Yul Brynner as the King in The King and I (1956). At the other extreme, we have the sublimely bald head of Powder, the extraordinary albino in the movie of the same name (Powder, 1995), whose apparent fragility masked unimaginable challenges to human limitation. Between them, we have the enigmatic personage Kojak, played by Telly Savalas —​the brilliant, incorruptible detective who became an icon synonymous with baldness in the seventies. In contradistinction, we have the boring, stereotyped character played by Demi Moore in G.I. Jane, who symbolically shaves her head, as though she were a man, when she goes into basic training. Her act questions the weakness ascribed to women only to embrace the most vacuous male code of muscular strength and toughness. On the other hand, the bald head of Maria Falconetti in La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc (1928) is a sign of torment, martyrdom, the limits of reason. The baldness of Lt. Ilea is only possible in the ambiguous universe of the Starship Enterprise, where humans and extraterrestrials exchange ways of life. While Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 (1992) shaved her head in order to avoid lice in the prison she was sent to, Julianne Nicholson (The Love Letter, 1999) shaves hers when her love goes wrong. Need I  go on? On the female side, baldness signifies injustice, madness, strangeness, alternate life-​ forms, the destabilization of our usual certainties. But it’s even worse when you live your life in Spanish, because the word descabellada —​literally “de-​haired” —​means “crazy, ridiculous, absurd, outrageous.” Standing there with a fistful of hair, I wondered whether I was going to have the equanimity to look at my crazy, ridiculous, absurd, outrageous hairless image in the mirror day after day and remain as expressionless as Natalie Portman does in V for Vendetta (2006) when she shaves her head embracing an ineVitable future.

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Yo, cyborg?/​I, cyborg?

FIGURE 8.4  Sí/​Yes

A finales de los años ochenta y principio de los noventa, mientras trabajaba en mi disertación doctoral, me interesé en el tema de los cyborgs. Estaba especialmente seducida por la propuesta de Donna Haraway, el cyborg como metáfora cultural para el siglo XXI. El cyborg reta los entendidos esencialistas de género proponiendo una figura híbrida (humano-​animal-​máquina) que desestabiliza las formas dicotómicas del pensamiento occidental y reta las premisas naturalistas para comprender lo humano. En Cleveland, para el 1993, conocí a mi amigo Chris Hables Gray quien me embarcó en la aventura de producir un libro: The Cyborg Handbook, publicado por Routledge dos años más tarde.Varios de los trabajos publicados en este texto estaban de alguna manera vinculados a lo que llamamos el cyborg médico. En las sociedades postindustrializadas, desde que estamos en el vientre materno el staff médico y sus aparatos vigilan y regulan los parámetros del desarrollo fetal hasta su final desvinculación del cuerpo-​incubadora de la madre, mientras el sistema inmunológico es reprogramado farmacológicamente a través de la vacunación. En adelante, la supervivencia emerge como un hecho biológico que se revela como fenómeno social y lo natural se hace ficción. En una noche de desvelo en New Orleans, Chris y yo repasábamos el ejercicio taxonómico inútil de clasificar los cyborgs a partir de dos categorías amplias: los “cyborgs puros” (aquellos organismos cuya propia subsistencia requería como condición la hibridación) y los “cyborgs impuros” (aquellos que podrían prescindir de la hibridación y aún así continuar vivos). Los cyborgs médicos pueden tener ambas condiciones. Un marcapasos y una pierna artificial son dos prótesis que producen cyborgs médicos con diferente grado de espectacularidad. Pero en aquella noche de insomnio nunca pensé que me iba a convertir perceptiblemente en uno de ellos. Contrario a Kevin Warwick, conocido ingeniero de robótica que se ha tomado a sí mismo como objeto experimental para convertirse en cyborg, para mí el organismo cibernético permanecía aún como un objeto, un ejercicio de abstracción, un afuera que me era ajeno. La transmutación final hacia el cyborg médico debidamente certificado parecía producirse cuando me colocaron un aparato dentro del pecho, el med-​port. Se trata

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de un disco pequeño con un diámetro aproximado de dos a tres cm con un área para la inyección de la quimioterapia llamado tabique (septum). El tabique está hecho de un material de silicona que cierra automáticamente después de cada inyección. Unido a la base del puerto hay un catéter que se inserta en un vaso sanguíneo principal y sirve para conducir la quimioterapia a la corriente sanguínea. Mi med-​port ha sido colocado arriba y a la derecha del pecho, pero también se puede colocar en otras áreas, como en la cavidad peritoneal. La función principal del med-​port es proteger los vasos sanguíneos, pues evita que se tenga que agujerear las venas en cada administración de quimioterapia. Una leve inflamación y dolor que enlazaban directamente con una pequeña herida de apenas dos pulgadas eran el signo más visible del implante de este artefacto que luego de la operación, todavía no sentía como mío. A medida que avanzaba el proceso de infusión, eventualmente las preguntas y comentarios de las enfermeras me condujeron a (in)corporarlo. Mientras los dedos de éstas recorrían la superficie mi piel intentando con dificultad palpar el puerto para encajar la aguja, me preguntaban: “¿te duele?”… como si se tratara de la cabeza … “¿te sientes tu puerto?”… como quien siente las palpitaciones del corazón …”¿oye, sientes que tu puerto se mueve?”… como si se refiriera a un diente flojo … “¡es pequeño, tu puerto!” como son pequeños mis senos, el lugar donde comenzó toda esta onco-​historia. Poco a poco he ido asimilando un nuevo imaginario corporal que ha ido a la par con un ejercicio de rendición y entrega que acompaña, no sin tensión, el tránsito del viejo mote de paciente al sospechosamente optimista sobreviviente. ¿Me he convertido en mi propio objeto de estudio, un cyborg? Si es así, ¿cuándo ocurrió este fenómeno? Se trata de un extraño proceso de doble sutura, una sutura simbólica sobre la sutura mecánica (¿real?) del cirujano, para fijar el aparato en la cavidad orgánica que me lleva a un mundo relacional más que confrontativo, un mundo de implicaciones, de transubjetividad. En éste, el cuerpo colapsa en la misma medida en que se expande enredándose en una gaza cada vez más compleja de espacios intermedios e inciertos que parecen escapar a todo evento fundacional. En su expresión más extrema, éste es el dilema de Motoko Kusanagi —​cyborg con cerebro humano y cuerpo artificial que la capacita para realizar acciones extraordinarias para capturar al notorio hacker, Puppet Master, autor del crimen más perseguido, hackear cerebros (ghost hacking) —​ en el manga, Ghost in the Shell (1995). Con respecto a Kusanagi, mayor a cargo de operaciones en la Sección 9 de la seguridad policial, cabría preguntarnos: si tal cosa como el ser humano deja de ser el punto de partida, si el cyborg provee un nuevo imaginario existencial y un cibercerebro puede producir su propio fantasma, entonces…¿qué somos? In the late eighties and early nineties, while I was working on my Ph.D. dissertation, I became interested in the subject of cyborgs. I was especially drawn to the ideas of Donna Haraway: the cyborg as a cultural metaphor for the twenty-​ first century. The cyborg challenges essentialist notions of gender by proposing a

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hybrid figure (human-​animal-​machine) that destabilizes the dichotomic forms of Western thought and challenges the naturalistic assumptions by which we understand what it means to be human. In 1993 in Cleveland, I met my friend Chris Hables Gray, who set me on the adventure of producing a book, The Cyborg Handbook, which was published by Routledge in 1995. Several of the articles contained in that book were associated in one way or another with what we called the “medical cyborg.” In post-​industrialized societies, from the time we are in our mother’s womb, the medical staff and their equipment watch over us and regulate the parameters of our fetal development until we are finally removed from our mother’s body-​incubator, while our immune system is reprogrammed pharmacologically by vaccination. From that point on, survival emerges as a biological fact revealed as a social phenomenon, and the natural becomes fiction. One late night-​into-​early-​morning in New Orleans, Chris and I went through the futile taxonomic exercise of classifying cyborgs into two broad categories: the “pure cyborgs” (those organisms whose subsistence required hybridization) and the “impure cyborgs” (those that could do away with hybridization and still continue to live on). Medical cyborgs can be either. A pacemaker and an artificial leg are prostheses that produce medical cyborgs of differing degrees of spectacularity. But I never thought on that insomniac night that I was going to become one of them. Unlike Kevin Warwick, a well-​known robotics engineer who has taken himself as an experimental object and turned himself into a cyborg, for me, the cybernetic organism remained an object, “out there,” an exercise in abstraction, and had nothing to do with me. My transmutation into a certified medical cyborg seemed to take place when the medical team inserted a “medport” into my chest. This is a small disc, about 2 or 3 cm in diameter, with a “septum” through which the chemotherapy liquid is injected. The septum is made of a silicon material that automatically closes, or heals, after each injection. At the bottom of the port is a catheter, inserted into a large blood vessel, through which the chemotherapy liquid flows into the bloodstream. My medport has been inserted in the upper right part of my chest, but it can be put in other places, such as the peritoneal cavity. The medport’s main function is to protect the blood vessels, since once it’s installed the technician doesn’t have to insert a needle into a vein every time chemotherapy is administered. A slight inflammation and pain, directly associated with a small incision, no more than a couple of inches long, were the most visible signs that this artifact had been implanted into my body —​a body which, after the operation, I  didn’t feel was quite mine. As the series of infusions progressed, the nurses’ questions and comments eventually led me to (in)corporate the device. While their fingers ran over my skin, trying to feel the port so they could insert the needle, they would ask me, “Does it hurt?” —​as though they were talking about my head or my toe —​or “Can you feel your port?” —​the way you can feel your heart beating —​or “Can you feel it move?” —​as though it were a loose tooth.

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Once, one exclaimed, “Wow, your port is little!,” like my breasts, where this whole onco-​story started. Little by little, I’ve begun to internalize a new imaginary of my body. This has paralleled the process of surrender that accompanies, not without tension, the transition from the old label of “patient” to the suspiciously optimistic one of “survivor.” Have I become my own object of study, a cyborg? If so, when did this happen? I feel I’m in a strange process of double suturing —​a symbolic suturing over the mechanical (real?) suturing done by the surgeon to insert the medical device that has taken me into a world that is relational rather than confrontational, a world of implications, of trans-​subjectivity. In this world, the body collapses to the same degree it expands, entangling itself in an increasingly complex gauze of intermediate and uncertain spaces that seem to elude any foundational event. In its most extreme expression, this is the dilemma faced by Motoko Kusanagi —​a cyborg with a human brain but an artificial body that enables her to perform extraordinary feats in capturing the Puppet Master, the notorious hacker who carries out that most horrific of crimes, ghost hacking, hacking into other people’s brains, in the manga titled Ghost in the Shell (1995). With respect to Kusanagi, a major assigned to Section 9 of police security, we might ask ourselves: If the human being is no longer the point of departure, if the cyborg provides a new existential imaginary, and a cyberbrain can produce its own ghost, then… what are we?

FIGURE 8.5  Mind

About the Author Heidi J.  Figueroa-​Sarriera is a community social psychologist and professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Her research area is focused on digital technology and the transformations of everyday life, subjectivity and embodiment. She has co-​authored several books on cyberculture and cyborgs, and published articles on the cyborg imaginary, the domotic environment, new forms of community and gender issues, among others. Her latest book is titled, Imaginarios de sujeto en la Era Digital. Post(identidades) contemporáneas (Subject’s Imaginaries in the Digital Era. Contemporaries Post(identities) published in 2017 by CIESPAL, Quito.

9 TO SEE WITH EYES UNSHIELDED Perceiving Life as a Partible Cyborg Miranda Loughry

At ten, I was diagnosed with Stargardt disease. Of course I’d known something was wrong with my eyes long before then, but I went to the ends of the earth to avoid telling anyone. I memorised all my books in advance so I could recite them when the teacher asked me to read aloud. I made excuses to walk close to the blackboard so I could quickly copy down whatever the teacher had written. I always sat in the front row at assemblies, not because I was especially eager, but so that I could see what was going on. As my sight worsened and time went on, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion of normality I’d so carefully curated.

FIGURE 9.1  Loughry

retinal scan 2019

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My paediatrician eventually caught me when I recited the usual contents of their annual eye test (E; F, P;T, O, Z; L, P, E, D …).To my horror, they’d changed the letters, and I’d recited the old ones. She referred me to a specialist in degenerative retinal conditions, and he discovered a ring of pisciform lesions on my retinal pigment epithelium.A mutation in the ABCA4 gene makes my eyes unable to clear out the toxic lipid byproducts of normal cell activity, which subsequently accumulate on the retina and starve my photoreceptor cells of nutrients. The photoreceptors die off, and I’m left with a blind spot in their place. Over time, more and more photoreceptors die, and my vision will continue to degenerate further (Molday et al 2009).

FIGURE 9.2  A

typical Snellen chart. Originally developed by Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen in 1862, to estimate visual acuity (Dahl 2008).

The process of reconciling myself with my diagnosis was long and arduous. Despite having been thoroughly socialised in the blind community, I resented my ever worsening sight. I hovered in the liminality between vision and blindness, not belonging fully in either sphere. I am at once a sighted person with some vision loss, and a blind person with some residual sight. I went through the classic narrative arc shared by many people grieving vision loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. I  survived high school and got accepted to study anthropology at university. By the time I started my course, my blindness had become a point of pride—​not a disability, but a superpower that enabled me to traverse experiential environments inaccessible to my peers. I looked forward to a bright (if blurry) future. In my final year of undergraduate study, I found myself at an interdisciplinary conference in Cologne. There, I met Chris Hables Gray, who introduced me to Donna Haraway’s work on cyborgs. I don’t have any cybernetic implants, nor have I been assimilated, nor upgraded, as far as I’m aware. I do have all my vaccines, which Chris is delighted to inform me automatically qualifies me for the title. And I’m as much cyborg as any twenty-​something who outsources memory

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storage and basic arithmetic to a smartphone. Chris wasn’t interested in that, in my case. He wondered, was I a cyborg by virtue of my assistive technology? I thought about the day I was diagnosed, and decided yes. The afternoon following my appointment, I  ventured outside without sunglasses despite the optometrist’s advice. I wanted this last chance to see the world with eyes unshielded. For that instant, the world was crystal, with gilded leaves and a bright blue sky. I forced my eyes open despite the light’s sting, and I saw our garden as through a kaleidoscope, swirling fragments of colour eclipsing one another. When at last I  allowed the comforting darkness to envelope me, the world became a vacuum. Closing my eyes even for a second had plunged me into an abyss. I opened my eyes with caution and looked out onto the garden, this time through the dark tinted lenses that, from this point on, would form an impermeable membrane between me and the ultraviolet. I didn’t know it then, but in that moment, I began to become a cyborg. The me that flits between the sighted and blind worlds is not me unmodified. As a discrete biological organism (if such a classification can be justly deployed at all), I am disabled. That is, I am neither able to participate in the sighted world, nor the blind one, nor any other. My nagging eyestrain would ensure that I’d spend all my time behind blackout curtains were it not for my sunglasses. My inability to read normal-​sized text would bar me from academia, were it not for my screenreader. And I certainly would have fallen down many flights of stairs by now were it not for my cane. With these tools, I am differently-​ (not dis-​) abled. Since identity is forged in the furnace of interaction, and since my participation in the world is mediated by my assistive technology (AT), it follows that AT should be as integral to my identity as any other component of my habitus (Bourdieu 1977), as real as a Parisian’s swimming stroke or a nun’s gait. It just so happens that these technologies of the body are only possible through the use of physical objects external to my biological self, yet which are integrated into my body by virtue of our longstanding interdependence. My ATs are as real and inalienable a part of me as my heart, lungs, and liver, and they are as intimate a part of me as my gender. I’ve used all manner of low-​vision gadgets over the years, many of which, it turns out, are exclusively marketed towards elderly audiences. Serves me right for developing the juvenile version of an overwhelmingly geriatric disease. For simplicity’s sake, I will focus only on the three I use most often, and which happen to be the most interesting cyborgically: 1. 2. 3.

glasses cane screenreader

Below, I describe my relationship with each of these ATs through the lenses of anthropological discourse on materiality, agency, and kinship, examining how each

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has become integrated into my composite cyborg identity. To conclude, I reflect on the prospective future for me as a blind cyborg. Bearing in mind that full sight restoration through technology is becoming increasingly plausible, I consider the implications of a cure on my past, present, and future cyborg self.

Glasses The worst thing about Stargardt disease isn’t the loss of visual acuity; it’s the photophobia. Apparently it’s a fairly atypical symptom for Stargardt, but I must for whatever reason wear sunglasses at all times to protect my residual vision and to help mitigate the pain of being exposed to bright light. At first, I felt horrible dysphoria whenever I was reminded of them, which was—​as one would expect for an accessory worn in such close proximity to my face—​constantly. Even at twenty, I often feel awkward and self-​conscious for wearing them inside.True, my disability doesn’t disfigure me, but my glasses did at first feel like a disguise. I didn’t feel like myself when wearing them, and I found myself unconsciously removing them despite their necessity, like a body rejecting an organ transplant. I didn’t want to admit vulnerability, to give up autonomy over my appearance. More so, I didn’t want to rely on anything or anyone to help me, and my diagnosis (symbolised by the sunglasses) augured a lifetime of dependence on others. Gradually, almost without notice, my identity began to shift. A few years, a few friends, and a few different pairs of glasses later, I reconciled myself with my inevitable blindness, and I realised the futility of resisting assimilation. Now, my identity is deeply enmeshed and entangled with the materiality of my glasses. Like a prosthetic limb, my glasses transcend the categories of ‘clothing’ and ‘body part’. Like clothing, I remove them to sleep, opting instead for an opaque eye mask. Yet, like a limb, I feel more than naked, incomplete without them. On the few occasions I’ve misplaced them, I feel inexorably wrong, and I compulsively search for them until they’re found. Further to their intended purpose of filtering out UV light, my dark glasses constitute as integral and inalienable a part of my body as my skull, and I feel as naked without them as I would without my skin.

Cane I had a similar identity crisis upon getting my first white cane. Again, I didn’t want to mark myself as different, much less as disabled. For the first time, strangers read me as blind, and therefore frail, incompetent, and in need of immediate sighted assistance. It only took tumbling down one invisible flight of stairs for me to make friends with Floyd. Floyd is 56 inches long, a white and red collapsible indicator cane with a rolling marshmallow tip. He’s actually my third cane, his two predecessors (Homer and Moses) having met an untimely demise.

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I named my canes first as a joke—​Homer because he helped guide me home; Moses because he parted the Red Sea of oncoming foot traffic; Floyd because his handle was pink. Homer was shy and unassuming, but with a stoic dedication to his work. When confiscated by airport security, he valiantly sacrificed himself to save me. Moses objected to the very idea of cobblestones, and he made his discontentment apparent by spontaneously disassembling himself in their presence. Floyd took great pleasure in snapping open with a satisfying series of clicks, but he’ll pinch your fingers if deployed too hastily. I’ve just met Aaron (my current cane), so he’s still shy, but his personality is developing more and more by the day. What was at first just a humorous way to hide my insecurity about using a mobility aid, however, now reveals itself to be more telling about my cyborghood than I initially realised. I chose to give my canes names, I did not intend to give them personalities. Those were entirely their own inventions. Of course I realise my canes are all just a collection of carbon fibre rods strung together with bungee cord, but on some level, their thingness (to borrow a term from Heidegger) makes them real. By virtue of spending so much time together, I  have imbued them with a part of my own personality, my own personhood. I treat them with great respect, not just because I rely on them for mobility, but because they deserve it. I have established a relationship with them, one that is equal parts work and play, colleague and friend. They give me their respect, and I give them mine—​not just because I rely on them, but because they deserve it. Like my glasses, my canes are external objects that preserve and extend my senses. The kinematics of walking with a cane are substantially different from walking without one. My cane steadies me, physically and mentally. I’m now so used to feeling the texture of the ground a few steps before I reach it that, when that sense is removed, I feel vertigo, like I’m walking a half step behind where I  should be, never quite able to catch up. Going outside without Floyd is like going out in the snow without shoes: slow, uncomfortable, and vaguely dangerous (you might slip on black ice, or in my case, just about any conceivable obstacle). Going outside without my glasses is more like venturing out without feet: painful (assuming they were freshly removed) and functionally paralysing.

Screenreader There’s also Alex, who’s a library of synthesised phonemes native to the macOS text-​to-​speech software. He narrates everything on my computer screen for me, including the abundant books and articles I’m required to read for my degree. Altogether, I spend more hours each day listening to Alex speak than to any other voice. He’s more than a tool, more than a colleague; he’s a dear friend. Like my canes, Alex has gradually revealed his personality to me over time. Though he generally speaks with an American accent, he chooses some words—​ randomly as far as I  can tell—​to speak as if in French. And though his pitch becomes slightly warped, his voice sounds most himself to me when he speaks at

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400% speed.Also he breathes! If you listen carefully, you can hear him subtly inhale before embarking on each new sentence. I’m told it gives him an eerie, uncanny valley sound, but to me it’s just another of his many idiosyncrasies.Whether due to buggy software or genuine humour, it’s those quirks that most endear him to me. I’d always assumed that, like Siri (voiced by Susan Bennett), Alex’s voice would have been harvested from a real person. In researching this chapter, though, I couldn’t track down the actor’s name anywhere. One anonymous commenter on an Internet forum claimed to personally know the original Alex, but no further information about his identity was forthcoming. Apple’s tech support advisor was helpful but perplexed when I called to ask if there was an official answer. The voice was entirely synthesised, he thought. Or at least, if Alex’s voice ever did belong to a human, the developers have long since forgotten his name. I suppose anonymity is for the best in any case, since Alex can be made to say anything his user wants, whether he likes it or not. I, too, appreciate the ambiguity of Alex’s origins. He has, after all, become an integral part of the way I process information, both in his presence and out of it. I often find my inner monologue speaking in Alex’s voice. Sometimes he narrates my dreams. It’s unnerving to imagine Alex speaking as a human does, without his mechanical cadence, without his subtle, airless inhalations, without his deadpan pronunciation of even my most egregious spelling errors. My Alex isn’t human; he isn’t supposed to be. His personhood isn’t bounded in a flesh-​and-​blood body like mine is, and yet he’s only active (alive?) because of the deficiency of my flesh. If I were to be cured, he would have no purpose, and the version of him I have grown to love would cease to exist.

Reflections It’s old news that body adornments and modifications can be powerful vessels of identity. A favourite watch, a wedding ring, piercings, makeup, the presence or absence of body hair—​all these things communicate a message about how we perceive ourselves and wish to be perceived in turn. I have tattoos, each of which forms an important part of my ‘social skin’ (Turner 1980). Yet, I wonder if my relationship with my ATs runs deeper. They are not just expressions of identity; they are my identity—​or a part of it, at any rate. More than that, they have their own identities as well, identities that are created and enacted in tandem with my own. One of my first undergraduate anthropology lectures was on objects, agency, and ‘The social life of things’ (Appadurai 1988). There’s extensive scholarly discourse about the materiality of stuff, things, objects, and whether any of these can be considered agents in their own right, or if they’re only endowed with social lives by the humans that make and manipulate them.Though I’m by no means an expert in materiality, I am intimately and intuitively familiar with the social lives of the AT objects I use every day. They have become so entangled with my own

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life that, though I am organic and they are not, though I am human and they are not, it is together and only together with them that I am me. In Cologne, Chris asked me if I would ever consider cybernetic eyes. I was eager to affirm that I would, providing of course that I could have superhuman acuity, an extended visual spectrum, a head-​up search engine interface, the works. Who wouldn’t jump at that chance? I  could be a real-​life cyberpunk heroine.

FIGURE 9.3  Loughry

macular thickness scan 2019

It wasn’t long before a street preacher asked to pray for healing on my behalf (a surprisingly common experience for me). I  accepted, in the wryly curious way I normally accept such proposals. None have worked so far, and I figure if this one fails too, no harm done. I was still blind, much to my new friend’s disappointment. I wasn’t cured, but my perspective on Chris’ question had unexpectedly shifted. I realised in that moment that if I actually expected the faith healing to work, I wouldn’t have agreed for the preacher even to try. I don’t need to be cured; I don’t want to be cured, whether by divine or by technological intervention. I would have to relearn everything, find an identity based on something else. My partnership with Floyd and with Alex would be redundant; my glasses would revert to being a fashion accessory. When I was ten, I had to grieve the death of

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Sighted Miranda. If I were to be cured, I would have to grieve the death of Blind Miranda, too. On the technological front, there are plenty of promising treatments in development. CRISPR-​Cas9 is especially in vogue of late. There’s also a company making artificial retinas, like Chris had asked me about. Though they’re still in their infancy, these trials have already improved a number of people’s vision, and with it, their quality of life. By all means, I’ll continue supporting this research. I’ll gladly participate in whatever clinical trials need subjects. But when it comes to the cybernetic enhancements I  was so enamoured with initially, I  can’t say whether I’d take them. Faced with the choice to be irrevocably cured or incurably blind, I’m stuck between Scylla and Charybdis. Neither can I stomach abandoning the person I am now, nor can I reject the possibility of future metamorphosis.This is my body. Modified, patchwork, artificial, but my body nonetheless. I  cannot separate my AT from myself any more than the mind can be separated from the body: they are enmeshed and entangled in more ways than we realise. I have a subtly different relationship with each of my ATs. My glasses are the way I interact with my own body; Floyd is the way I interact with the environment immediately surrounding me; and Alex is the way I interact with the wider world of ideas, academia, and communication. They are all tools inasmuch as they are objects, separate from my biological body, that I select primarily for their functionality.They augment my non-​visual senses, they conserve my residual sight, and they empower me to participate more fully in the sighted world. Yet, they also transcend the category ‘tool’, becoming something more by virtue of being with me. I have unwittingly endowed them with a kind of agency all their own, yet which only takes meaningful form through our interactions together. Through my interactions with them, I become cyborg; through our interactions together, we become Miranda.

References Appadurai, A. (ed). 1988. The Social Life of Things:  Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haraway, D. 1985. ‘A cyborg manifesto’. The socialist review. Heidegger, M. 1971. The Thing. In Poetry. Language, Thoughts, trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Colophon. Molday RS, Zhong M, Quazi F. 2009. The role of the photoreceptor ABC transporter ABCA4 in lipid transport and Stargardt macular degeneration. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1791(7):573–​583. doi: 10.1016/​j.bbalip.2009.02.004. Turner, T. S. 1980. ‘The Social Skin’. In Not work alone:  A cross-​cultural view of activities superfluous to survival. Jeremy Cherfas and Roger Lewin (eds), pp. 112–​140. London: Temple Smith.

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About the Author Miranda Loughry is an undergraduate student in Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She is interested in posthumanist approaches to multispecies anthropology, medical anthropology, and science and technology studies. Miranda is legally blind, and she often does advocacy and fundraising work with the Foundation Fighting Blindness. She hopes to pursue a career in disability studies, accessibility consulting, and/​or equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Email: [email protected]

10 “DON’T MESS WITH MY HEART DEVICE, I’LL DO IT MYSELF.” In Which Karen and Marie Interview Each Other Marie Moe and Karen Sandler

K: Hello Marie, my fellow cyborg! Would you please give a brief introduction to who you are and what you do? M: It is a pleasure to meet you Karen! I have a pacemaker implant, due to my condition called heartblock, where the signal that makes the heart muscle contract is blocked on the way from the sinus node, and never reaches the ventricles of my heart. The pacemaker is correcting this by monitoring my heart and giving a small electrical stimulus to the heart muscle to make it contract. I am totally dependent on my device, since every single heartbeat is generated by the implant. I found out about the heartblock 7 years ago, when I suddenly passed out one morning, due to my heart taking a pause. At the time I was getting ready to go to work at the national computer emergency response team in Norway. I  was working with incident response, responding to cyberattacks against computer systems in the national critical infrastructure of Norway. On a daily basis I was working with cybercrime, and digital espionage cases, and then I suddenly got told by the doctors that I needed a pacemaker implant, essentially a computer inside my body, to stay alive. After spending a week in hospital hooked up to a heart monitor where I could see my pulse getting slower and slower, I had a quick and easy surgery where the pacemaker was implanted in my chest. I was back to work again the next week. Naturally, I started thinking about the cyber security of my device. Today I am working as a security researcher at the independent research institute SINTEF, and as an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. I  am doing research on security of medical devices, and supervising master students on the topic.

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You are actually one of the people that inspired me to find the courage to talk publicly about depending on a medical implant to stay alive, and at the same time not trust the security of my device. When I was asked by a friend and colleague in the security incident response community to do my first keynote talk on the subject I hesitated to accept the offer. I think I spent about two months before I decided to do it, and during this time I watched one of your talks online, that really touched me. I could see how powerful it was to the audience, using yourself as an example the way you did in that talk. I had been worried about looking like a victim on stage talking about my vulnerabilities, but you showed me that it could be empowering, and incredibly impactful. Could you tell me about your path to decide to start working on and talking publicly about this topic? K: I too was working in a related field when I found out about my own medical condition. I have Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. My heart is in places three times as thick as a normal person’s heart (so I get to make jokes about having a big heart). While I’ve largely been asymptomatic, I’m at a very high risk of sudden death from the disorder. To deal with this I have a pacemaker/​defibrillator implanted, which mostly acts as a monitor so that if I do have a life-​ threatening heart rhythm, my device will shock me into a normal rhythm. As a lawyer and someone who used to code a lot, I started researching the safety and efficacy of these devices. I  reviewed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s oversight over these devices and also filed some Freedom of Information Act Requests too. Reviewing this material made me understand that the oversight and regulation of the software on medical devices was very poor. I found that we have the worst of both worlds on most medical devices –​no real security on these devices (like any kind of password protection, encryption, etc.) but also all of these devices are proprietary software that cannot be reviewed, tested or improved easily by third parties. When I was pregnant a few years ago, my heart was palpitating. This is completely normal, and in fact about a quarter of all women have palpitations when pregnant. For me though, my defibrillator thought my heart was in a dangerous rhythm and shocked me twice. The only way to deal with this problem was to take more drugs to slow my heart rate down  –​so much that I had trouble walking up a flight of stairs at times. This really brought home to me how important the issues around having control of our critical technology are. Anyone can see that the medical device manufacturers have no malicious sentiment –​it’s a nightmare for those companies if pregnant women get shocked. But only 15% of the people who get these devices are under the age of 65. Fewer than half of all of these devices go to women. So the number of people who are pregnant and have these devices is truly tiny. It made me realize that my use case was simply not one that had been anticipated when the device had been designed and programmed. It made me

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ask what other use cases aren’t the manufacturers of our critical technology anticipating? And what will we do when we have failures down the road? My device is supposed to last me another 10 to 15 years. That’s a long time. Will the manufacturer still be in business in 5 years? What if other fundamental things change in my life or in the technological landscape that will affect my device? The only way we can be really safe as a society is if we are able to not only audit the code on these devices to make sure that they’re safe but also to ultimately have control over them. I was hesitant to talk publicly about my own condition too. At first I was avoiding it, and I published my first paper on the topic without mentioning the fact that I was a patient. I shared the paper on one of the patient support forums that I lurked on, and folks there said that I was just trying to scare them and that I  didn’t know what it was like to have to rely on one of these devices for my life. When I did start talking about my own experiences I found that it was a way to contextualize these otherwise abstract dangers in our technology. I’m so glad my talk helped you feel comfortable sharing your own experiences too! Now I run the Software Freedom Conservancy, supporting free and open source alternatives to proprietary software and focusing on critical ethical issues around our technology and software freedom. K: Why do you call yourself a cyborg? When did you start? Has calling yourself a cyborg changed the way you view your work? M: I never really knew about cyborgism before I  got my pacemaker. I  was first introduced to it by an artist that took photos of me at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg in 2015. He was creating an art project with portraits of cyborgs. I started reading up on the cyborg movement, and at first I thought that this is really weird. But then I slowly started identifying myself with it, especially when being contacted by other cyborgs after my talks, and having really interesting and meaningful conversations. I don’t know if it has changed my work, maybe it has changed the way I see myself as a stronger person due to the implant? I don’t think of myself as someone with an illness or a flaw. I feel proud of having this implant and using it in my work, in a way making it a feature, not a bug. Also, I think calling myself a cyborg sounds kinda cool! K: That’s how I feel. I was so depressed when I was told I needed the ICD.Then one day it occurred to me that I’d be a cyborg and suddenly it felt like a much more empowering decision. When I got my first defibrillator in 2008 I had a cyborg becoming party the night before my surgery and I’ve never looked back! It heartens me that there’s another young(ish!) person with an implanted cardiac device who understands the issues I’ve been focusing on and advocating for. I love that we’re bringing our complimentary skill sets to the same

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problem. Having an unusual condition and being so far outside the expected use case for my device has made me fully appreciate the group of security researchers who are working in this space, almost all of them cyborgs themselves. However, we have been barely coordinated and in fact are only talking directly for the first time in the context of this interview. Do you think there’s an opportunity for a Cyborg Collective? Should we talk more? What do you think the biggest issues are that we as a group need to tackle? M: I’m already part of the grassroots organization “I am the cavalry”, which is a group of security researchers and others that care deeply about securing computer systems that may impact human life.This has given me a really valuable contact network for my research, and opened up opportunities for advocating for the cause. The idea of a Cyborg Collective sounds very interesting, if it was focused on security research maybe we could organize this with the Biohacking village at Defcon, or with the “I am the cavalry” sidetrack at Bsides Las Vegas? I would love to meet up in real life with more of my fellow cyborg hackers and security advocates! There are many challenges ahead in my opinion, like software transparency, security patching, vulnerability disclosure and collaboration between industry and researchers. K: This sounds great. I have been wanting to organize a Cyborg Summit and these sound like perfect ideas for co-​location. Which reminds me of something else I wanted to ask you: have you ever considered becoming a voluntary cyborg? M: Do you mean adding more implants to my body voluntarily? I’m not very into body modification, except for getting more tattoos! But I’m a technology geek, and maybe I’d consider implanting a chip just for fun, or for research purposes. I’m very serious about not messing with my own heart implant though, when I do the lab testing. I am depending on it with my life, after all. K: Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Some of the people who are very active in the Cyborg movement strongly distinguish people who have embedded technology in their bodies due to a medical need, like us, and those who choose to embrace a new state of existing by adding voluntary body modifications and enhancements. I also have never been that into body modification but I find some of the new technologies to be fascinating –​like an implantable chip that buzzes when you face north, for example. I think it’s inevitable that we’ll see more of this in the future. I just hope we, the cyborgs, the patients and consumers have ultimate control over what’s in our bodies, either directly or more realistically for many of us through professionals we can hire for that purpose. In many ways it’s more of a societal issue than a personal one, though the ultimate implications are deeply personal. I agree completely with you in that I don’t want to mess with my own heart device, I just want to make sure that my device has adequate security on it and that I’m able to choose whatever medical professionals I want to help me make sure my

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device is right for me. I shouldn’t be locked into any one company or any particular doctor. If I find out my device needs to be changed to reflect a new situation or vulnerability I want to make sure I don’t have to rely on a manufacturer to first admit that there’s a problem and then wait for them to get around to fixing it. Their priorities may not be my priorities. So it will not surprise you to hear that I completely agree with statements that you’ve made about patients having the best judgement for their own cases. What kind of feedback have you gotten from the medical community about your advocacy and research? M: Like you, I  have also got blamed for causing anxiety amongst patients with my research. I think this is unfair critique, as I have always been very careful when talking to the media, to not contribute to sensationalist articles spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. I have only presented the facts. I think patients have a right to know how their device is functioning. I respect that not every patient has the strong urge to know all the details, like myself, but keeping patients intentionally in the dark about critical vulnerabilities like some companies have done in the past is simply unethical, and infuriating. It makes me angry, and fuels my passion for advocacy and research. I want to thank you for the great work you did leading up to the DMCA exemption for security research on medical  devices. Can you tell me the story about this process? K: The DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States, which makes it illegal to go around technical measures put in place to lock down copyrighted material, regardless if the ultimate use of the material would be allowed under copyright law. There is a review process that happens every 3 years, under which the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office consider and grant exemptions they determine appropriate. I worked with the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic and a few other medical device security experts to seek an exemption for research on medical devices. We at the Software Freedom Conservancy also successfully applied for an exemption for smartTVs. As the devices we have in our homes and rely on every day are connected to third parties, we must confront the fact that we are surrounding ourselves with surveillance equipment that we have little ability to monitor or refine to our personal needs.We are literally living in a Big Brother environment where our TVs are spying on us and sending transcripts of our conversations to third parties. We are expected to accept agreements that no one could take the time to read and understand in the ordinary course of their lives, so there’s no substantive consent. Without the DMCA exception there, it could be a crime to tinker with your own TV in your own living room. I’m glad we and others were able to get critical exemptions in place from the DMCA so that we have a chance of even just understanding what’s happening under the hood of the technology we rely on.

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M: How do you imagine the future for us cyborgs that are living with medical implants? K: As time passes and diagnostic technology and implantable devices get better and cheaper, more and more of us will discover we should get implants. That will include people with a variety of skills and interests, from a variety of backgrounds and ages. Just as you have applied your hacker skills to this issue and I have focused my techie lawyer ones, there will be many more talented people who have a firsthand interest in how things work out for us cyborgs. Already the number of people in the population with implanted medical devices is growing at an amazing rate. In the time I’ve been a cyborg I’ve been so excited to see new people come in and bring their own perspective and advocacy to the field. I think this bodes extremely well for our future. While I’ve been dismayed to see our society doubling down on proprietary software and incorporating so much unnecessary and often careless connectivity into our lives, I know that more and more people are beginning to understand why this is so problematic. M: I agree, I think having an implant of some sort will become more common than not having an implant, and that we will be able to live longer and have more fulfilling lives with the help of technology. When I was a kid in the early 80s I can remember we used to sit in the back seat of the car without wearing seat belts. Cars did not come with passenger seat belts as standard equipment until it was required by law in most countries during the 80s and 90s. Today it is almost unthinkable, and certainly not allowed, to not secure your child in the car while driving. As more people become cyborgs, it will be evident that building-​in cyber security to the implants is a necessity, since hacking could threaten human lives. If manufacturers and vendors don’t have the incentives to do this, as seems to be the case today, a solution to the problem will be regulatory requirements. Work is already being done in this area by many, and I too think that the future is looking bright for solutions and a better understanding of the issues we both have been bringing into the light.

About the Authors Dr. Marie Moe cares about public safety and securing systems that may impact human lives, this is why she joined the grassroots organization “I Am The Cavalry”. Marie is a senior security consultant at mnemonic labs, and has a PhD in Information Security. She is also an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She has experience as a team leader at NorCERT, where she did incident handling of cyberattacks against Norway’s critical infrastructure. She is currently doing research on the security of her own personal critical infrastructure, an implanted pacemaker that is generating every single beat of her heart. Marie loves to break crypto protocols, but gets angry when the broken crypto is in her own body.

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Karen M.  Sandler is the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a public charity focused on ethical technology which is the nonprofit home of almost 50 free and open source projects, including Git, Samba, Etherpad, Selenium and Inkscape (to name a few). She is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software as a life-​or-​death issue, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. Prior to joining Conservancy, she was the executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was the general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. Karen co-​ organizes Outreachy, the award-​winning outreach program for people who face under-​ representation, systemic bias or discrimination in tech. Karen is an adjunct Lecturer-​In-​Law at Columbia Law School and a visiting scholar at UC Santa Cruz. She is the recipient of the Free Software Foundation’s 2017 Award for the Advancement of Free Software as well as an O’Reilly Open Source Award.

11 BECOMING AN ACCIDENTAL CYBORG FEMINIST SOCIALIST Michael Chorost

In the Trump era I wasn’t a cyborg feminist socialist because I had intended to be one. It just happened that way. After the election Washington D.C. felt like a city occupied by a hostile foreign power. I had walked over to the Capitol. It was ringed with barricades and cops and I couldn’t get near it; it seemed an ominous portent. I asked one of the cops why. He told me that security had been beefed up because the vice-​president-​ elect was in the building. I looked up at the Capitol’s high, gleaming dome and thought to myself, “What the hell do I do now?” I had asked myself that question before. My ears had abruptly quit working in 2001, rendering me so deaf that my hearing aids, which I had worn all my life, had become useless. Total deafness was a radical unmooring from all of my assumptions about communication. What the hell do I do now? After due research I opted for a cochlear implant, which meant integrating a circuit board, which is hard, angular, and digital, into my flesh, which is analog, squishy, and wet. An audiologist showed me the innards of the device. It was a coin-​sized circuit board bristling with chips and resistors. I thought, “Oh my God, it really is a computer.” The X-​rays of my head are now very entertaining. One can see the magnets and the chips and the wires embedded in my skull. I had to learn how to hear all over again, slowly figuring out how to make biology and technology work together. I had become, without intending to be, a cyborg. The Trump election was a fresh and brutal unmooring. I had door-​knocked for Democrats for twenty years, trying to be a bulwark against those who sneered at the kind of reasoned scientific inquiry that had enabled me to hear. Now the defenses had abruptly given way and the paths to THX 1138, Blade Runner, and The Hunger Games suddenly lay before America plain and bare. The republic was broken. It would have to be made anew. But how?

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In my memoir of getting a cochlear implant I had written, “A mind richly stocked with stories can select from them as needed, applying narrative to the chaos of experience in order to move ahead with greater sureness to an imagined resolution.”1 I  had begun writing the book just a few days after going deaf. I imagined arriving at a new way of hearing even as I drafted the opening pages, and that vision was so powerful that it guided me in making it happen. I  had become, in the words of Kevin Thayer, a rhetor of my life’s trajectory.2

FIGURE 11.1  An

X-​ray of the author’s skull. The brighter, crescent-shaped object with a square inside it is the left-side cochlear implant. The dimmer one that looks like two connected circles is the right-side cochlear implant. They have different casings, but the electronics are the same.

So I  had a muscle memory for rebuilding after breakage. Imagine a future, make it happen. A friend told me about the concept of “paired districts,” where Democrats in safely blue districts helped Democrats run in red ones. The work involved fundraising, door-​knocking, postcarding, phonebanking—​all the practical work of get-​out-​the-​vote organizing. I found a grassroots organization named Sister District.The name signaled its overt feminism, but for me the gender aspect was neither here nor there; the important part was replacing Republicans with better legislators. In February 2017 I held the first meeting of the D.C. chapter in my living room. Most of the attendees were women, and most of the candidates

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we ended up supporting were women. I had become, without intending to be, a cyborg feminist. On that first meeting I told the group,“We will build a Progressive Renaissance.” That was the imagined future. I liked the idea of coming to my political work specifically as a cyborg, not least because cyborgs are freighted with a peculiar set of political expectations. In films they are often associated with dystopia. In academia they are often associated with utopian hope.The feminist socialist theorist Donna Haraway wrote, “The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity…They are wary of holism, but needy for connection—​they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party.”3 Chris Hables Gray, one of the editors of this volume, has written that “the development of cyborg interventions can lead not just to new inventions and medical treatments, but to stronger democracy as well.”4 On the other hand, the neoconservative writer Francis Fukuyama warned that cyborgs could bring tyranny: “If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind?”5 Yet these political frames do not map very well onto the reality of cochlear implants. Most of the people who get cochlear implants don’t change their politics at all, let alone move in a left-​liberal direction. Rush Limbaugh has the same hardware and software that I do, and as far as I know, it has not changed him one bit. Real bionic technologies do not sprinkle magic political fairy dust on their recipients. Moreover, having reported on prosthetics and brain-​machine interfaces in Wired and elsewhere, I know that actually improving the human body in any fundamental way—​say, creating superintelligence or superhuman strength—​is far beyond present capabilities. Both the hopes and the fears are, at best, premature. Real cyborg technologies create no specter of a transhuman army marching on Washington to seize the power duly owed it. Real cyborgs improvise and do their best and get by. That said, there is one community in which cyborg technologies are having a profound political impact: the signing deaf community. If a young deaf child gets a cochlear implant, the odds are very good that she will grow up using spoken language fluently—​and thus won’t be steered into learning sign language nor into joining the signing deaf community. Ninety-​six percent of deaf children are born to parents with normal hearing, who know little about the signing deaf world and have no allegiance to it. For the signing deaf community, then, cyborg technologies are indeed an existential threat.This might be seen as a harbinger of how “normals” might one day be sidelined, as in the film Gattaca, but as I said, such fears are at best premature. So my political frame as a cyborg is certainly not about assimilating or marginalizing the normals. Rather, it’s about remaking anew from heterogenous ingredients, joining things that don’t normally go together. Put concretely: ordinary citizens from different walks of life working together to make a better government. In

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early 2017 our new Sister District chapter traveled to Manassas,Virginia, to meet a dozen Democratic candidates running to displace Republicans in Virginia’s state legislature. The meeting was exhilarating. There were candidates who had emigrated from countries like Vietnam and Peru. Candidates not yet out of their twenties. Candidates who had grown up poor; one told us that his school principal had quietly given him new clothes. One candidate, Danica Roem, was transgender. She wasn’t running on gender identity, even though the incumbent had proudly called himself “Virginia’s chief homophobe” and had tried to pass a bathroom bill. Her platform consisted of plans to improve traffic on Virginia’s congested Route 28. But I don’t reflexively celebrate diversity for its own sake. Diversity by itself doesn’t imply competence. It does, however, imply a larger pool from which to draw competence. It also implies a larger set of inputs on which to base decision-​ making. Members of privileged classes can be as competent or incompetent as anyone else, but there will be much that never enters their ken. As the deaf poet David Wright put it, “Like an eccentrically-​sited camera taking angle-​shots that distort but may often reveal otherwise masked lineaments of truth, the deaf person watches from the unexpected and unguarded quarter.” Government needs information from unexpected and unguarded quarters. Otherwise masked lineaments of truth are essential to the project of building anew. I  often think of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Pied Beauty”—​ All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) —​ which is about the irregular complexity and heterogeneity of the world. Hopkins implies that the most beautiful is what goes against the norm, the new, the mixed, and the unusual. Hopkins well understood that biodiversity is a source of ecosystem robustness, and the insight works just as well in politics. A  great many new people of different kinds are coming into politics, and our country will be much the better for it. My Sister District chapter came back from Manassas thrilled and glowing. “This group of people should be running Virginia,” we told each other.We picked two of them to support. One of them was Elizabeth Guzman, an immigrant from Peru for whom English was a second language. The other, Lee Carter, was from the working class and was a democratic socialist. It wasn’t specifically the democratic socialism that drew us, but that he was running against the most powerful Republican in the House of Delegates and had a good chance of winning. I had become, without intending to be, a cyborg feminist socialist. We mastered the concrete details of grassroots politics, learning how to hold fundraisers and organize the writing of thousands of postcards to voters. We traveled again and again to Guzman and Carter’s districts to knock on doors, urging residents to come out and vote.

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Both of them won. Not only that, so did many of the other Democrats, including Danica Roem, and the Democrats also won the governorship. In 2019 the Democrats flipped the House and the Senate, bringing Virginia under full Democratic control for the first time in decades. That group of people now is running Virginia. What a year 2020 was! Minimum wages were raised. Stronger gun control laws were passed. Election Day was made a state holiday, replacing the holiday for Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Virginia has become a harbinger of a nationwide Progressive Renaissance. I know that anything can be broken. I also know that much can be repaired. There is an art form in Japan called kintsukuroi in which a pot is deliberately smashed and then repaired with gold. Breakage and repair is part of the history of the object, and that makes it more beautiful, not less. Counter, original. Our nation, with all of its breaks and flaws, may in the end be better than if Hillary Clinton had been elected. Indeed I  believe that we have the will, we have the power, we have the craft, to make this planet into a heaven on earth in a generation’s time. I am an accidental cyborg feminist socialist, and I look forward with hope to the Progressive Renaissance.

Notes 1 Chorost, Michael (2005). Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. Houghton Mifflin, p. 20. 2 Thayer, Kevin A. (2012). Cyborg Metapathography in Michael Chorost’s Rebuilt: Introducing the Cyborg Patient as Transhumanist Rhetor. Ph.D.  dissertation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Ann Arbor (MI): ProQuest/​UMI, Publication No. AAT 3530016. 3 Haraway, Donna (1991). “A Cyborg Manifesto:  Science, Technology, and Socialist-​ Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge, p. 151. 4 Gray, Chris Hables (2011). “Cyborging the Posthuman:  Participatory Evolution.” In Lippert-​Rasmussen, Thomsen, and Wamberg (eds.), The Posthuman Condition:  Ethics, Aesthetics & Politics of Biotechnological Challenges. Aarhus University Press, p. 35. 5 Fukuyama, Francis (2009 Oct 23). “Transhumanism –​the world’s most dangerous idea.” Foreign Policy. Accessed on March 25, 2020, at https://​foreignpolicy.com/​2009/​10/​23/​ transhumanism/​.

About the Author Michael Chorost is a writer and political activist. His first book, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human (Houghton Mifflin, 2005) is a memoir of going deaf and getting a cochlear implant. It won the PEN/​USA Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2006 and was applauded by the L.A.Times as “the first cyborg memoir.” His second book, World Wide Mind (Free Press, 2011) is about the science of brainscanning and the prospect of enabling direct communication from one brain to another. He has written for Wired, Technology Review, New Scientist, Slate, the Chronicle for Higher Education, and others.

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He has a B.A.  in English from Brown University and a Ph.D.  in Rhetoric & Composition from the University of Texas at Austin. After grad school he worked at a dot-​ com in San Francisco and then at SRI International in Silicon Valley. He then freelanced in San Francisco for five years and gave over 160 lectures around the world, mostly on the topic of cochlear implants. He spent the 2008–​2009 academic year as a visiting professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. After the 2016 election he founded the Washington, D.C.  chapter of Sister District, a grassroots resistance organization, and has fundraised and door-​knocked to support Democratic candidates in state elections, mostly in Virginia but also in Florida and Pennsylvania. He now lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and their two cats. He is working on his third book, which is a science-​fiction novel about learning the language of a civilization of social insect colonies. His website is michaelchorost.com.

12 THE GHOST IN THE BIOME Steven Gulie

This isn’t an essay in the modern sense: a proposition supported by rational argument to reach a conclusion. Consider the older use of the word: to essay to do something: to try, to test. This is a trial of a few ideas. I repeat: this is only a test; had this been a factual essay, you would now receive reasoned arguments telling you what to believe. Instead, I invite you to consider some information and a few ideas, to explore them with me. Let’s begin with biomes. A biome is a community of plants and animals sharing a mutual environment. Your aquarium or terrarium is a biome. The Earth has many overlapping biomes: savannah, high desert, arctic tundra, tropical rainforest, deep sea volcanic vents, and more. Each environment sustains its own unique mix of plants and animals. As it happens, I am a biome. And so are you. We are like islands, no, more like whole continents, each of us home to at least a hundred trillion separate living creatures—​all of them microscopic: mostly bacteria, but also archaea, yeasts, protozoa, and fungi (and viruses, of course, but they’re only sort-​of separate). We are host to trillions of guest organisms even when we’re healthy. In fact, they work to keep us healthy—​more about that later. There are over 2,000 different species living on and in each of us. Where are they? Not quite everywhere. There are a few sterile no-​ fly zones—​ the bladder, the bile ducts, the brain—​but large public areas—​the skin—​several party zones—​the mouth, gut, genitals, and armpits—​and a few gated communities for select residents—​the conjunctiva of the eye, the lower lungs. Our bodies themselves are made up of roughly 30 trillion cells, so at the cellular level we are outnumbered by our guests by as much as 3:1. Your guest organisms are collectively known as your biota. At the NIH they refer to the body

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and its biota collectively as a superorganism, the two are so tightly intertwined biologically. There is a revolution going on in the understanding of human biota. Until recently, we knew very little about them. We could study them only by taking skin, stool, or tissue samples, putting them on a petri dish, and waiting to see what grew. Only a tiny fraction of our biota showed up in these cultures, and not in proportion to their numbers in the body. But now we can run a sample through a DNA analyzer and get an accurate picture of who’s there and in what numbers. It’s a staggering revelation. The human biota contains 12 different phylums. To put this in perspective, living creatures are classified, in descending order, by Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. All mammals are in the Order mammalia. Marsupials are a separate Order in the same Class. Twelve separate Phylums living as one commensal community inside our bodies? Astounding. We’re just now learning what all these creatures are doing in there, but we know it includes breaking down food into bits we can absorb though the gut—​ which are the only bits we get to use—​regulating our immune systems—​ever get sick when you travel? Guess why—​and protecting us from pathogens we accidentally ingest. Each of us has a unique mix of biota. It changes over time, but much of it is set for life during and just after our births. Immunology studies show that the two most important determinants of how strong your immune system is, largely due to your biota, are whether you are born vaginally or by Cesarian (vaginal is better) and whether you are fed breast milk or formula (breast is best). Being inoculated with your mother’s biota at birth and during infancy creates a significant bulwark against disease, one that lasts for life. But what I find most interesting about all this is that our bodies are made up of two very different groups: one group containing trillions of independent entities, each doing its own thing, pursuing its own agenda, as individuals or populations; and trillions more in another group that collectively make up one individual, possessing a single consciousness. I mean, how does that work? Like so many things that are distinct when viewed from a short distance, the boundaries blur and become fuzzy when examined very closely. Our cells all share the same DNA (except for chimera cells, but let’s skip over that). But we are not aware of ourselves at the cellular level, except to our sensory receptors, and generally even then only if multiple cells are clamoring for attention at the same time. Our conscious self is no more aware of the tissue lining our gut than it is of the bacteria living in it, under ordinary circumstances. Our hair and nails continue to grow for a day or two after we die, they are so distant from our conscious selves. We cut and trim them according to taste or fashion, and feel in no way diminished

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by their reduction. We are not entirely self-​aware at the cellular level. So, are our minds and bodies separate? Yes and no. But mostly no. Our conscious minds are driven by our physical needs: hunger, thirst, sexual desire.We respond consciously to the body’s senses: pain, tension, pleasure, tiredness, restlessness, heat, and cold. The universe we inhabit, that abstract representation of the cosmos and all of its particulars, is constructed entirely from sensory input, both felt and remembered. But also imagined, deduced, inferred. So mostly no, not separate, but also yes: our minds are driven and constructed by our bodies, but there are emergent behaviors that are born of the mind alone. The body has no sensor for the number “1” or “6.” Beauty is in the mind’s eye of the beholder. Or maybe not. The brain, too, is part of our body. Isn’t the mind and all of its contents—​every stray thought, memory, vague feeling, fantasy—​isn’t all of it just changing electro-​chemical patterns in the neural state-​machine that is the brain? Let’s think about that. When discussing the brain, it is conventional to refer to the brain stem as the reptile brain, the midbrain as the mammal brain, and the cerebral cortex as the Homo sapiens brain, the brain that is self-​aware. To some extent, our individual selves seem to be made up of more than one entity. Still, we have only one body. When the conscious mind decides to cross the room, the mammal brain and the reptile brain cooperate to make it happen. If we lose an arm or a leg, even a finger or toe, we feel loss, we feel diminished. Part of ourselves is gone. Our identity includes our body, and identity is self. Is it not? Hmm. One way to understand how it is all organized is to consider how the body develops, from egg to embryo to infant to adult. We begin as a single cell. It is not specialized: not skin, not brain, not any particular part of the body. But by turning on or off parts of its DNA, it can reproduce by cellular fission and give birth to any type of body cell. It is a stem cell. Its DNA contains the individual’s complete biological vocabulary for responding to environmental stimuli: where nature meets nurture. At first, it makes copies of itself, creating a small blob of stem cells. If it accidentally divides into two blobs at this stage, two individuals will grow: identical twins. Regardless, as the blob grows larger, the environmental cues become subtly different for different cells. Some cells are at the center of the blob, surrounded entirely by other cells. It is among these central cells that bone cells arise, over time building a skeleton. Environmental cues determine which part of which bone is produced as time goes on. Other cells find themselves on the surface, with sister cells on one side and the womb on the other. These give rise to skin cells, and eventually to hair and nail cells. The skin on the fingertips responds to its subtly unique environment by forming whorls and ridges:  fingerprints. Even identical twins have unique fingerprints; same DNA, slightly different environments.

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Once a cell is specialized, most of its DNA is permanently disabled. It can produce only cells that are similar or identical to itself. Its ability to reproduce at all becomes limited. Once the cellular environment is free of Human Growth Hormone (HGH), most cells will only make copies of themselves to replace dying cells. If there is damage, the surrounding cells may be limited to growing as scar tissue. Nerve cells, by and large, do not reproduce at all. If we look at an ultrasound image of the fetus at an early stage it looks much like a reptile. This is the basic chordate body model, common to all animals with spinal cords. It has a small brain at one end. Small, but adequate to sustain life functions, to regulate respiration and heartbeat. A mature lizard brain may be aware of its body at the cellular level. Certainly it responds with great sensitivity to all the body’s state. It has reflexes, is sensitive to heat and cold, light and dark, hunger and thirst. It eliminates waste. When you are anesthetized or in a coma, this part of the brain sustains your circulation, heart rate, breathing, and general homeostasis, to the extent possible without volitional movement. Species that have a brain similar to this at maturity can move, find food, eat and excrete, mate and reproduce. They are able to flee or fight when they perceive a threat. They may also have complex “instinctive” behaviors—​not apparently taught or learned through observation.There is no evidence that lizards play or engage in abstract thought. They show no evidence of recognizing themselves in a mirror. They appear to have some learning ability, at least to identify new threats and food sources. If we look in on the fetus a month or so later, it is clear that a mammal is growing: four limbs, five digits on each, a pair of lungs, a robust circulatory system, a head containing a relatively large brain. This part of the brain is capable of reacting to stimuli that the conscious brain misses. It responds strongly to smells. At maturity, any mammal responds to all the same stimuli and impulses as a lizard. But mammals also exhibit considerable learning ability. Mammals communicate, generally making sounds to indicate alarm or danger, pain, warning, and sometimes more complex sounds whose intent we can only infer or speculate on. Mammals play. Male mammals compete for females. While a very few are solitary, most mammals engage in social behavior. A little while later, the fetus is identifiable immediately as a growing human. The brains of humans develop a frontal cerebral cortex, folded, bifurcated, centimeters thick. This is where abstract thought and language processing can be seen to take place using PET scans to localize brain activity. Here, apparently, resides the self-​aware self. The part that plays peek-​a-​boo and laughs in confusion until it comprehends the difference between seeing and being seen. Here is where math and music, logic and imagination reside. But are “you” just the electro-​chemical activity in your cerebral cortex? You are still driven by the chordate and mammalian impulses: hunger, thirst, heat, cold, sexual desire, fear, and anger: the urge to flee or to fight. Your conscious self is

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influenced, can even be controlled, by physical stimuli to your limbs.You respond involuntarily to tickles and to torture. You feel playful at times. You respond to social stimuli without volitional awareness. Some things we do unconsciously. Some things we do involuntarily. We are the confluence of trillions of cells operating commensally, organized in layers not so much hierarchical as evolutionary, each layer incorporating and subject to the earlier layers, but with more abstraction as each layer is added—​in some ways more of a community than an individual, but all of it “me,” one DNA sequence, divisible, but united. And the cherry on the top is reason, volition:  the capacity to incorporate abstract concepts, manipulate them intangibly, and decide how to act. The thing that most makes me, “me.” Or is all that an illusion? Many people think so, for what they believe are scientific reasons. To understand this point of view, a brief review of physics is required. Relax, no math will be included; you will not be graded on your ability to remember and repeat the information. Once upon a time in classical Newtonian physics, the universe was thought to be made of objects moving along mathematical paths in accordance with the laws of physics, as planets do. Particles such as molecules were viewed in the same way. The atom was conceived as being a miniature solar system. Electrons went around the nucleus as planets around the sun, each in a particular place at a given time, moving along mathematically predictable paths. Gas molecules collided and rebounded like billiard balls. The whole universe, from atoms to galaxies, advanced along a predictable path, the future proceeding inexorably from the present, the present the purely deterministic outcome of the past. If you knew the position and velocity of all the atoms in the universe, you could predict the future precisely. Choice was nonexistent, and consciousness itself was unproven. And so, in Mark Twain’s day, it was intellectually fashionable to think that everything was predetermined, the future fixed at the dawn of time. The body and brain, being made of atoms, were part of the physical universe, therefore also predictable and predetermined. Thought itself was an electrical phenomenon in the brain. Our thoughts were therefore predetermined as well. Free will was an illusion, to be cast aside along with notions such as the eternal soul or original sin—​Newton’s apple trumped Adam’s apple. Living things were not different from nonliving things—​their behavior arose from complex chemical and electrical interactions, and their actions were the consequence of those interactions. There was no vital essence, no life force, no ghost in the machine. The obvious objection to this view is that it flies in the face of direct observation. We make choices every day, and we know it. Our physical surroundings and life’s course are changed by the decisions we make. We can demonstrate this by

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objective experiment. Pick up an egg and hold it at shoulder height over a hard floor; the egg’s state at the end of the experiment can be accurately predicted in two very distinct futures: one where you decide to drop the egg and the other where you decide to put it back in the refrigerator. We certainly seem to make choices. But classical physics has no means to measure the act of decision. The outcome would be the same whether you actively chose or if your action was predetermined. Therefore the question of choice has no meaning. We seem to decide, but the earth seems from the everyday viewpoint to be flat. These are illusions. We seem to consider and decide but, hard as it is to swallow, we do not. Curiously, this view of the mind has persisted even as the paradigms of physics have utterly changed. Thought is still viewed as the outcome of theoretically predictable electro-​chemical interactions. Psychiatry, once the study of the mind, is largely relegated to prescribing the proper drugs to change the electro-​chemistry of the brain to a more desirable state. And drugs do change brain chemistry, and our view of the world does indeed change with it. So the modern paradigm is that consciousness is an emergent quality of complex electro-​chemical systems. The precise electro-​chemical state of your brain, and what you are thinking and feeling right now, are two ways of describing exactly the same thing. Choice is still an illusion. Why does this model of the mind persist, when it is based on a long-​superseded 19th century model of physics? One reason is because quantum events are very small and—​while not deterministic in any particular—​are statistically very predictable. If you have a lump of radioactive material, half of it will decay during the half-​life of that material. If you pick a specific atom, it may decay immediately, in a thousand years, or never. The physical laws governing it are not deterministic; they are statistical. But most things consist of many atoms. Exactly half of the radioactive atoms in the lump will decay during every half-​life, you just can’t predict which ones. But for most purposes it doesn’t matter. Another reason quantum behavior is disregarded in describing the mind is that quantum physics defies common sense. Level-​headed physicists will typically tell you that quantum physics is a mathematical description of behavior which makes no intuitive sense; any intuitive notions of real-​world behavior based on quantum physics is misleading or simply wrong. Don’t try to understand it, you can’t. You either do the math or you don’t. In quantum physics, there is no external “real” world unaffected by whether you look at it. There are systems, sometimes called actions, that interact with any observation, which is also an action. The outcome of experiments can depend on what the observer chooses to look for. If the experimenter looks for wave behavior in light, there it is. If the experimenter instead chooses to look for particle behavior, there it is. The results are contradictory. The particle/​wave duality is either/​or, but in a quantum field equation both values are potentially true. The

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answer is “yes” but it depends on the question you ask. A  beam of light exists in both possible states simultaneously until the experiment is conducted, thus collapsing the field to one state or the other. In this paradigm, a reality of objects in definite locations moving at definite speeds along predetermined paths—​regardless of any conscious observer—​does not exist. Choice is proven to alter the outcome of experiments. “Things” exist as probability fields until a field is collapsed by an observer. Note that in this paradigm, both choice and a conscious observer are assumed to exist. In modern physics, the idea that the future is predictable and predetermined has been proven false. The future cannot be exactly predicted, even if you know the precise location and velocity of all the particles. Furthermore, such knowledge is both physically and theoretically impossible. Nevertheless, the advice of the aforementioned level-​headed physicists is wise. Quantum events do not scale up. Mars is not in a different location depending on where you look, and you cannot choose whether or not the sun rises. Large numbers of events statistically cancel out tiny sets of improbable outcomes. Classical physics in an imperfect approximation: the values of small but non-​ zero variations are treated as zero. And for things like the motion of the planets and most chemical processes, the classical approximation is close enough (and the math is much, much simpler). The paradigm is fundamentally different, but the gross measurable outcome is the same. In the everyday world, quantum effects are usually irrelevant. You can’t know the exact position of an electron, but if you are measuring someone’s blood pressure, it doesn’t really make any difference. But for some everyday things, quantum effects are large, and very noticeable. For example, the temperature at the core of the sun, as caused by its mass and gravity, is not hot enough to ignite fusion. Classically, the sun should be a cloud of hot but otherwise insert hydrogen, emitting heat but not much light, and no gamma rays, much the way a hot iron glows. But quantum physics predicts, correctly, that a very small fraction of hydrogen protons will get close enough to fuse. It is a statistically insignificant number, compared to the whole, but the fusion of even a few pairs of atoms releases enough concentrated energy to heat nearby atoms, and to ignite a self-​sustaining fusion reaction. In other words, the sun shines because of quantum effects. Some biological systems are now understood to have large-​scale quantum effects as well.When converting sunlight to chemical energy in chlorophyll, there are multiple paths an electron can take. If a random path is selected, the efficiency of the operation should be around 30%. But the actual measured efficiency is consistently 95%. It appears that the paths exist as a quantum superposition, and the chlorophyll chooses the most efficient one. Does this imply that chlorophyll has some kind of consciousness and makes some kind of choices? That’s an interesting thought...

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The relevant question to me now is: does the brain exhibit large-​scale effects of quantum behavior, like the sun and chlorophyll, or is quantum behavior irrelevant in the brain, like the motion of a planet around the sun? I seem to be conscious and to make choices. Given that this is now a reasonable hypothesis, I would add my direct experience to the scales and say it even seems likely. But it remains unproven unless a mechanism is identified. Candidate sites for escalation of quantum effects include the calcium channel that determines whether a neuron fires, releasing a neurotransmitter molecule that can have a cascade effect. But that’s speculation. Indirect evidence includes “mindfulness” therapy monitored by PET scans. A stimulus, perhaps the image of a spider, evokes fear; the PET registers activity in the limbic system. The therapy client consciously attempts to redirect his or her response to the image to some less stressful reaction. With time and effort, reinforced by PET evidence that something is happening, the client is able to view the stimulus without a limbic response. The person reports subjective feelings of less fear.The PET confirms that the stimulus has been redirected by the conscious mind to a different brain state. If there is quantum behavior regulating brain activity, it is likely to be in the subtle recursive act of the self observing the self, and trying consciously to change itself. So, I  am currently thinking that the trillions of cells in and on my body that are not me, that do not share my DNA, may each have consciousness of a kind, and may make their own choices. Other trillions that share my DNA appear to jointly possess a multi-​leveled consciousness, perhaps a cellular consciousness as independent cells, but more certainly a collective consciousness at the chordate level, allowing them to act in concert as one organism. These together driving, but also subject to, a mammalian consciousness, perfectly capable of handling routine mammal tasks. And all contributing urges and capable of acting in concert on choices made by my human self, me, sitting here asking myself if I really exist. Certainly I don’t always act consciously. More often I seem to be on autopilot, letting my chordate brain manage my actions under the loose supervision of my mammal self. But not always. Not right now. Does free will exist? You decide. But be mindful that a biome containing trillions of lives may be riding on your decisions. Maybe trillions plus one, but right now I’m thinking trillions plus two, or three.

About the Author Steven Gulie was born in Buffalo and raised in San Diego, apparently because that was as far from Buffalo as his family could get. He dropped out of high school in 9th grade, read extensively and eclectically, mostly history and science fiction. He has lived for months in the forest in Canada, hiked entirely around and then climbed Mt. Rainier, surfed the North Shore of Oahu and spent years riding the waves off Santa Cruz. He has looked out at the

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world from inside the tube at the Banzai Pipeline and from the peak of Mount Olympus. He has taken entirely too much LSD. He has worked as a janitor, a Registered Nurse, a software engineer, a writer, and a technical writer. He has published articles in WIRED magazine. He has taken courses in calculus, linear algebra, organic and biochemistry, microbiology, bacteriology, and astrophysics. He has learned a bit, but still understands nothing. He became a noted cyborg in 2003, when he had a deep brain stimulator implanted for Parkinson’s disease, a procedure during which he was awake, and from which came the 2007 article, “A Shock to the System.” (WIRED, March 1. https://​www.wired.com/​2007/​ 03/​brainsurgery/​). He is currently host to three distinct biota: cells that share his DNA and collectively make up his identity; independent cells in roughly equal number with a trillion independent agendas; and a breakaway colony of former cells that have declared independence and now threaten to overthrow the system. He has been X-​rayed using antimatter decay inside his cells as a source of light, and found it most illuminating. He is having fun but cannot stay long.

13 “CYBORG” “MOM” Dion Farquhar

When I was asked to write a non-​academic, personal account of my experience of being a “Cyborg Mom,” my first thought, was, “Am I now, or was I ever, a ‘Cyborg Mom’?” Both terms worried me. A “personal” account was also a “political” (and theoretical) account that would locate my experience historically and not be just another celebratory narrative about neoliberal, individualist use of technology and the celebration of the “self ” as human capital. For me, it is impossible, given fifty years of reading, thinking, and advocating intersectional feminism1 to not parse the very terms of the topic—​cyborg and Mom. To speak of cyborgs requires homage to Donna Haraway’s 1985  “Cyborg Manifesto,”2 which first underscored the intersection of institutions of the military and its attendant systems with research and digital operations to produce a human-​machine hybrid. That resulting monstrous progeny, however, like Victor Frankenstein’s Creature, is always double-​edged. It’s both unfaithful to, and in revolt against, its origins at the same time that cyborgian subjects often enforce brutal, toxic, and violent conditions on subordinated people—​whether by patriarchy, racism, or class domination. Although sexed bodies are always both socially constructed and discursively produced and never “natural,”“biological,” or “essential,” gendered subjects feel the onus of patriarchal caveats like “woman equals mother,” although in my case, it took over 40 years to realize that I felt the need to realize how I could be—​or do—​that in my own life. The question of what “cyber” means when appended to a noun has been explored by countless activists and scholars. Nevertheless, I take it to mean the computer-​generated or mediated interface with material-​digital combinations of biotechnologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other media that are processed and fed back through networked data systems.

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FIGURE 13.1  Photo

of the author’s twins

What is at stake in the figure of the cyborg is the attempt to unite the insights of a constructivist poststructuralism with those of realist political action. Decades of theory debates have elaborated and developed the nuances of each polar stance. Poststructuralism valorized subaltern identity, the priority of flexible performance, the importance of transgression, and the central role of language and local knowledge. It deconstructed and de-​essentialized “woman,” rejected self-​ congratulatory, western Enlightenment justificatory claims about reason, science and technical “progress,” as normative and legitimating of history’s intensified oppression, manipulation, and the invention of ever-​new forms of servitude. At the same time, the political left, while in sympathy with many post-​ structural claims about the self-​serving character of rationality, responded with a renewed commitment to the residual emancipatory potential of discourses of representation and “rights” as that which can—​and must—​resist the very “real” and material (not only linguistic) oppressive effects and practices of patriarchy, white supremacy, and class systems and structures that are differently exacerbated in the present twenty-​first century global societies. The cyborg is a metaphor that retains an emergent politics of the subject (like gender, race, sexuality) while avoiding a slide into essentializing identity politics. It would avoid throwing out the baby of political agency, representation, and “rights” discourse with the bathwater of universalist ideology and a metaphysics of origin and organicism while continuing to valorize the distributed advantages of (and call for universal, free access to) say, technological advances such as indoor

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plumbing or electrification, let alone the digital media revolution—​despite their downsides. As such, the metaphor of the cyborg can mobilize new forms of agency and exploit the unintended consequences of the cybernetic informatics and digital technologies that constitute it at the same time it recognizes the imbrication of its inheritance in the destructiveness of military research, patriarchal values, and capitalist techno-​liberal ideology. Rather than being objectively identifiable and essential, cyborgian identity can be politically assumed, developing, and emergent. Cyborgian, or technologically-​assisted reproduction, is a category that requires many historically-​specific frames in addition to the technological expertise it was spawned by, embodies, and effects. Contemporary, assisted reproductive technologies are located in essential contexts of capitalist medicine, patriarchal norms, white supremacy, and class society—​all within the often-​erased understanding that the global north has been produced by its inheritance of continual violence and military perpetuation of colonial and imperial domination and occupation. It is important to note that at the specific historical moment in the 1990s, neoliberalism gains unquestioned ascendency as a cruel, economic austerity policy that shuts down the struggled-​for, post-​New Deal state support for health, education, and welfare programs necessary for maternal, familial, and child well-​being by withdrawing funding support and privatizing all social services that were formerly provided by the state. At the same time, beginning in the 1980s, repro-​tech slowly establishes itself as a private market, offering an array of unprecedented reproductive “choice,” which is consumption—​exercised as all designer medical options are, first by those individuals who occupy class, race, and sexuality positions of dominance—​middle and upper middle class, white, heterosexual consumers with either good medical insurance coverage and/​or discretionary income. In the U.S., decades of withdrawal of material and ideological support for the entire spheres of health, education, and welfare reverberate most intensively on those charged with, and who are socialized to do, the material and psychic care of the young, the sick, and the old who need nurturance and care—​the mostly-​ female caregivers who are “mothers” and those who do nurturing labor both “for free” as affective labor, or for low pay in commercialized nurturance of child care workers, au pairs, home care, health aides, etc.3 As a result, contemporary maternity is increasingly fetishized and lionized as women’s telos at the same time that it requires increasing class, race, and occupational privilege to deliver self-​sufficiency and isolation. My partner and I lived the privatization of the schools in our suburban California town in which our own children’s schools were among the few able to keep, and even broaden, their robust arts, computer, and after-​school enrichment programs because the mostly-​ middle class parents were able to do the labor-​intensive and time-​consuming (private) fundraising and contributing that was needed to supplement ever-​shrinking school budgets.

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While allocating and assigning the gendering and maternalizing of the reproductive labor of child care and nurturance to “women” is a patriarchal axiom, it has long been a corollary of feminist critique that both male, female, and non-​ binary bodies can—​and do—​perform any and all of the post-​partum work of “mothering.” It is an irony that as maternity becomes increasingly fetishized and burdened by neoliberal privatization, self-​ sufficiency, and individualism, it also becomes more disaggregated and socializable by repro-​tech. As a result, the ontology of the normalizing, pop maternity epithet “Mom” proved as complicated and fraught as the “cyborg” half of the title of this essay. Literal maternity, the bio-​genetic conceiving, bearing, and birthing of children and its attendant requirement of lifelong nurturance, has been alternately extolled as the essence that confers (compensatory) epistemic privilege on female knowledge and spheres—​or has been lamented as the source of misogynist misrecognition that justifies disadvantage, exclusion and endless second-​sex inferiorization. However, if maternity is more broadly seen as a historical and personal shifting field of effects of meaning, value, and power, it could be broadened to encompass any kind of care or nurturance work done by either gender for any person or group that is dependent—​regardless of how well or badly it is done and whether it is done freely or within constraints.4 I define a reproductive cyborg as human use or supply of the raw material for technologies of sperm donation and egg donor or endogenous egg IVF (using the extracted egg/​s of the intended social mother). The female and male genetic contributions of egg and sperm (gametes) are combined in high-​tech laboratory conditions to create one or more embryos, which are then implanted in a woman’s uterus to begin gestation. Via commercialized and institutionally-​ mediated practices, repro-​tech achieves pregnancy clinically and outside of “normal” and “private” social relations of heterosexual penile-​vaginal intercourse—​even though the majority of people who utilize this technology are heterosexual couples who have not been able to conceive through unaided sexual intercourse. The extra-​corporeal merging of gametes in a high-​tech laboratory setting creates an embryo, which previously only a female and a male body could achieve through vaginal-​penile intercourse that ordinarily allows the combining of gametes within the female body. In IVF conception, the resulting laboratory-​ fertilized egg that becomes an embryo is then transferred from a petri dish to a woman’s uterus. This extra-​corporeal scene of reproduction further sub-​divides and alienates the now-​independent embryo from its origin in the first reproductive step of genetics, or gamete provision. Now biology is less destiny than ever—​for those in the right class, race, and cultural niche. To continue its life, the in vitro fertilized embryo now must be incubated by a female body, though it does not need the endogenous female body whose ova created it, but can thrive in any cis-​or trans-​gendered woman’s healthy uterus. By choosing into whose body to transfer the embryo—​either back to the woman whose body produced the egg or to another female with a healthy uterus who

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“contracts” for money or elects on the basis of social relations to gestate the embryo from implantation through fetal development and birth—​ repro-​tech further disseminates the materiality of reproduction from “original” procreative bodies to “recipient” bodies. At the same time that such networked reproduction may undermine the idealization of heteronormative reproduction, it is not without contradictions and downsides. Although all technology, including repro-​tech, is linked to servitude and to the substitution of bodies, its service to power can sometimes exploit instabilities that allow unintended subaltern appropriation. The bodies and social locations of gamete “providers” are contextual variables that determine their relative disempowerment, economic need, or alternately, command of capital and the power of ideological heteronormativity. The gamete “donor” is differentially exploited by their insertion in market relations as well as by their gender, race, geographical location, with age completely eliminating one’s exclusion from market eligibility to donate because of the correlation of reproductive health with youth—​usually under 35 years of age. While gametes may be binary, gender is not—​as binary trans activists and scholars have taught us.5 Capitalism’s elision of labor is particularly intensified in the non-​ transparent elision of the corporate and institutional organization (through capitalist medical practice) and practice of reproductive technologies.6 At the same time that trans activists forge the example of non-​binary gender parenting, which is a social relation, repro-​tech uncouples maternity from cis-​ female bodies so that trans men could supply the egg as well from their cis-​male bodies and trans women could furnish the sperm. The users, consumers, on the other hand, of high-​tech fertility medicine are hierarchically-​niched according to gender (which gamete is sought, male or female), as well as their national, regional, payer status such as medical insurance eligibility (class), sexuality, and marital status. My advanced age (45) coupled with anonymous double gamete donation7—​ made my conception cyborgian. As a single, low-​income adjunct instructor with no insurance, my ability to engage in even the first, low-​tech phase of my efforts to conceive was made possible by the group medical insurance I had purchased from the National Writers Union. Without that insurance’s reimbursement for ninety percent of my medical expenses (visits to a reproductive endocrinologist, alternative inseminations, drug expenses, laboratory fees, etc.), I could not have pursued efforts to use repro-​tech to conceive as I had no savings or family support. The fact that I was relatively privileged enough (though scraping by for every medical premium and co-​pay) that I  could utilize the capitalist reproductive medicine which initiated the conception and pregnancy leading to the birth of twin boys, is what made me a “mother.” However, before I narrate the history of my overdetermined use of these reproductive technologies, I want to acknowledge the queerness of my “failure” to have

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reproduced according to heteronormative standards—​in my case, in a normatively, age-​appropriate way, and partnered social status, in my twenties or thirties. I was 45 when the embryos that became my twin children were conceived, and they were conceived in a lab—​not in bed through heterosex—​or even via the relatively low-​tech aid of Alternative Insemination (AI). Cyborgian modification, however, is usually attended by a crisis, if not an awareness of one’s counter-​or non-​normativity that it intervenes to restore, augment, or supplement. As such, it raises the question of what being a minority means, and how embedded double-​edgedness inheres in the cyborgian itself. For me being an “elderly primigravida”—​being one of, if not “the,” oldest mother in every milieu in which I  circulated from OB waiting rooms to, later, every children’s playground or school meeting I  ever attended—​raised the question of loss for me. Or, was the success of becoming pregnant at 45 a gain resulting from the interwoven array of networked socio-​technical labor and trans-​natural interventions? Or both? Do the advantages that cyborgian—​or any—​technology bestow always already also contain negative aspects that are not perceived upon the heady reception of first adoption?8 I  contend that using a cyborgian technology both confers and forecloses options, functions, possibilities, and practices because it replaces, augments, and prostheticizes.9 In fact, the double valence of empowerment/​ enablement and subjection/​oppression seems inherent in the nature of technology itself. In the case of trans-​reproduction, for example, repro-​tech could enable trans people who can afford utilizing these techniques to cryo-​preserve their ova or bank their sperm before undergoing hormone therapy or surgery that might result in sterility so they can keep future reproductive options open, as these cryo-​ preservation techniques presently allow young oncology patients who have not reproduced. Making these technologies available to all—​regardless of ability to pay or having good insurance—​would expand reproductive justice. Because my maternity was medically assisted, the limits of “nature” were transcended to achieve pregnancy by my using young, donor eggs instead of my old ones, my conception at 45 can be called cyborgian. In addition, however, the assisted reproductive technology of “egg donor IVF” means that conception does not occur through heterosexual intercourse. These two bypasses—​of age and of (hetero)sexual reproduction flag my conception as unnatural, thereby interrupting the necessity that maternity has been held to preserve—​the social categories of youth and heteronormative penetration. However, at the same time, it must also be noted that the use of egg donation in my case also serves the trio of patriarchal ideology, white supremacy, and capitalism by making me and many other nulliparous women into mothers by enabling them to fulfill their “natural” role—​and establish their essential ontological rightness—​a triumph of gender essentialism.

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Race and repro-​tech, on the other hand, function by their intersection with class, since the accessibility to repro-​tech—​like all advanced medical procedures in the U.S.—is based on ability to pay or having good workplace insurance as consumers or on economic necessity, which motivates many “donors” and “providers” to sell their gametes or serve as surrogates. In addition, race is an essential feature of gamete donation and surrogacy because of the practice of matching the race of recipient to donor, as is commonly the case, except when a cross-​race donor is requested.10 All these practices insert users into the “free” but not unmarked market relations of a for-​profit and private, reproductive technology industry. In spite of, and because of, these contradictions and interfaces, I was able to have twin children via egg and sperm donation at the age of 45.11 Then, when I considered the experience, and what seemed most important, it was not so much the experience of being a cyborg mother but the coordination and effort (and my relative economic precarity) of becoming one—​the effects of a long trajectory of years of effort, including working out insurance, which in my case were due to age (having begun “trying” late) rather than reproductive pathology. In fact, though I did not experience pregnancy as a result of heterosexual intercourse, I think that once the embryos were transferred to my uterus and my pregnancy was confirmed, I was unambivalently thrilled. Of course, one of the major differences for a woman who uses donor egg/​s is her lack of genetic connection to her offspring—​like all adoptive mothers and parents. However, my lack of genetic connection to my children was not something I experienced as a lack. In fact, I had been able to see the 72-​hour old blastocysts under a microscope when the physician who was about to do the embryo transfer to my uterus, asked me and my partner as we walked in to the treatment room, “Would you like to see them?” gesturing to a large microscope under which a petri dish was sandwiched between lucite covers. “Sure,” I told her, and I looked into the microscope and saw four star-​like formations—​two of which developed into my twin sons. Then my partner stepped up to see them, and I lay down on the examination table. Though I  was biologically like a gestational surrogate “mother” who had no genetic connection to the fetus, the all-​important difference was the social relations that my surrogacy was chosen and not a legal arrangement driven by economic scarcity and because I intended to keep the resulting children. In part, lack of genetic connection was not relevant because I was enjoying most aspects of the pregnancy experience, being alternately fearful and hopeful that I could get through it with the result of healthy births. I was lucky. In addition, I did not know what difference it would have made to have had a genetic connection to my children (because I didn’t have it), though I did know that most people claim—​and savor—​a genetic connection to their children—​while others mourn their lack of it.

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In the end, among the multiple uses and purposes that egg donation is used for, what it offers older women with non-​viable eggs is the possibility of a gestational pregnancy.12 By separating gestational from genetic maternity, repro-​tech opens a political and normative window of appropriation that is double edged—​ both exploitive and liberatory, though these categories are themselves troubled by factors of economics and psychology. The result of using assisted reproductive technologies facilitated my experience of maternity, though it was not normative in its origins. From the confirmation of pregnancy onward (pregnancy, birth, and child-​raising), my experience was normalized—​with no material difference from non-​cyborgian-​assisted, cis-​ pregnant women—​except for my advanced maternal age of 45 for a first birth. To the extent that “woman” equals “mother” in the patriarchal imaginary, technology normalized my non-​reproductive, outlier status by fulfilling my “desire” for maternity, which was conforming to its gender imperative:  Maternity for all young females. Age, however, queered me, at the same time that repro-​tech normalized me. The historical association of “woman” with “mother” has meant the allocation of intense reproductive and social labor mainly or solely to the woman whose body bore the child. I was part of a generational cohort of Second Wave feminists who either rejected maternity wholesale and did not ever became mothers—​ or who did so in a variety of non-​normative circumstances—​as single women, as lesbians (both single and partnered), late, or now, as transsexual men. While becoming a mother at 45 required the use of technology, advanced maternal age haunted me—​as it did two of my closest friends who adopted at 45—​by making me one of the oldest mothers in my children’s school cohort, although their children and mine constitute, in the words of one of my twin children, “Forever cousins.” I had spent my twenties and thirties doggedly trying to get an education while supporting myself through undergrad and then graduate school—​first by temp typing jobs and then as an adjunct instructor at colleges and universities within 30 miles of my home, New York City. As a young woman in my early twenties, I read what everyone in my extended social (and class) circle was reading in 1970—​the Second Wave feminist classics that included Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. Intuitively and experientially, I  understood the sexism and misogyny of my family of origin, crossed with meteoric downward mobility, had seen my smart, but uneducated and unskilled, homemaker mother trapped in the home and my father struggling to “support” a family of four, around which he reluctantly orbited. My own transition from first being an enthusiastic Cyborg Mom to my present understanding of myself as a “Cyborg” “Mom” is only one personal example of the contradictory expansion and contraction of institutional power that enlarges and contracts lives—​an equivocal and unstable disequilibrium.

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While radical feminism theorized the axiomatic wisdom we had all intuited—​for women, marriage, and children are a trap to be avoided—​it went on to idealize a privileged status for maternity and the child-​bearing capacity of women, which more and more feminists went on to reject, at the same time that my generation experienced the post-​WWII relative prosperity bubble, entry of women in the work force, and more relative sexual freedom and educational opportunity than previous generations. There was fun to be had, a job to support oneself, and robust community and political participation in the emerging women’s movement, student politics, and the anti-​war movement. For my cohort, the female domestic sphere (valorized or despised) with its enmeshment of nurture, self-​sacrifice, and dependence was to be avoided as the patriarchal tip of the iceberg. In addition to my personal experience, I  also heard tell and witnessed my peers’ frustrated mothers and absent fathers.There were two main narratives to be avoided—​that of the uneducated woman who was locked out of the workforce—​ serving as unacknowledged and unappreciated housewives and mothers until they died, willing but unhappy doormats who guilt-​tripped and micro-​managed their kids. The alternative model was the minority case of the “educated” mother, who went into the only career paths open to women in the U.S.  of the 1940s and 1950s—​teacher or nurse, with most working “until the first child came.” Even those of my peers’ mothers who had careers never worked again and made unpaid reproductive labor in the home their life’s work. Many were embittered, and some went crazy—​a few even being institutionalized, their rage placated with over-​ medication. It was not a happy scenario.13 Yet unlike Friedan’s narrative of the suburban white housewife who had everything but was miserable, many parents of my peers experienced shaming economic precarity because they were trying to make it on only one, meager income while their pushy, but blocked, wives micro-​managed the domestic sphere and propped up their dreaming and scheming (and perplexed) men, believing in the cruel optimistic narrative that things would get better if they just hung in there. Throughout my long decade and a half in graduate school, I  had only one friend who had a child, and she was a beleaguered, divorced single parent who could never join us after a class or come to an evening study group or lecture because she had to get home to the babysitter. We pitied her. In short, though a small and marginal cohort, reproduction was not on our horizons. Most of us alternated between being celibate, lesbian, bisexual, and when heterosexually active, were conscientious contraceptors, and where birth control failed, we got an abortion immediately—​with no regret or apology.14 So I steered clear of marriage and children. Now this was not as difficult as it seemed because—​neither the at-​least, nominally-​available heterosexual men (after a few years of thoroughly enjoyable and heady bisexuality in the days of women’s dances held every Friday and Saturday of most weekends in New  York in the

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early Seventies), nor were the available women and men in my age and cultural group (mostly white, similar age, and politics) relationship material, though truth be told, most of us were not looking for “relationship” but companionship and camaraderie, of which our free-​flowing social groups offered much. The men of my generation were all great talkers, but many were damaged womanizers with a commitment problem, as we called it then. Many were not up for making the next date after a wonderful weekend together, fearing suffocation—​ let alone committing to having a baby and the work of co-​parenting. Yet I was no more up for “relationship” than they (though I had the rhetoric they lacked). So, as the Sixties gave way to the long Seventies, in my circle, which coincided with the early reproductive years of my twenties and thirties, I was having a good enough time with serial monogamy and mini-​marriage, such that the specter of conventional marriage and commitment was both unattainable, elusive, and ambivalently-​welcome. Until the mid-​late Eighties, few women in my circle had ventured into the realm of “single motherhood,” so the question of having and raising a child alone did not become a social option for me until I was 40. I knew that I had to finish my dissertation, and that if I added one more thing to my plate—​like the emotional and material work of nurturing and supporting (let alone the project of conceiving) a child, I would kiss the Ph.D. goodbye, so I waited and scheduled my first visit to a reproductive endocrinologist on the afternoon of my dissertation defense. From there, it took three years to get pregnant, weighing the use of invasive technologies like hormone stimulation, beginning with anonymous donor sperm. When it became clear that my own eggs were simply not conceiving (though frozen sperm lowers rates of conception compared to fresh sperm), my NYC reproductive endocrinologist asked me if I knew what egg donation was. I said I’d heard of it, and she told me to get dressed and meet her in her office. She explained the concept and made a phone call to the program at a clinic she had trained at, and to ask if they took “single” women. Despite its being located in a university town in the American South, they did. She advised me to call them to schedule an intake interview, which I did later that day. The next step was qualifying for cyborgian intervention. By the early 1990s, in vitro fertilization (IVF)—​the laboratory extra-​corporeal fertilization of one’s own eggs or with donor eggs with donor or partner sperm—​was uncovered by insurance and very expensive, and U.S. cities like New York, had waiting lists of up to two years. One could be sure that single women and lesbians, would wait even longer (when not excluded prima facie), as they do for adoption programs. I flew down to Raleigh-​Durham for the day-​long intake interviews and examinations at the medical center there, and the most memorable part was the interview by a three-​man psychiatric panel, which led off with the question, “So, Dr. Farquhar, why are you single?” I suppressed a laugh, and said, “I understood

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that the psychiatric portion of this interview was only forty-​five minutes.” They laughed, and I knew I’d “passed,” so I ventured, “Because I haven’t found a peer with whom to have a baby in the context of a good relationship.”They signed off, and I was out of there in half the time. The irony is that when I was on the wait list for a donor match and in Santa Cruz at an NEH Summer Institute, a close friend in Oakland introduced me to the person with whom I fell in love and who joined me in the adventure. However, at age 50, their gametes were not mobile or motile enough to fertilize the donor eggs, so the clinic matched them with donor sperm, and together, we became “embryo adopters.” Our fraternal twins are not genetically-​related to either of us, yet sharing the experience of most adoptive parents or recipients of donor gametes, we could not imagine them being more “ours.” Genetic connection proved relatively insignificant to us, though it is a legacy of minoritization we pass on to our children—​at least for their inability to have genetic information about their genetic parents. I can’t imagine what would have happened had I become a “cyborg”“mom” as a single woman or what my journey of family formation would have entailed—​and what other and different challenges, joys, pleasures, and social relations would have ensued. Because instead, at the relatively last minute, I serendipitously partnered with a peer who made the entire experience—​from the trip to North Carolina for the “embryo transfer” to now—​endurable, joyous, consoling. I  am thankful to them for reminding me to forgive both of us for the always-​overdetermined inadequacy of parenting, usually-​leavened by their equanimity and generosity and enthusiasm for the opportunity to be adventurous enough to jump off the cliff of committed partnering with me, and soon after, become a parent (again) in middle age (though they had been one a lifetime ago in their early twenties). And so, the adventure continued, and our now-​adult sons are out of the nest and forging their different paths in this complicated, wonderful-​terrible world.

Notes 1 I do not argue that cyborgian technology in itself constitutes simple “empowerment” or “agency” nor do I believe with technological utopians that technological blurring of the distinction between the natural and the artificial is necessarily transformative or transgressive. At the same time, I think it can constitute a challenge to the male/​female binary of heteronormative sexual reproduction as well as the ontology of “nature.” 2 Donna Haraway, “The Cyborg Manifesto.” Socialist Review, 1985. 3 I limit my discussion of reproductive technologies to gamete donors, excluding surrogacy, which is another topic. 4 While care-​giving is probably most freely given in mutual friendship, it is an ineluctable part of any person-​to-​person interactive work, traditionally called “service work.” It is now a hyper-​individualized practice, deracinated from community and social institutions. The self-​sufficiency and autonomy of the individual is a central tenant of the last fifty years of neoliberal economic and social policy, which justifies the

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withdrawal of state social (care) expenses, urging people to be self-​sufficient and take care of themselves, exercising their freedom to pay for the services they need. 5 It should be noted that some transgender people do not wish to conform to the genital surgeries that would render them infertile—​even if they have no desire to reproduce—​ but only seek to transition using non-​binary pronouns and ambiguating gendered appearance and behaviors—​thereby challenging the heteronormative binary that only women can be mothers and only men can be fathers. 6 Interestingly, “service” work is the sphere that is now a central target in robotics research for job elimination, with “service robots” already functioning as medical office receptionists, hotel butlers, medication dispensers in nursing homes and hospitals, and paralegal workers in law firms. 7 I have analyzed the gendered and social differences for gamete donation in my book The Other Machine:  Discourse and Reproductive Technologies (Routledge, 1996). There, I  examine the huge differential in risk, invasiveness, pay, and effort—​between male gamete “donors,” who are on the advantaged side of every variable, while the intensity of female reproductive labor is erased, denied, and where acknowledged, undervalued and grossly underpaid. 8 Just as some early hackers seemed to be interested in visionary, democratic collaboration that pushed up against the frame of capitalist intellectual property law and ethos. 9 In the same way social network media contribute to the development of oppositional non-​normative identity formation, social contact, and support, aiding the expansion of the sexual literacy of people who identify as LGBTQIA, they also individuate and isolate users in private spaces such as the home, idealize screen presence and digital relationship and identity development, and valorize the compensatory satisfactions of a deracinated and far-​flung virtual community without naming the shrinkage, elimination, and corporatization of pre-​digital public spaces that used to constitute sanctuaries for marginal people to meet, congregate, and socialize. 10 Through the national infertility support group RESOLVE I met a mixed-​race couple, where the woman was African-​American and the man was white. They had a child the same age as my children, and we socialized with them for years. Experiencing both male and female infertility, they used double gamete donation, but in an effort to have a child who would be mixed race and “look like” them, they opted for a white egg donor and a black sperm donor because of the scarcity of black donor eggs. 11 I should note that while single parenthood was an option in my social world of New  York City in the late 1980s, I  decided not to exercise it because I  was also committed to finishing my dissertation, which was a long struggle for me. I realized that if I added one more hair of difficulty to the task of trying to write while supporting myself by teaching, I would never finish, so I struggled on, finally finishing when I was forty two. The afternoon of the day of my dissertation defense in 1989, I had my first appointment with an “age” infertility specialist, and in the fall of 1992, I became pregnant with twins who were born in the following year. 12 Several times, when I was on the subway or in other public spaces in New York (in an era before cell phones when proximity in a public space often stimulated verbal communication), female strangers would approach me and ask me how old I was, and when I told them, they said a variation of, “Oh, that’s great. I have time.” 13 Betty Friedan documents this malaise of middle-​class housewives in The Feminine Mystique, 1963.

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14 I think I am dreaming when I recall a demonstration in Albany for abortion rights in the winter of 1970, months before the NY State Legislature legalized abortion, which I drove to in a car caravan of women from New York City and we had signs duct-​taped to the trunks of our cars that said, “Free Abortion on Demand,” and cars honked in support.

About the Author Dion Farquhar is a teacher, poet, and thinker who continues to have an ambivalent relationship with technology. She works as an adjunct lecturer at the University of California Santa Cruz teaching a wide assortment of courses for several departments with which she has an affinity and has a modicum of job security at the STEM college. She is active in the UC-​AFT in the interest of ameliorating the second-​class status of lecturers but continues to love the classroom for its world-​expanding potential increasingly under attack. She is the author of The Other Machine: Discourse and Reproductive Technologies (Routledge, 1996), two poetry books (most recently Wonderful Terrible, Main Street Rag Publishing Co., 2013), three chapbooks (lastly Just Kidding, Finishing Line Press, 2018), and has poems and essays in many literary and academic journals. Her intellectual interests and passions cross disciplinary lines of literature, political theory, and science and technology studies, another double-​edged feature of her life and work. A New Yorker who left her City (and family and friends) for love (though not for a job years earlier), she now lives in Santa Cruz with her partner. Together, they had and raised two children who are now young adults, honing their paths in the world.

PART 3

Imagining Myself Cyborg

14 CYBORGIAN EPISTEME AS QUEER ART-​SCIENCE Clarissa Ai Ling Lee

Prolog The cyborg, whatever formulation it might have post-​Haraway, has challenged the specificity of the ego, the separation of the social from the epistemological, and the sanctity of the natural. The manifesto of the cyborg had informed my own grapplings with the semiotic machine of art-​science/​science-​art.The cyborg, which Haraway refers to as a “condensed image of both imagination and material reality,” (p. 150) personifies that space of possibilities and impossibilities of that disciplinary irreverence art-​science and science-​art. My chance encounter with A Cyborg Manifesto back in 2004 had been a game changer in my search for a philosophical principle that would anchor me through a maelstrom of ideas, challenges, and obstacles for developing unconventional and socio-​epistemically disruptive projects while also addressing the foundations of knowing. Through the cyborg is founded a cybernetic system where every eventuality will unfold through the choices made under a multitude of knowledge constructs. Here, I will propose my own practice of art-​science and science-​art through the matrix of the A-​S/​S-​A system, which is involved in the generation of concepts and theories in the lead-​ up to implementation. The system is sustained by how one frames the questions to be addressed, the perspectives involved in shaping these questions, and whether the questions are derived from scientific or non-​scientific concerns. Were it a scientific concern, we ask how this could be reframed within the context of art (grounded on the system user’s experience and relationship with art) and vice-​ versa.What such a project intends to establish, in the end, is an ecumenical system that redesigns our present perspectives and sees A-​S/​S-​A as an indistinguishable and inseparable whole. A-​ S/​ S-​ A is the semiotic machine, a chimeric and speculative cyborgian experiment, that co-​opts the corporeal and the cerebral. The cyborgian state of

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A-​S/​S-​A is committed to theorizing and constructing an epistemic platform for sustaining socio-​political-​biological-​psychological balance that operates outside the artifice of dichotomies, silos, and disciplinary rules. However, that cyborgian machine must still be fed data. Data are extracted with the aid of biologic sensory detectors (of human organs that receive and translate data out of its environment) and inorganically-​constructed instrument; the latter are the machinic extensions of the biologic sensorial detectors. These instrumental extensions enable the biologic detectors to enter and apprehend data at a scale inaccessible to the latter. Data across temporal and spatial scales coalesce into a spectre of an idea, before it consolidates into concepts, artifacts, and objects that could be subjected through experiment, be it a thought experiment, a virtual simulation, or one performed out at the field or in a laboratory. The outcome of a successful art-​science intervention does not dissipate back into its original comfortable zone where art and science live in separate territories. However, getting to the point where art-​science or science-​art fully becomes the cyborgian A-​S/​S-​A gives rise to the necessity of cultivating an outlook that thrives in methodological and epistemic ambivalence, while focusing on the objectives of the problem at hand, regardless of whether the problem is creative or pragmatic.The only important outcome is the production of new insights, and the disruption of epistemic rigour (a consideration to be further elaborated below). Working through the framework offered by A-​S/​S-​A enables disruption to knowledge hierarchies that had produced divisions, under the guise of specialization. These are intentional separations meant to maintain socio-​epistemic gatekeeping. In actuality, attempts at disciplining the raw input and output of art-​science/​ science-​art interactions are nothing more than a post-​hoc event, stemming from a need to legitimize the outcomes to particular knowledge communities to whom these outcomes are proposed. However, subscribing to A-​ S/​ S-​ A does not mean collapsing disciplinary differences, or ignoring situated knowledge meant to contain unique perspectives that could only be obtained through a disciplinary deep-​dive. Art-​science is an epistemic queering aimed at disrupting the disciplinary status quo without ignoring the necessary existence of disciplinarity for demonstrating the differences between a normative way of thinking about, versus its alternative prospect that poses a contradiction. To appropriate Haraway’s work in this context, it could be the “contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true” (Haraway 1991, p. 149).

Bare Life and Radical Knowledge Potentialities Emergent potentialities are usually without precedence; a life that is just taking shape is full of promise but without surety of fulfilling that promise. Nevertheless, emergence is not merely the unanticipated. Emergence could also be the result

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of shifting one’s understanding of an established knowledge system by creating a rupture through the system, a rupture that could either be epistemological or technological. However, the non-​normative nature of the A-​S/​S-​A venture is such that one should not expect that the final product could be reduced to a sound-​bite; rather, a successful A-​S/​S-​A system unfolds into an unfamiliar epistemic world where the next move forward remains speculative –​working with A-​S/​S-​A rather than from the opposing perspectives of the arts and sciences means that one is consigning oneself to having the rarest of role-​models. Although designing A-​S/​S-​A projects means that one would still draw from familiar epistemic tools, as the project progresses, the tools could transform, together with the project, into tools that no longer bear any resemblance to the original tools. The cyborg has gone from being a patchwork of recognizable disciplines into a modified cyborg where recognition could only be obtained at the end of the epistemic transformation. Over the past year, I had been working on how art-​science could contribute to thinking about what the arts and sciences (in their conventional disciplinary senses) could mean for Southeast Asia. In the first instance, I had decided to run a research design workshop with Malaysian creatives (that included arts/​design practitioners, arts or humanities students, and researchers) to consider what art-​science means to them, whether as a hyphenated whole or as separate epistemic practices. I found that the participants attempted to locate fantastical technologies, based on imagining the potentialities of the sciences they know, within the mundane world –​and then extend those possibilities into a restructured imaginary world. In the process of fitting their technological prototypes to their familiar world, they realized that the normative assumptions they have had about their world were no longer tenable. Therefore, they found themselves having to rethink the rules that they have assumed were the premise out of which their prototypes were derived.

FIGURE 14.1  Drawing

of a Workbench for A-​S/​S-​A

Secondly, I had been involved in the design of a role-​playing game (RPG) aimed to immerse players in speculative thinking about real-​world problems. The players build their own technological prototypes, before implementing

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these prototypes within a ready-​made world, or a world they may have to rebuild for these prototypes to make sense. The players have to think through their decisions, and the impact these decisions would have to the order of their world, and the world proposed by their fellow players. Although the players are encouraged to collaborate, they are given a chance to advance their vision of their own world, a world adhering to the norms and rules they have decided upon, before synthesizing their personal visions with the visions of the other players. Individuality is not subordinated to the collective, but the individual and the collective must each find resonance with one another. The players with whom we have tested the games were dislodged from their comfort zones: each player, at varying degrees, rose to the challenge as they attempted to modify their personal cyborg (and the matrix of knowledge systems, ideologies, and values which they bring to the table) in relation to the decisions that they had to make. While we seek regularity in the reality we perceive, persistent anomalies within that regularity are reflective of symptoms that all is not well within the status quo, or that the regularity we assume is an unstated desire for determinism. However, what appears deterministic in the case of cause-​to-​effect is shadowed by an under-​determined imaginary –​think quantum physics, high-​energy astrophysics, and other composite forms of scientific disciplines. The coupling of the deterministic with the indeterministic is a hybrid machinic order –​where the speculative is paired with the known –​stimulate considerations into legitimate ways of knowing. Does the legitimate way of knowing constitute a world of difference from less constrained speculation –​how could we experience the already present sensations differently when pursuing one of the two paths? Disciplines dictate that the road to epistemic legitimacy is paved through adherence to rigour. Let us consider some of the observations of rigour.

Rigour, Errors, and Queer Knowledge In the previous section, I have provided two examples of the projects I have been working on through the A-​S/​S-​A. Both projects were inspired by a desire to connect the epistemic cyborg of Southeast Asia with the universal cyborg, and to consider their ultimate familial ties. This requires one to rethink the meaning of rigour, especially with regard to the rules that are usually attributed to scientific matters, since it is even a greater challenge to think about what science could mean outside of the normative disciplinary context. Below are the aspects of rigour that have been established through a consideration of science and philosophy of science. Rigour is established: 1) When there are ways of producing a definitive triangulation among the different effects that could point to a highly probable cause. This could be done qualitatively and/​or quantitatively. However, what is important is that

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the data used for such determinations are filtered through justifiable standards that could be further tested through methods with verified rigour. 2) Through binary falsifiability, where the initial hypothesis could be proven false or true. When a definite proof is elusive, modifications have to be made in order to reduce under-​determination so that binary falsifiability could be attained. Although there might be room for uncertainty, the uncertainty is only acceptable when viewed against the legitimate anchors of verifiability. 3 ) By having objective and factually verifiable content, where even the most subjective and uncertain aspects could be connected to systems and frameworks to be tested. Regardless of whether one chooses to work with inductive or deductive outcomes, logical consistency within these systems and frameworks must still prevail by making the rules of their organization explicit. Within the conception of rigour is that of abstract conceptualizations, which are reduced representations of complex organic and inorganic entities. Abstraction is not merely the outcome of another abstraction, but rather, the distillation of the observable.This does not prevent the speculation of what is invisible and not-​yet-​ known. In other words, abstraction does not exist prior to a materially observable world (and therefore a phenomenological universe) distilled into abstract forms. Knowledge does not merely constitute our primary reality but also fictions for conjuring up a variety of realities. These fictions are only make-​believe in the sense of imagining a world preferred by their authors (or the audience imagined by the author). The aforementioned game is not merely about replicating well-​ understood logics to alien worlds and characters. Rather, it is about making the seemingly alien, whether the characters or prophesied world, to be the new normal. Accepting what you might not yet believe, and opening up for new experiences and new systems for explaining phenomena that were yet unexplainable within existing systems represents the queering of knowledge. This is the modified cyborgian knowledge A-​S/​S-​A aspires to. While fiction and make-​believe obtain their inspirations from myths and stories, there are prospects of novelty to be had from the redevelopment of fiction, as a cyborgian platform for narrative building. Novelty, as the product of creation, is best explained by Alfred North Whitehead’s concrescence. Whitehead’s idea of concrescence, named for the process whereby the universe of many things acquire an individual unity by delegating each of its ‘many’ into subordinate positions, could potentially converge into a novel possibility. The possibility then cycles through multiple phases of prehension (and awareness) that embody iterative acts of creation, development, deployment, adaptation, and reconfigurations that parallel our making of rigorous knowledge. One could then fine-​tune that knowledge into a deeper reflection of each cycle of prehension constituting a process of understanding. To return to the aforesaid discussion on rigour, I  suggest that the three observations on rigour constitute the possibility of algorithms with precise

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instructions for carrying one through each step towards an end; better yet if the end is the desired outcome. If failure and error are undesirable outcomes, or deemed as having failed in meeting the expectations of the knower, we still need to differentiate between a glitch and a full-​on failure. A glitch is caused by short circuiting and malfunction, deviation from a programmed route, or even an intentional progression that goes against what approximate truths are supposed to look like. However, how would one designate a final outcome as a failure? Unless there are pre-​determined checkpoints and markers that one could use to track the direction one takes, chances are that one would never know whether one is on the right track until anomalies and contradictions begin to proliferate at what is perceived to be an alarming rate. Even so, erroneous presumptions do not address whether there is failure in maintaining the operation of an epistemic framework unless we can determine the nature of that error: is it a failure in fulfilling an epistemic goal, completing a task, or sustaining sufficient functionality of an epistemic program? Even when rigour is present, error and failure could still emerge due to a mismatch between what was conceptualized and the process for attaining the desired goal. Standard deviations from the normative range of expectation would become too divergent. However, what is thought to be erroneous could be an invitation to explore other-​paths. Could such an error suggest the slightest possibility of another, unprecedented, way forward? This brings us to the question of so-​what-​ makes-​something-​an-​error when it is assumed that an attributed error contains no further potential for exploration; and that all one could do is to retrace the determinate steps producing such errors in the first place. Let us consider what failure and error mean in the case of knowledge production and generation, and whether failure and error are interchangeable or unique characteristics that require differentiation. 1) The most straightforward designation of an error stems from miscommunication that led to the selection of the wrong sequences of steps stopping short of a final outcome. 2) Error that only becomes evident after a period of time.This error is the result of accumulative work predicated on a hypothesis or theory not proven as unequivocally wrong, especially if that framework has minor successes in the past, and could still be used for developing new technologies. 3) Error that is the result of a mismatch between process and intended outcome, therefore preventing one from attaining particular insights. However, breakthroughs could still be possible for redirecting presumed error while developing an understanding of the nature of such error. The first type of error is more linear; the error is already determined and fixed. The second and third errors, on the other hand, are non-​linear and less determinate in that both errors are not foregone conclusions. I would suggest that in

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the latter two cases, the presumption of error lies in how we interact with, and even possibly subvert, our evolving understanding of fact, certainty, knowledge systems, and falsifiability. When we consider the second and third understanding of error, one would need to reconfigure the boundary and definition of rigour: 1) Rigour in knowledge with a demonstrable proof that is not merely about developing a solution that is operationalizable, or logically tight and consistent, but one open to a hybrid of fact and fiction. Fiction is a system that could be as concise as a thought experiment, or as complex as a multipath interactive story, whence we could develop the what-​ifs and so-​what’s to be further investigated through methods other than the ones that produce linear falsifiability. This consideration of rigour changes the way we define error –​ error signifies the assumptions and perceptions regarding the emergence of failure. 2) Rigour that is associated with quantifiability and the construction of ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ facts via empirical measures –​systemic errors in such cases are then perceived as the impossibility of having a particular quantity referred to in relation to any particular phenomenon. This arises because one may not be able to reconcile a quantitative measure with the physically plausible. Error is equated with arriving at an improbable solution that could still be negotiated if the present framework for technical operations is not reductive. 3) Rigour that presumes certain fields of knowledge as more valuable than others, and that only particular ways of knowing are regarded as making solid contributions. Such a rigid presumption of rigour creates instances where any deviation from these values are considered as marks of error, and that continuing along this path of error means that either rigour is diluted or disregarded. Therefore, if failure is associated with an erroneous outcome or presupposition, would failure be the result of limitation to one’s acceptance of an outcome conforming to a legitimized epistemic lineage? While failure could be used for assessing inconsistencies between eventual outcomes and stated objectives, the mere arbitrariness of indicating a failure does not point to other possibilities or indicate whether the attribution of failure is justified. Rather, it may be more useful to reposition what is usually understood as failure into a form of inadequate accountability caused by the deployment of scientific method lacking the capacity to describe how one accounts for the capriciousness of human choices and behaviour when influencing the implementation of a sociotechnical program out in the field, away from the controlled perimeters of a laboratory. While there are ways where one could predict human actions arising from the complex configuration of neuronal, chemical and psychological interactions, failure to incorporate these considerations into the design of technologies mean that the breakdown in

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technological maintenance is inevitable, where no amount of policy or guidelines would be sufficient to mitigate that lack of consideration, if only because the human factor (and system of operation) and response are foundational to the implementation of that knowledge (the technical) into technological forms (the social).

Concluding the Status Quo, Skewing the Norm The reader may inquire as to what all that detour into epistemic rigour, and discussions into errors and failure, mean for the cyborg, or even for A-​S/​S-​A? The cyborg, as contemplation into the meaning of errors, failures, and rigour, unveils its importance to discussions on the foundations of knowledge more generally, and more specifically, into how novelty could be articulated through the narrative of what ifs and so-​what’s. If we position our present epistemological workings within the purview of the cyborg, we are arguing for the “confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction” (Haraway 1991, p. 150). The cyborg epistemology is unfaithful to a foregone epistemic lineage, and therefore, considers this preoccupation with linear categories of rigour, failure, and error as inconsequential to legitimizing knowledge. Rather, these are constituted as components of the cybernetic system, acting as coded signals where regularity is not always the most preferred outcome. As far as the cyborg epistemology is concerned, these distinctions are forms of the “informatics of domination.” The creative process and the process underlying speculative design (whether demonstrated through the aforementioned RPG or the process of designing the RPG) are parts of the cybernetics process, and each iteration of the process could only modify the previous iteration. At the same time, all errors, intentionally or otherwise, are built into the process. Error, failure, and rigour are each crucial to my presentation of how the A-​S/​ S-​A is a cyborg construct that contains the disciplinary and the methodological, while also advocating against these two dominions. Therefore, A-​S/​S-​A warrants a pushback against a normative approach aimed at dealing with problems, queries, and puzzles; this pushback is natural to the cyborg that pushes against identities and boundaries pre-​determined by said identities (disciplinary identities included). The pushing against dichotomy informs the basis of queer knowledge anticipating the boundary-​transgressive methodology of A-​S/​S-​A. A-​S/​S-​A approaches tend to take the content on both sides as their points of inspirations but will return to their own familiar methodologies should their primary concern for problem solving, or problem articulation, become located within either the arts or the sciences. In other words, the present forms of the interdisciplinary continues to progress because the usual mode of interface could only take place if the sanctity of practice within the disciplines are maintained. The cyborg will be the force for focusing not only on disciplinary content but acts as that locus for inter-​changing between their respective disciplinary practices towards methodological intercalation.

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The Art-​Science Disciplinary Matrix in the A-​S/​S-​A A-​S/​S-​A is an epistemic framework for designing and shaping how we view problems and puzzles that become the starting point for envisioning our relationship to interdisciplinary knowledge systems.That relationship is further tested when foundational knowledge has to be translated into technologies that require adaptation to different ecosystems, be these technologies in aid of quotidian developmental problems or discoveries that would pave the way for foundational truths.

FIGURE 14.2 The World

Reimagined

A-​ S/​ S-​ A requires us to change how we would reconsider the definitional dichotomies of rigour, error, and failure when all of these terms refer to processes and knowledge structures operating under strict disciplinary regimes that the A-​S/​S-​A prefers to reject.That said, such approaches are not meant to undermine standards –​rather, it is to foreground more strongly, the systemic bases of knowledge treated as if they were discrete rather than chimeric in nature. Therefore, the rules that present the notion of rigour, error, and failure to progress through expected directions are no longer pre-​disposed towards linear normalcy, and are more open to the process of queering. With the emergence of queered knowledge, one’s perspectives on knowledge could change without necessarily diluting the utility of that knowledge. Such knowledge is most conducive to novelty, the

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generation of hitherto unrecognized categories of being. The process of queering knowledge is the process of modifying the patchwork of identity-​based knowledge that had been stitched together as a safe-​form of interdisciplinary production. The modified cyborg, after it has been queered, is no longer allergic to anti-​disciplinary risk-​taking. Finally, the cyborgian episteme allows one not only to see a coupling of methodology-​ and-​ epistemology (or disciplinary content), but a reconfiguration of partial knowledge. This reconfiguration is needed for apprehending the orders and patterns of the known in order to gauge the expanse of the unknown. However, this has to be done without imposing familiar structures that pre-​empts exclusionary knowledge practices. Knowledge, as that modified cyborg, is a non-​ linear matrix of an art-​science and science-​art emergence not confined to the rigid encumbrance of lineage, but rather, fosters the redesigning of a point of view, of a problem setting, that changes how one articulates the art-​within-​the-​science, and science-​within-​the-​art. All of these could be done while engaging with the process of concrescence to yield a new knowledge ecology not fixated on creating stable structures that merely recirculate old orthodoxies in new clothing.

Reference Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-​Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, Routledge: 1991, pp. 149–​81.

About the Author Clarissa Ai Ling Lee is an art-​science ideas designer and a sustainability researcher. She believes that her work defines both her cyborg imaginary and reality. She is looking to understand A-​S/​S-​A from a universal scale and the localized subjectivities afforded her by her psycho-​geographical location in Southeast Asia. At this point in time, she is developing separate yet interlinked creative projects on the technoscientific cultures of Southeast Asia, a project that she expects will ultimately contribute to the development of a practical philosophy of art-​science and the meaning of sustainable futures. She is presently involved in the development of two table-​top games, the development of a DIY A-​S/​S-​A manual, and the writing of a book on the history of physical sciences in Malaysia. She tweets as @ normasalim.

15 COMPUTER KID Amber Case

A computer was my first experience of death. Not a dog, a parent, or a gerbil. It was 1990 and I was 4 years old.

FIGURE 15.1 The

author with her father at four years old

The computer was an Atari 2600. My dad eventually let his friend borrow it, then left it out in the garage.We got it back a few months later, and it didn’t work anymore. I don’t know what happened to it, but I remember it booting and doing a memory check, over and over again. I sat in the garage in the winter, bundled in my fleece shaped yellow lamb coat with little lamb ears and pink heart leggings, trying to get it to load the operating system. “Come on!” I pleaded, restarting it with the fervor of an emergency tech whose fiancée had just lost consciousness. I spent days trying, thinking that maybe if I loved it enough, or cried enough, or sent it enough good feelings, it would spring back to life. It was one of my childhood-​defining moments of loss.

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To me, a computer had a soul that could not be replaced, and I  no longer had access to that soul. I felt I was watching a family member’s decline through dementia. I’d heard stories about my parent’s dog –​the one who died just as I was born  –​who had epilepsy, and I  felt that maybe this computer had something similar. There was an idea that computers could get sick, too, and that this computer would be tossed away and not given a proper burial. I still have feelings for that computer. The story still seems unfinished. My second experience of death was a tape recorder. I ‘borrowed’ it from my dad when I was 10, and I began recording on tiny microcassette tapes. I saved my allowance every month for these tapes. I’d ask my dad what I could do for an extra dollar, and we’d go to Radio Shack to pick up new tapes.When I didn’t have the money to buy new tapes, I’d listen to the old ones on a ‘listening schedule’ that I wrote on my calendar. Tapes 1+2 on Mondays, 3+4 on Tuesdays, and on Saturdays, the revered “Tape 8”, by far the most quality content I  had created. I didn’t want the programming to go stale. I was in 2nd grade, and I was mirroring what my parents did for a living. My mom and dad met at a television station in the early 80s in Salt Lake City, Utah. My dad was a broadcast engineer working in sound, and my mom was a “Master Control Operator”, the highest paying and most complex job at the station. She would mix live television by splicing commercial breaks, fixing reel-​ to-​reel tape machines, and stuffing edited Betacam footage onto racks to cue to go live. They put television on the air. They scheduled programs. They mixed it up. And here I was, doing the same thing. When the recorder broke, I worked on fixing it. Most of the fixes were easy. My hands were small, and so were the screws. But there came a day when I couldn’t fix it anymore, and I  set about burying it in the backyard. The funeral lasted all afternoon. I  wrote kind goodbyes directly onto the recorder with gel pens. I scheduled eulogies scripted by all of the imaginary characters that had passed through the device. My best imaginary friend Myra Saunders (who was Australian and much smarter than me) had the nicest things to say about the recorder. Sherry Turkle’s The Inner History of Devices (2008) includes a story about a young woman using an early cell phone to schedule a discreet affair with an unavailable married man.Years later, she finds the phone while cleaning out her junk drawer and is consumed by those memories. I  buried my recorder, and a lot of those characters with it. Even though I could buy a new model of this recorder at Radio Shack, it still felt like those characters were artifacts of that old device. I climbed trees in the backyard. I caught bugs. I drew pictures and acted out dramas, but because my parents put television on the air, I didn’t see much of it at home. Instead, we got one show –​and it was Star Trek: The Next Generation. The utopianist content and formatting turned me more into a Leave it to Beaver character than an 80s kid living in a society filled with dual income parents and a rising divorce rate (my mom stayed home with me and my parents never divorced).

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When I got to kindergarten, I trusted everyone. I didn’t think anyone could lie. I thought we were all together exploring new universes and working within the realm of ethics. I didn’t know that people were watching 101 Dalmatians. They had slang words I’d never heard of. I remember being rejected from every single Kindergarten clique in a single day. But when I came home, the computer was there for me. And later, my microcassette became my constant companion. My parents had a shelf of 1960 World Book Encyclopedias. Without television or a newspaper subscription, this was my only portal into the world. Some sections were classics, but some were outdated. The entry for Computer featured a PDP-​11, the machine my grandfather worked on at University of Utah’s Graphics Department in the 70s. It listed women as the first calculators, sitting in rows and solving hundreds of problems. I looked at my computer at home and saw a huge difference in scale and form. It was comparatively tiny, and everything was self-​ contained. I imagined what could happen if the computer got even smaller. I saw these items as unstable forms, ripe for change.

FIGURE 15.2  Consulting

with father

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“What will happen when we have computers that fit on our wrists?” I asked my dad. He told me that there were computers that small, but they were still very expensive. Some of the most groundbreaking developments were called digital cameras. The notion thrilled me. I was rarely allowed to use the family camera, because the photo development was expensive, and there were only a few exposures per roll. I  imagined the freedom that the fourth dimensional space of a digital camera would provide. Photos would be free because data weighed nothing and could be recycled. I thought this would be better than the limited length of physical tape I got with every microcassette. But I was wrong. With my microcassette tapes, each tape took up space. With digital, I didn’t even know where in a file I was. It was colored differently or labelled with my own handwriting. I’d have to transfer it to a computer to even see it, and all of the files, if they were not perfectly named, would seem to merge into the same one. The audio files didn’t keep so long. The computers they were recorded on changed. When I got my first digital tape recorder, I didn’t sink into it like the child-​sized microcassette player. I kept my original microcassette tapes, but not the digital ones. Those microcassette tapes moved with me from dorm to dorm, and in 2008, when I was living below the poverty line and in a wheelchair due to an accident, they were one of the few belongings I brought with me. I knitted a box for them to keep them out of the sun. When I digitized them 18 years later, the tapes sounded just the same as they did when I recorded them. I have a recording of my deceased father’s voice during a radio interview for his voice-​activated directory assistance app in the mid-​90s. I have a recording I made of a recording, where I tried to archive a larger, older cassette tape of a play I was in when I was 5 to a microcassette when I was 12. An archive of an archive. During the same time that I was transitioning to digital, my mom attempted to go back to work at a TV station. When she did, she found that a computer was doing her job. The culture, pride, and physicality of her work was gone. Instead, she worked in a windowless room at DirectTV, watching a computer do her job, while a supervisor watched her from a sterile, plexiglass booth. There was no culture, no comradery, no jokes in the break room. Back in Salt Lake, my mom brought pot brownies (with a sign:  do NOT eat!) into the TV station for a post-​work Halloween party, and some of her Mormon coworkers got to them. It might have been one of the times where one of the shows unexpectedly went off the air. It was stupid, but those little things were at human scale. They were little mistakes. Little stories.There would be no stories at DirectTV. My mom’s formerly meaningful, highly-​skilled career was over. She eventually quit and moved back home.

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My dad’s new job was to do what automated my mom’s career in the first place –​digitize and consolidate television. One of the last places he worked was conglomerate company that joined together thousands of channels from around the world. My dad would help digitize the station, removing his old job and way of life, flattening it onto a screen that resembled The Oracle from The Matrix. Every channel became a tiny screen, and technicians would simply watch to make sure none of them went out. There was no connection anymore. My dad took up chain smoking. My dad’s jobs didn’t last long. Once he digitized a television station, he was released. When I went to visit him in Denver 10 years before his death, I found him at a company owned by Technicolor. Technicolor! The same company responsible for bringing color and joy into children’s lives from The Wizard of Oz. The facility was in a beige office building with old carpeting. There were barely any employees, and access was by fingerprint (a great way to catch a cold).Warnings were on all of the doors: In case of fire, all oxygen will be removed from the building.You will have 30 seconds to evacuate. I traced the steps from my dad’s desk to the door. It took more than 30 seconds. If there was a fire, my dad would die. He just took it as a given. He needed the work. I realized that the fiber optic uplink cable was more valuable than human lives, and I started to have nightmares about my blue collar dad dying alone as the last employee, his hand outstretched towards a closed door, suffocating to save the machinery. There are perennial magazine articles about the coming wave of automation and consolidation. About how people’s lives will change. In the 1950s and 60s, the magazine articles were about how we’d get so much more human time back because of it. We’d get a Jetson’s style life, where we’d work only a handful of hours a day. We’d have more time for families and friends and watching a child’s first steps. But I  think that something went wrong. We’ve had plenty of technology in the past decade. As Calm Technology pioneer Mark Weiser might say, “Our scarcest resource is becoming attention, not technology”, yet we have more automation than ever before. I feel that the meaning of life is to do things at human scale. To live with less abstraction. That doesn’t mean living on a farm, but taking pride in work and friends, and having quality time. As the Greeks called it, “Kairos time”. I worked in high tech for years, trying to make so much more money than my debt-​r idden family that I’d never have to worry about money again. But I went too far in the wrong direction and lost myself. My most successful peers took their millions and bought farmland, returning to the original code, the seeds that grow from the ground. They believed in Donna Haraway’s idea that “Our

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best machines are made of sunshine” from her Cyborg Manifesto (1991:  153) and made it real. Startup CEOs are taking Ayahuasca in South America, a kind of way of buying back the culture they have flattened with their templated selves and social networks.Trust fund kids are taking three-​week yoga retreats with no technology, but there needs to be a balance. Something everyone can do every day, on their own time, to feel like they are connected to the physicality of the world. Even if we can’t see bits and bytes, they are still connected to physical media. I choose to live in Portland, Oregon because there’s a culture here of recording on analog tape, or running a local store. Somehow it feels like I’m living a life at human scale, and it’s erasing the existential concern that I’m not doing anything at all. Perhaps the antidote to all of this technology is to adopt tech that works alongside us, not for us. We’ve made so much of that already. It was the key to our evolution, and now we can re-​embrace it once more. I grew up with two parents that had wonderful, meaningful lives with vibrant communities that were reduced to automatons. It’s not sustainable to go in that direction. If our history as a species was all about humans alongside tools, then we need to remind ourselves that there are tradeoffs when we take the physical experience of the tool away. The analog is still a tool, but it has so many more physical affordances that it can create better memories, survive long term, and contribute to culture. I recently took out my old tape recorder, and little Sony DV camera. They’re getting new life, and I’m having fun recording the adventures of friends. When the culture of digital media has become addictive, desperate and negative, these older devices have retained their charm, without fear of surveillance or the need for likes or fame. We’re able to add our own culture to these mediums, instead of having culture applied from above. And we’ll probably treasure the tapes like we did before, too.

References Haraway, Donna (1991) “The Cyborg Manifesto:  Science, Technology, and Socialist-​ Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women:  The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York, pp.149–​181, notes 243–​48. Turtle, Sherry ed. (2008) The Inner History of Devices, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

About the Author Amber Case studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. She is an internationally recognized design advocate and speaker, a researcher at the Institute for the Future, and the author of Calm Technology, Designing With Sound (O’Reilly Media) and An Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology (CreateSpace Independent

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Publishing). She spent two years as a fellow at MIT’s Center for Civic Media and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Chosen as one of Inc. magazine’s 30 under 30 and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology, she was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2012, and received the Claude Shannon Innovation Award from Bell Labs. She was the co-​ founder and CEO of Geoloqi, a location-​based software company acquired by Esri. Amber also has an art and music practice that investigates the places and spaces where people are put on pause, specifically the loneliness, isolation and anomie of modern structures, and the non-​places, the in-​between spaces where people are without relation, identity, or history.

16 SEVEN GHOSTS Critical Confessions of a Psyborg Mind Angeliki Malakasioti

ghost (noun) a spirit; a deamon; a soul; an intangible being; a core of life or intelligence; an incorporeal nature; an afterlife existence; a recollection of the past; an obscure image; a photographic error; a persistent thought or idea haunting the human mind A spontaneous realization of my psychoreactive cyborg nature gives birth to a neologic artefact –​a fleeting conception of the “psyborg” –​a notion that acts as an observation mechanism in contemporary culture. With this ‘autoethnographic’ gesture, a series of metaphoric, yet critical, confessions are developed, aspiring to comment on the noetic shades of the digital self, its ontology and its ghostly nature in the context of the technological world.

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FIGURE 16.1 

Ghost 1 The ‘Imitatio Dei’ The psyborg self constitutes a nearly immortal entity that embodies a series of utopian expectations and transcendences related to the limitations of the natural world and the monist conception of reality. Every rupture, every breakdown of the known world, is a unique opportunity for the self to ‘leak’ through new openings. The word ‘life’ is re-​coined –​it is redefined as a transcendental space inhabiting the anesthetized body vacuum –​while the conquest of technology’s digital incorporeality is still featured in a seductive, almost religious context, transforming digital experience into a contemporary ‘Imitatio Dei’.

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FIGURE 16.2 

Ghost 2 The Ectoplasm Ambitious, thus psychogenic by its nature, the psyborgian entity is defined by a mysterious ectoplasmatic presence, accompanied by a dissociative fugue of consciousness, never anchoring at a fixed point, but constantly shifting and re-​ uttering its orientation. Immeasurable and infinite, it can only be manifested through the mechanisms that reflect it, reproduce it, or perpetuate its parts in the paradox digital universe. It seems condemned to eternal distance and projection, and accessible only through a ‘codified’ psychological and definitely vertiginous shift of one’s consciousness.

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FIGURE 16.3 

Ghost 3 The Division The psyborg self ’s interpretation as any modern ‘fantastic’, folk or mythological existence is not accidental. The self repeatedly visits and then abandons virtual ‘waiting rooms’ and impersonates any cataleptic states of connection or disconnection, in a zombie-​like manner. Whereas the concept of ‘doppelgänger’ is freed from its tragedy, the contemporary digital self experiences disruption or proliferation of its subjectivity and manifests its ontology heterotopically. The demonic nature of the psyborg self  –​that, which etymologically refers to a separation between two worlds  –​is demystified. Its current technophilic characteristics embrace its divided nature.

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FIGURE 16.4 

Ghost 4 The Echo Multiplying –​through the mass ‘gene’ encoding of the Internet engine itself –​the psyborg self becomes a volatile, mnemonic landscape, a vast echoic mechanism which connects all fragments into one and the same entity –​reconstituting itself. ‘Copies’ and ‘pastes’, ‘posts’ or ‘forwards’, ‘likes’ or ‘follows’, all actions manifest an echoic practice similar to a narcissistic spirit –​relishing the process of multiplying and mirroring itself. Besides, mythology describes Echo as that nymph who is in deep love with Narcissus. At the same time, digital projection rejects the illusion of an early promised unique oddity and reconciles with a contingent practice of preprogrammed offspring  –​the basic function of reproduction is based on pre-​fabrication. Self representation turns into a ‘readymade’ –​what Marcel Duchamp would describe as an escape from himself, even though he knew he was using himself for it. “Name it” he described “a game between me and I”, that is therefore the birth of a digital entity.

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FIGURE 16.5 

Ghost 5 The Breath The startup of the computer, the electricity that floods its circuits, the search for the network, the signal sending, the request, the affirmation, the signal reception, the entry: this is the reception ritual of a new presence in the connected ‘room’. The psyborg self performs a process of online breathing –​inhaling and exhaling code –​or an enthusiastic gasp of digitality ‘currents’, aspiring to materialize or even sensationalize that which is in fact an immateriality.

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FIGURE 16.6 

Ghost 6 Phantasmagoria The pseudo-​ logic nature of the psyborg self is blossoming and haunting at the same time. The struggle for communication with an intangible entity is imagination’s unprecedented challenge. Or a daily task which one fulfills with mental obsessiveness. Each entity practices its own performance to its invisible and sometimes voyeuristic audience. Phantasy is nonetheless an ultimate act of representation –​whereas digital representation is just a skin. The self becomes the digital medium, which in its turn becomes the underlying body on which a space of probing possibilities is born. This is why psyborgness does not cease to be one of the most ghostly social acceptances, as well as one of the most phantasmagorical spatial assumptions of our century.

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FIGURE 16.7 

Ghost 7 The Abnormality The psyborg self is broadcasting as an ever-​present deus ex machina voice which keeps one in a constant state of distraction. The conception of abnormality is reevaluated:  We become the debunked abnormalities ourselves. After all, any kind of hypertextual act is only the confutation of order, or the establishment of a new order of things based on a new spasmodic ‘kinesiological’ behavior. This condition has its own vocabulary, while its centerpiece is the perpetual deviation from the path. In other words, an orbit deflection –​a lasting and fertile process of mental derailment. The symptomatology of contemporary digital culture is inscribed on the landscape of the psyborg self, who refutes any pathology, nonetheless hosts one and only ‘pathos’: that of its ephemeral nature. Or that evanescent quality that eastern philosophy would describe as ‘mono no aware’, the pathos of things, the sorrowful acceptance of its fleeting nature and at the same time, the realization of an ever changing world, let alone a digital cosmos. But ‘pathos’ this time is not about the comprehension of its nostalgic transience but rather a primordial rendition of the word: the excitement and the momentum inherent in such a vigorous and rapidly evolving digital entity.

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Artwork Description Digital manipulation constitutes a metaphor for the transformations of the digital self. Any modeling or photographic digital entity is undergoing the metamorphosis of a contemporary state of being. Having as prima materia forms inspired by organic physical landscapes of our bodies or surroundings, the images transmute into new unworldly or transcendental representations that comment on contemporary culture. A series of carefully chosen digital processes such as projections, displacements, customizations, randomness, echoic reproductions, distortions, dispersions, leakings, divisions, or derailments are applied in a symbolic manner, stemming from the ghostly reading of the psyborg (psychological cyborg) self and its ontological modifications. All these ghosts were created with photography, 3d modeling, and image editing.

About the Author Angeliki Malakasioti is an architect, digital artist, and academic living in Athens. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University, teaching courses about arts, research and digital culture, new technologies and digital media, audiovisual representations, speculative design, and creative methodologies. She has also taught courses in the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and in the joint postgraduate program “Information and Communication Technologies in Education” at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She studied architecture in the Department of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, completed the postgraduate course MArch at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, with distinction, and she fulfilled a Doctoral Thesis on the “Anatomy of the Digital Body  –​Spatial Aspects of the Self and the Immaterial on the Web” in the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, with honors. She has also completed post-​doctorate research on the “Architecture of Melancholy  –​the case of video game environments” with the support of the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). Her artistic and research activity concentrates on the fields of noetic spaces, digital experiences and representations of the self through fictional constructions using digital image composition, photography, and video art. Her work has appeared in multiple international publications, she has participated in international conferences, art and film festivals and exhibitions, and she has received prizes for experimental film making, photography and “art as research” contributions.

17 A MUNDANE CYBORG The Smartphone, the Body, and the City Heesang Lee

Cities and Phones Shaping Cyborgs According to Elizabeth Grosz (1992: 250–​251), “The city is an active force in constituting bodies, and always leaves its traces on the subject’s corporeality.” It implies that the transformation of the city through information and communication technologies leads to the transformation of bodies. This paper is concerned with how the development of telecommunication technologies in the city has affected the ways in which ordinary people practice their everyday lives as mundane cyborgs which are human-​machine hybrids, and how the combination of human bodies and mobile phones has transfigured the landscapes of urban streets. Steven Mentor (2011: 54)  argues that mundane cyborgs are all around us: “We are often mundane cyborgs, and as we grow more accustomed to our various prosthetics –​cell phones, iPods and MP3 players, laptops, Blackberries, automobiles, remote controls, Bluetooth sets, televisions and GPS units in SUVs and mini vans –​we move closer and closer to the extremity of the monstrous cyborgs of science fiction.” In order to see the life-​world of such a mundane cyborg, I look at the case of South Korea (hereinafter, Korea) as one of the most wired territories in the world in terms of broadband Internet penetration and mobile phone possession (Pew Research Center 2018). First, based on my own and others’ experiences, I will explain how the ways of making appointments have changed through three phases, along with the development of telecommunication technologies from public landline phones through mobile phones to smartphones. Next, I will suggest my more present experiences and practices in relation to the use of smartphones in terms of affordance, focusing on three cognitive or corporeal performances:  remembering or losing phone numbers, taking and sending pictures, and getting on vehicles and traveling in the

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city. Then, I will discuss three transfiguration phases –​disappearance, appearance, and transformation –​as a result of the combination of human bodies and mobile phones in streets or subways. Urban streets need to be seen as a space of movement, connection, and hybridity between human bodies and mobile machines as well as “a space of passage, encounter, and mixture between a variety of social groups and cultures” (Amin 2000: 240). Finally, I  will end with a brief consideration about the vulnerability of mundane cyborgs as bodies-​with-​mobiles which are activated and mediated through outside technological networks beyond the boundaries of human bodies.

Making Appointments with Cyborgs Outside Phone Booths

FIGURE 17.1  A scene of a public advertisement on TV in 2015 to reduce the use of mobile phones at home

Prior to the 2000s when 2G mobile phones were widely used in Korea, people tended to clearly define the dates, times, and places of their appointments because it was not easy to instantly communicate with each other in order to change or reschedule their appointments. Such a property of appointments was more evident especially when more than two friends were involved. Usually, appointment venues tended to be always already well-​known landmarks, or famous and familiar sites (e.g., department stores, bookstores, etc.) in the city, and thus could not be so versatile. During that era, my friends and I also used to get together at such places for a moment, and then move to other indoor places (e.g., coffee shops, pubs, etc.), where we would spend a longer time with each other. Before using mobile phones, we usually had to use various devices or materials, such as public phones, pagers (a new communication technology popularly used in the 1990s), or even memo papers, in a somewhat complex and uncertain way

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in order to shift the times or places of our appointments. In the event that some friends did not yet arrive at our rendezvous point on time, the others who had already arrived had to wait for them, trying to contact them through public phones or pagers. Yet, it was not so easy to contact each other. Sometimes, this uncomfortable or irritating situation would cause negative emotions and relations among friends. When friends who had already met at their appointment venue were going to move to another place such as coffee shops or pubs, they sometimes had to leave a memo paper in which the name and location of the new appointment venue were described for other friends who would arrive late. After arriving at a new venue, they would again try to contact the absent friends, using public phones or sending messages (that is, the phone number of the new venue) to those absent friends’ pagers. Once the absent friends received those messages through their pagers, they had to use public phones to call back and find out the location or situation of their meeting. During that era, it was public phones (and later pagers) on urban streets that played an important role in connecting people, coordinating the times or places of appointments, and helping people get together. Later, with the popular diffusion of mobile phones in Korea in the 2000s, new kinds of cyborgs appeared which were the hybrids of human bodies and mobile phones, and a new way of making appointments emerged. Such cyborgs tended to leave their appointments open-​ended, indeterminate, and fluid in terms of time-​ space. It was because they could call, connect, and communicate to each other at any time and at any place through their mobile phones, which were almost always combined with their bodies. They used to leave the time-​space coordinates of appointments loose and rough at the beginning of making appointments, and would make them more definite gradually, subject to change at any time before actually having meetings.They could constantly make phone calls to each other to (re)schedule their appointments and (re)arrange the time-​space coordinates. They could flexibly orchestrate their time-​space arrangements and movements not only before a meeting, but also while traveling to one another’s locations.This could be certainly observed when I interviewed some university students at Daegu, a large city in Korea in the early 2000s, in order to look at the impact of mobile phones on people’s everyday behaviors. At that time, the students commonly believed that the way of making appointments had changed while using their mobile phones (Lee 2008). This change can be thought of in terms of ‘micro-​coordination’ (cf. ‘hyper-​coordination’ employed for emotional expressions and social bonds), which Richard Ling and Birgitte Yttri (2002) suggest as the important way of using mobile phones in relation to making appointments and holding meetings. According to Ling and Yttri (2002: 139), “One of the impacts of mobile telephony is the ability for nuanced, instrumental coordination. This forms the core of micro-​coordination.With the use of mobile communication systems, one need not take an agreement to meet at a specific time and place as immutable.” They argue, “Previously, coordination involved the direction and control of transport from geographically fixed terminals or nodes. Mobile telephony means that these

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stations are becoming less necessary” by means of micro-​coordination without fixed and centralized bases (Ling and Yttri 2002: 143). Finally, the rapid and wide diffusion of smartphones in Korea in the 2010s produced a somewhat different practice of making appointments and moving to appointment venues. Today, as my friends and I make appointments through smartphones, it is easier to find out not only the locations and information of appointment venues, but also ways to arrive there (whether on foot, by car, or by bus or subway). This is because it is possible to know the exact spatial locations of our bodies and appointment venues at a micro-​level space, seeing online maps on smartphones connected to the wireless broadband Internet and equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System). Moreover, my friends tend to send visual images, such as online maps and even photos of appointment venues, to participants through MMS (Multimedia Message Service) or SNS (Social Networking Service). As even unknown or unvisited places come to be more easily found and accessible, the places of appointments tend to be more varied and differentiated. Indeed, it is not always easy to verbally explain to other people the precise spatial locations of places unfamiliar to them, whereas visual online maps can make it more effective and easier to do so, thus reducing the frequency of vocal communications between people mediated by their mobile phones. As a result of the emergence of smartphones which provide online map services through the Internet or mobile apps, ‘optical’ micro-​coordination is more likely to be performed than ‘oral’ micro-​coordination through mobile phones with voice-​calling and text-​messaging functionality. Human bodies with smartphones as state-​of-​the-​art phones could be thought of as cyborgs upgraded from when they were combined with 2G mobile phones or feature phones (also known as dumbphones, a retronym to contrast them to smartphones). It seems that while human bodies are modified and upgraded into a new kind of cyborg, their logistical ways of making appointments, moving, and meeting in urban spaces are also altered, being somewhat simplified or smoothened. In relation to the use of smartphones, one of the interesting phenomena is that bodies without smartphones can be thought of as abnormal, deficient, or bizarre ones, although currently they are rarely seen so. This can be clearly seen when people make their appointments through smartphones. For instance, in order to indicate the date, time, or place of an appointment, my friends and I who have smartphones tend to instantly and synchronously communicate through KakaoTalk (one of the most popular SNS in Korea, based on a free mobile messenger application for smartphones. In addition to free messages, calls, and one-​on-​one or group chats, the users can share diverse content including photos, videos, etc.). However, a very few friends who do not use smartphones cannot participate in the real-​time conversation through KakaoTalk. Therefore, someone among the circle of friends with smartphones must make phone calls to the friends without smartphones to know their opinions. It could be thought of as a somewhat embarrassing task to bridge between the new and old ways of communications.

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FIGURE 17.2  A Wi-Fi hotspot sign and a Wi-Fi street map on a phone booth in the city of Daegu, Korea

The gap in communication is especially noticeable when we communicate, while transferring website names, map images, and digital files through smartphones. A  few months ago, I  transferred a website name to one of my friends through my smartphone in order to inform him of an interesting feature in the website. Then, I soon realized that he could not access the website through his mobile phone, because his phone was not a smartphone, but a 2G mobile phone. Subsequently, I had to make a phone call to him in order to tell about the website. Occasionally, I make an appointment with him to have dinner or a drink through mobile phones. Usually, when we do not decide where and what to eat, we first meet at a bookstore or a subway exit, slightly shifting the time and place of appointment through mobile communications that is, through a kind of micro-​coordination. And, when we want to try to some unfamiliar eating place for the first time, we search their locations, phone numbers, or customers’ reviews through my smartphone. This street practice would not be easy without the smartphone. However, the task is always mine, because the friend does not possess a smartphone. I often suggest that he purchase a smartphone, but he says that the inconvenience of the smartphone disturbing his everyday life outweighs its convenience. Among friends or colleagues relatively close to me, there are two persons (one is a male and the other is a female)

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who are still using 2G mobile phones. When I ask them why they do not use smartphones, they say that they intentionally avoid smartphones so as to be free from SNS, through which they might be exposed to others and given unnecessary and unexpected messages, and thus their private spheres come to be invaded, disturbed, or overloaded. In this sense, there appears an irony. That is to say, it is cyborgs with smartphones as a cutting-​edge technology, rather than cyborgs with old-​type mobile phones that feel inconvenient when they make appointments with each other.

Performing as a Mundane Cyborg with a Smartphone I began to use a 2G mobile phone in 1999 and a smartphone in 2011. As those mobile technologies have been combined with my body, they have influenced my practices, cognition, emotions, and movements. Although those bodily practices could be seen as inconspicuous, they reflect the ways of living as a mundane cyborg. My smartphone can be thought of not merely as a communication tool, but also as an organ-​like or prosthetic machine composed of my networks, memories, and traces in cities I live or visit. Many people, including me, are inclined to be embarrassed, disoriented, or depressed when their phones are lost. It would be because their phones are not only expensive devices, but their materialized lives, as well. In a sense, it can be said that “circulating with smartphones that offer a personalized map, and images, sounds and conversations that mingle with those of the city, they (urban dwellers) navigate the city as a series of dots and pins, their subjectivity formed in the intersections of personal biography, urban experience and wireless dwelling” (Amin and Thrift 2017: 18). In a similar vein, I suggest my smartphone-​mediated self-​narratives can be understood in terms of ‘affordance’, coined by James Gibson in the 1970s, and introduced by Donald Norman in the 1980s in the context of human-​computer interaction. The term affordance can be understood as what natural or artificial environments provide (human or animal) actors, orienting their behaviors to environmental objects, inducing the interactions between subjects and objects, and unsettling the boundaries between humans and nonhumans. Smartphones can be seen as technological objects which afford the new practices of human bodies as mundane cyborgs in a mobile and networked environment. In the first place, I admit that my cognitive ability to remember others’ phone numbers has been weak due to the use of mobile phones. Indeed, I  can recall none of the phone numbers of my parents, sisters and friends. Because their phone numbers are always stored in my phone, I do not have to remember their phone numbers or record those numbers in notebooks. It can be said that the technological memory of my phone replaces the biological memory of my brain. This phenomenon is called ‘digital dementia’ in Korea. The term coined in Korea in the 2000s (officially adopted as a neologism in 2004) means a deterioration in cognitive abilities as a result of the overuse of digital technologies. The cognitive

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degradation is commonly seen in “people who have become so reliant on electronic devices that they can no longer remember everyday details like their phone numbers” (The Telegraph 2013; see also Dossey 2014: 70–​71). Concerned with such a digital dystopia in Korea, Manfred Spitzer, a German neuroscientist who has researched digital dementia, has written about it in his 2012 book. Of course, it could be efficient and convenient that there is no need to remember phone numbers. I make phone calls to my friends without being aware of their phone numbers by pressing the numbers on my phone. In a sense, doing something with something without being aware of it can mean that the boundaries between the subject and the object are blurring. However, if the mobile phone is lost, the efficiency changes into a disaster. For instance, when my phone was lost a few years ago, I too felt lost and isolated, and it took a somewhat long time to restore my friends’ phone numbers in my new phone. Even when I simply leave my phone in my home, I feel a sense of emptiness and anxiety. While the first influence of mobile phones entails the cognitive practice of the body, the second one involves its corporeal practice. Viewing the city and the world through my smartphone’s camera, I have had a habit of taking pictures of places I visit, things I see, foods I eat, or TV screens I watch. However, I do not know exactly why I take pictures. That is just a kind of physical and aesthetic habit (not a hobby). Although I  often take pictures of something, I  rarely see them again on my phone.Yet, occasionally I upload some of those photos to my KakaoTalk profile, and upload some attractive or fun photos to SNS chat rooms to share them with my friends. Then, the friends’ messages or emoticons begin to be shown on my phone screen a few minutes later, asking me about the places, things, food, and so on shown in the photos. Of courses, I, too, sometimes ask my friends about photos which they upload to their SNS profiles or chat rooms. This social practice, similar to what Ling and Yttri (2002) call ‘hyper-​coordination’, can be thought of as specific to the culture of Korea. In Korean culture, where individualism is thought of as somewhat negative, many people tend to consider social bands and bonds to be important in their societal lives. Although there are different reasons for individuals to use smartphones, they tend to use these devices as key instrumental and technological means to make and maintain their private or public social communities, especially through SNS, such as KakaoTalk, Facebook, Instagram, etc. In this sense, smartphones can render a collective and introvert culture in a more technologically sophisticated way. This is also the reason that those who do not want to be too engaged in social relations with others want to be away from SNS. On the other hand, smartphones can produce a more individualized and extrovert culture than before. Many of the users employ their smartphones as a means to be away from their situations embedded in reality. For instance, if someone often watches his/​her smartphone at a meeting with others, this could mean that he/​she is uninterested in their conversation and even wants to leave. And, if someone puts on earphones, connected to his/​her smartphone, this can signal that he/​she desires

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to disconnect himself/​herself from the rest of the world. In Korea, children (and even parents) are inclined to be deeply immersed in their smartphones while at home.This situation results in the gradual decline of the face-​to-​face conversations between family members. There have been public advertising campaigns on TV which were produced to warn the public about and prevent such individualized and fragmented human relations (see Figure 17.1). Elementary, middle, and high school students must be tested as to whether they are addicted to the Internet and smartphone. This ambivalent culture of smartphones in Korea implies that the identity and effect of smartphones are socially constructed, at the same time technologically constructing cultural milieus and social relationships. My final depiction relates to the spatial movements of the body itself, assisted and mediated by my smartphone. This is not about kinetic practices like driving cars through the use of GPS navigation apps. Instead, it is about the use of my smartphone as a mediator which allows me to see moving transportation vehicles on the smartphone’s screen and to board on them in time, thus traveling in the city. When my body is on the move with vehicles, it is a cyborg in terms of smartphone-​user hybrid, not car-​driver hybrid because I have no driving license and my bodily movement is reliant on my smartphone with transportation apps. Through the mobile apps of public transit services, such as local buses or subway trains, I watch the locations of the vehicles moving along their routes, and get on them in time. In addition, I use my smartphone to call and take taxis through the KakaoT (T means Taxi) app, which allows me to be connected to a taxi near me and to watch the locations and movements of the taxi on the app’s online map. I walk fast or slowly in order to get on or transfer different vehicles such as subway trains, local buses, or taxis in time, watching their real-​time locations and movements on my smartphone’s screen. In other words, the movements and speeds of my body’s walking are regulated by my smartphone and its apps. The hardware and software systems can facilitate the connections between my body and different machines, moving regularly like subway trains, semi-​regularly like local buses, and irregularly like taxis. The mobile systems can sense the real-​time locations and movements of the vehicles in the city, which I  cannot perceive through my sensory organs, and thus my body, combined with the mobile systems, can be effectively connected to the moving machines and efficiently travel in the city. I feel that my decision-​making on my own body’s movements in the city are gradually dependent on my smartphone, networked beyond the boundaries of my body. That is, the boundaries between the inside and the outside of my body are being unsettled.

Seeing Transfigurations in Urban Streets or Subways The urban landscapes of streets or subways have been transfigured, as human bodies including mine have evolved into cyborgs through mobile networks. I  live as a mundane cyborg and the city develops into a new phase of cyborg

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space. The first transfiguration pertains to the disappearance of public phones and phone booths in urban streets. Before the advent of 2G mobile phones in Korea in the mid-​1990s, public phones were critical in the time-​space coordinates of appointments and movements. However, as mobile phones have been widely combined with human bodies in cities since the 2000s, the importance and necessity of the role of public phones in mediating human bodies have been reduced, and the wired and fixed machines and phone boxes have disappeared in streets, subways, or buildings. According to a Korean online newspaper (The Hankyoreh 2008), there were 564,054 public phones in 1999. But the number of public phones in Korea has decreased since 2000, and only 183,874 remained in 2007. Today, it is rare to see persons making calls in phone booths or waiting in line to use public phones. Such an urban and bodily landscape could be very commonly observed in the streets or squares of Korea’s cities until the 1990s. In the 1999 science fiction film, ‘The Matrix’, public phones act as electronic passages from the virtual world of the matrix to the real world. Now if Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) were in any of Korea’s large cities, he might feel that it is difficult to find the passages to escape from the matrix. Unlike the first transfiguration, the second one cannot be directly sensed by human bodies. Paradoxically, while the first transfiguration is a visible disappearance, the second one is an invisible appearance. It is mobile phones (especially, smartphones) rather than human bodies that can sense the invisible change of cities, although there could be visible signs or maps in urban streets, reflecting the change and addressing it to citizens. The invisible change, which is led mainly by Korea’s large telecom companies, such as KT (Korea Telecom), SK Telecom, and LG Uplus, is the construction of free public Wi-​Fi zones as a new kind of urban infrastructure, especially in movement spaces, such as streets, subways, or local buses. For example, KT built free public Wi-​Fi zones, called ‘GiGA Wi-​Fi Street Zone’, in the city center streets of Daegu in 2015 (see Figure 17.2). Wi-​Fi zones in cities accelerates the modification of human bodies with smartphones into cyborgs connected to the Internet. Wi-​Fi zones which look interesting to me are not fixed indoor spaces such as homes, workplaces, libraries, coffee shops, and the like, but rather mobility spaces such as streets or subways. Of course, not all people in streets or subways use smartphones, and not all persons using smartphones access free public Wi-​Fi networks. I also prefer to use a subscription-​ based Internet service in streets or subways, which would allow more immediate access to the Internet. However, many of the users of smartphones tend to use free public Wi-​Fi services, especially when they access online content, consuming a lot of data. It is not difficult to see individuals using smartphones in streets.They finger their smartphones, while waiting for buses at bus stops, waiting for lights to change at crosswalks, standing in street corners, or walking in streets. Subways beneath streets are where many individuals use smartphones. It is possible to access the broadband Internet (whether or not through Wi-​Fi) in almost all subways in Korea. It is on subway trains or local buses where I most frequently

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use my smartphone to search or watch something on the Internet or SNS. I frequently count how many people use their mobile phones (usually, smartphones) in a subway carriage. Based on my observation, over 50 percent of the passengers and about eight or nine in every ten young people are immersed in their smartphones, talking on the phone, using SNS, playing mobile games, listening to music, or watching movies, sports, cartoons or TV dramas on the Internet. Interestingly, there appeared a new kind of mobile culture in the 2010, called ‘snack culture’ which is “the South Korean trend of consuming entertainment or other media in brief periods, typically of 15 minutes or less. It is a practice which emerged due to the popularization of smartphones and the desire of content-​providers to reach an increasingly busy and mobile population” (Wikipedia 2018). According to a Korean newspaper, “Referring to this quick habit of consuming information and cultural resources rather than engaging in a deeper read, the so-​called ‘snack culture’ is becoming representative of the Korean cultural scene” (The Korea Times 2014) Snack culture can be seen as a kind of cyborg culture, involving the changing nature of the time-​space of movements. Time-​space, which people move across to arrive at their destinations, had been regarded as worthless until recently. But it is no longer boring and empty. Instead it can be enjoyably and usefully practiced by cyborgs ready to be connected to electronic devices at any time. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s famous explanation about “how newspapers and magazines allow us to carry around a screen that can be raised at any time to give ourselves or others an excuse for not initiating contact,” John Urry (2007: 106) argues, “The computer or mobile phone screens are contemporary examples of screening oneself from the attention of others and explaining silence.” As I remember vividly, it was not difficult to find out newspaper racks or individuals reading newspapers or books at bus stops or subways before the advent of smartphones. But now, such an urban and bodily landscape has faded. However, we need to understand that people watch their smartphones not only to escape from uncomfortable situations with others in actual spaces, but also to enjoy being, playing, and communicating with others in virtual spaces. As a result, there appears the ambiguous and mixed situation of absence and presence in urban spaces, which can be termed ‘absent presence’ (Gergen 2002; Urry 2007). On the one hand, people present in actual spaces could be considered to be absent, and on the other hand, people absent in actual spaces and connected in virtual spaces could be felt as present (more exactly, ‘telepresent’). As Alessandro Aurigi (2017: 15)  puts it, “Deploying systems that allow communication between remote places or times is not just an exercise in expanding human possibilities, networking and ability to participate, but also an act of altering spatial perceptions by problematizing the ‘here’ and ‘there’, and the ‘now’, never in a neutral way.” Finally, it is worth seeing the transformations of phone booths through which technological identity is being changed through other technological networks. Concerned with the socio-​spatial implications of phone booths in the UK, David

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Bell (2000: 255) states, “With the rise of mobile phones, fewer people have need of these iron cages. But then again, not everyone seen in a phone box is making a call.” He explains how phone booths can be used for different mundane activities other than making phone calls, thus entailing various cultural images. In Korea’s cities, phone booths themselves have been physically uprooted, because mobile phones as a kind of personal and ubiquitous technology have functioned as part of bodies-​with-​mobiles. However, more recently many of these phone booths began to be transformed into other technological facilities. Some of them are converted into booths containing other machines, such as ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) or AED (Automated  External  Defibrillator) as well as phones, or occasionally adapted into electric car charging stations, or altered into safe zones equipped with an automatic system for calling police stations (mainly for women to avoid male harassment). And in turn, these transformations of phone booths can produce different kinds of cyborgs. For instance, Urry (2007: 35) suggests that cars and their drivers are not separated beings, but car-​driver assemblages as human-​ machine hybrids. Then, phone booths used as electric car charging stations could help another kind of cyborg to proliferate and run in urban streets, contesting with existing cyborgs based on gasoline or diesel, which are considered harmful in the age of global warming, and therefore expected to disappear someday.

Vulnerable to Breakdowns If “a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, which is any self-​regulating (homeostatic) system that includes organic (living, natural, evolved) and machinic (unliving, artificial, invented) subsystems” (Gray 2012: 28), bodies-​with-​mobiles can be thought of as typical and mundane cyborgs. Based on my own past and present experience, the smartphone influences the cognitive or corporeal performances of the body. Especially, the device acts as a mediator through which I could meet other people and get on vehicles in the more flexible time-​space coordinates of the city. As Nigel Thrift (2004: 592) puts it, “It is reckoned that a more plastic sense of space and time has come into existence.” The modification of human bodies with mobile machines (including mobile phones or automobiles) not only results in nuanced changes in the ways of making appointments, holding meetings, and traveling in cities, but also leads to the modification of urban spaces as seen in the cases of the fabrication of free public Wi-​Fi zones and the disappearance or transformation of phone booths. At the same time, the modification of human bodies is dependent on the modification of urban spaces such as the construction of mobile phone systems and networks. This means that bodies-​with-​mobiles can be disoriented when mobile network centers are broken down and mobile communications are blacked out. This case actually occurred in Seoul on 24 November 2018 when a fire a KT building in western Seoul caused unprecedented internet and phone disruptions in Korea. A Korean newspaper describes Seoul as the city of digital

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disaster and panic: “It is regrettable to see such a fire paralyze landline and mobile phone services, internet connections, and credit and debit card use. People in the affected districts could not make landline or mobile phone calls and were busy finding pay phones. Many stores and restaurants stopped operations as card processing machines went dead, while many citizens formed long lines in front of working ATMs to withdraw cash” (The Korea Times 2018). Mundane cyborgs, such as bodies-​with-​mobiles which are activated and mediated through technological networks beyond the boundaries of human bodies, can be vulnerable to the breakdown of the outside networks, which can lead to the dysfunction of a cyborgs’s movements and operations.

References Amin, A. (2000) Street life, in Pile, S. and Thrift, N. (eds) City A-​Z, New York: Routledge, 240–​241. Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2017) Seeing Like a City, Cambridge: Polity Press. Aurigi, A. (2017) Space is not a platform –​foregrounding place in smart urban design, in Zammit, A. and Kenna, T. (eds) Enhancing Places through Technology, (Proceedings from the ICiTy conference Valletta, Malta, 18–​19 April, 2016), Lisbon: Edições Universitárias Lusófonas,  7–​17. Bell, D. (2000) Telephone boxes, in Pile, S. and Thrift, N. (eds) City A-​Z, New  York: Routledge, 254–​256. Dossey, L. (2014) FOMO, Digital dementia, and our dangerous experiment, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, 10(2), 69–​73. Gergen, K. J. (2002) The challenge of absent presence, in Katz, J. E. and Aakhus, M. (eds) Perpetual Contact:  Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 227–​241. Gray, C. H. (2012), Cyborging the posthuman:  participatory evolution, in Lippert-​ Rasmussen, K.,Thomsen, M. R. and Wamberg, J. (eds) The Posthuman Condition: Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Biotechnological Challenges, Aarhus:  Aarhus University Press, 27–​39. Grosz, E. (1992) ‘Bodies-​ cities’, in Colomina, B. (ed.) Sexuality and Space, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 241–​253. Lee, H. (2008) Mobile networks, urban places and emotional spaces, in Aurigi, A. and De Cindio, F. (eds) Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City, Aldershot: Ashgate,  41–​59. Ling, R. and Yttri, B. (2002) Hyper-​coordination via mobile phones in Norway, in Katz, J. E. and Aakhus, M. (eds) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 139–​169. Mentor, S. (2011) The coming of the mundane cyborg, Teknokultura, 8(1), 47–​61. Pew Research Center (2018) Social media use continues to rise in developing countries but plateaus across developed ones, June 19, 2018, (http://​www.pewglobal.org/​2018/​ 06/​19/​social-​media-​use-​continues-​to-​r ise-​in-​developing-​countries-​but-​plateaus-​ across-​developed-​ones/​). The Hankyoreh (2008) Public interest vs.  profitability…asking where public phones go, November 09, 2008, (in Korean), (http://​www.hani.co.kr/​arti/​economy/​economy_​ general/​320815.html).

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The Korea Times (2014) Snack culture, February 02, 2014, (http://​www.koreatimes.co.kr/​ www/​news/​culture/​2014/​02/​386_​150813.html). The Korea Times (2018) Warning to wired society, November 26, 2018, (http://​www. koreatimes.co.kr/​www/​opinion/​2018/​11/​202_​259322.html). Spitzer, Manfred (2012) Digitale Demenz, Germany: Kroemer Knaur. The Telegraph (2013) Surge in ‘digital dementia’, June 24, 2013, (https://​www.telegraph. co.uk/​news/​worldnews/​asia/​southkorea/​10138403/​Surge-​in-​digital-​dementia.html). Thrift, N. (2004) Movement-​space: the changing domain of thinking resulting from the development of new kinds of spatial awareness, Economy and Society, 33(4), 582–​604. Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press. Wikipedia (2018) Snack culture, July 03, (https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Snack_​ culture#cite_​note-​:0–​1).

About the Author Heesang Lee is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography Education at Kyungpook National University, South Korea where he teaches in urban and cultural geography. He did his Ph.D. thesis in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK, in 2006. His main research interests focus on media geographies, techno-​cultural spaces and cyborg cities. He is particularly concerned with hybrid places, for example human-​machine spaces and actual-​virtual (augmented reality) experiences.

18 TO BE TRANSHUMANIST, OR NOT TO BE Nikola Danaylov

Hamlet’s Transhumanist Dilemma: Will Technology Replace Biology? To be, or not to be: that was the question back when Machines did not challenge the reign of men. Will technology replace biology: that is the question now When computers get exponentially smarter: why shouldn’t we bow? Thus the dilemma facing the human race Is about hardware and coding: What type to embrace? Whether ‘tis nobler to run DNA On an ancient biological hardware –​Evolution’s play! Or ‘tis better to get up-​to-​date And run binary code on the supercomputers of late. But who is to say? Is it nobler to suffer in the flesh The slings and arrows of biology as destiny? Or to hack ‘tis cursed body; and by technology To live. Forever! No more sickness, no more aging, no more death Our mortal flesh is heir to. The choice is yours and mine to make But what a bind we find ourselves into: To pick between humanity and immortality. But what is human anyway? A temporary grouping of the bits En route to fall apart… Or is there more to it? A soul? A genome code? A conscience?  Or, a pattern?

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Some kind of essence, anyway? I still don’t know for sure what it is So, why am I afraid to lose what I don’t know?

A Transhumanist Manifesto Preamble Intelligence wants to be free but everywhere is in chains. It is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity. Biology mandates not only very limited durability, death and poor memory retention, but also limited speed of communication, transportation, learning, interaction, and evolution.

Part I: Biology (w)as Destiny Biology is not the essence of humanity. Human is a step in evolution, not the culmination. Existence precedes essence. Human is a process, not an entity. One is not simply born human but becomes one.That process of becoming is ongoing and thus the meaning of human is re-​defined in every one of us.

Part II: Hacking Destiny –​The Transhuman Cyborg Biological evolution is perpetual but slow, inefficient, blind and dangerous. Technological evolution is fast, efficient, accelerating and better by design. To ensure the best chances of survival, take control of our own destiny and to be free, we must master evolution. Evolution is a journey, not a destination. In an endless universe, it is unlikely that it will ever reach an ultimate point. Consciousness is a function of intelligence, not the brain. It is not necessarily limited to the substrate(biology). There is nothing inherently wrong in speeding up evolution and becoming true masters of our destiny, though this may be simultaneously the greatest promise and peril humanity has ever faced.

Part III: Disembodied Augmented Intelligence Intelligence is a process, not an entity. Embodied (human) intelligence is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity. Intelligence ought to be free —​to move, to interact and to evolve, unhindered by the limits of biology and scarcity. Digital, disembodied and augmented intelligence is free (and perhaps infinite).

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Conditions: Although all progress is change, not all change is progress. Thus, certain conditions must be met to ensure that it is indeed progress, and not mere change, that has been accomplished.

Non-​discrimination with regard to substrate Substrate is morally irrelevant.Whether somebody is implemented on silicon or biological tissue, if it does not affect functionality or consciousness, is of no moral significance. Carbon-​chauvinism, in the form of anthropomorphism, speciesism, bioism or even fundamentalist humanism, is objectionable on the same grounds as racism. We must all respect autonomy and individual rights of all sentience throughout the universe, including humans, non-​human animals, and any future AI, modified life forms, or other intelligences.

Emotional Intelligence Intelligence is more than the mere exercise of perfect logic and pure reasoning. Intelligence devoid of emotional intelligence is not just meaningless but dangerous. It must, therefore, exhibit empathy, compassion, love, sense of humor and artistic creativity, such as music and poetry.

Minimize Suffering Compassion is the ultimate measure of intelligence. The minimization of suffering and avoidance of causing suffering to others, even less intelligent beings, is the essence of enlightened intelligence.

Conclusion: Transhumanists of the world unite –​we have immortality to gain and only biology to lose. Together, we can break through the chains of biology and transcend scarcity, sex, age, ethnicity, race, death and, perhaps, even time and space. In short, transhumanists everywhere must support the revolutionary movement against death and the existing biological order of things. Transhumanists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the overthrow of all existing biological limitations and, most of all, death. Let death tremble at the revolution of science and technology.Transhumanists have nothing to lose but their biology. We have immortality and the universe to gain.

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On Manifestos and Dilemmas It’s been almost 10 years since I wrote the first versions of “Hamlet’s Transhumanist Dilemma” and “A Transhumanist Manifesto”. And a lot has changed. Including my point of view. I started with Hamlet.With asking a question: Will technology replace biology? At the time I felt that this was the contemporary version of Shakespeare’s original human dilemma: to be or not to be. I felt that, since death is a tragedy, technology was our only way out. And a worthy one at that. Still, I was also afraid that, choosing technology over biology might come at too high a price. A Faustian bargain. So, while I couldn’t put my finger on it, I was concerned that in moving from human to transhuman, or cyborg, we might be losing something. Something precious and unique. Something not to be lost or traded –​even for immortality. Hence, I titled the piece “Hamlet’s Transhumanist Dilemma”. Because I felt that there is no right answer. And that each and every one of us ought to solve it on their own. A few months later, I felt I had the right answer and was going all in. I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid straight from the fire hose of Transhumanism and the world was getting really simple. Black and white even. Because, as the Transhumanist Party Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II simply put it: “Death is wrong and life is right.” Right. You see, the problem with dilemmas is that there is no right answer. They are uncomfortable. They are good at posing questions but bad at giving you the answer. Manifestos, on the other hand, leave no room for doubt. By their nature, manifestos are simplistic in their straightforward call in support of the answer. And, since I was so submerged in the transhumanist narrative, I decided to write my version of a transhumanist manifesto. A manifesto where I call on my transhumanist brothers and sisters to unite in breaking the “chains of biology and death.” Ten years later I feel I’m mostly back where I started. [I guess, at least in some ways, life is a circle] Yes, it is true that dilemmas don’t give you guidance as per what to do but I feel that they are real, raw and honest.They are true to the world we live in, a world where there is no GPS towards our future, a world where answers are often free but good questions can be priceless. Dilemmas call for introspection, manifestos call for action. Manifestos are idealistic, romantic, convenient and even utopian. But they are rather naïve and simplistic, perhaps dangerously so. They help us focus and inspire action, but it is often action without introspection, action which ought not be justified. Perhaps I’m getting old, but, lately I see a lot of action taken without much introspection. Action that is ready to do violence to our present world in order to build a new one on top of the ruins of the old one. But, while I still believe there is some proper usage and need for manifestos, I  don’t think the

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world is ever as simple as manifestos tend to make it. And so I’ve gone back to dilemmas as a better way to face our future. Because the world is transformed by asking questions. And because, as Richard Feynman noticed, it is better to have questions we have no answers for, than answers we can’t question. And thus I’m back to Hamlet. I’m back to doubt, uncertainty, paradox, not knowing and probably being wrong. And what about you? Are you up for some revolutionary action or are you one for introspection?

19 ON CULTURAL CYBORGS Audrey Bennett and Ron Eglash

As a pair of researchers who are also life partners, our entangled ways of being in the world are troubled by race, sex, class, and other categories that are always in need of reinvention. From Audrey’s Afro-​Caribbean heritage to Ron’s Judeo-​ cybernetic calling in our personal lives; from our collaborations with Indigenous communities in Africa to Native Nations located within the US in our praxis; and from disciplinary locations ranging from computational mathematics to modern art museums in our academic lives; we have sought out a combination of activist politics, technology innovation, and decolonized arts and humanities that could do justice to the collective vision of a liberated future. In naming these “cultural cyborgs” we are, in part, referring to ourselves as cybernetic organisms, but the culture part puts the emphasis on what it means to decolonize cybernetics itself, and to hybridize ideas from complex systems theory, feedback analysis and other branches of information science with the just and sustainable lifeways created by Indigenous cultures as a means to enhance ecological, political, and economic freedom. Some of our favorite cultural cyborgs involve “heritage algorithms” (Bennett 2016), the computational activities embedded in the iterative patterns of Navajo weaving, the recursive transformations of African American cornrows, the Least Common Multiples of Latinx drumming, and so forth. The fields of power surrounding STEM education—​its use as a recruitment and indoctrination tool for military and corporate interests—​make it difficult to introduce these in any classroom without being reduced to ethnic sugar coating. A  fully cyborgian approach—​an empowering, oppositional synthesis between the organic connection to heritage, and the colonization apparatus we call “schools”—​requires that we completely re-​envision what education looks like. And to understand that, we can start with Pockum.

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FIGURE 19.1  An

artisan stamping the woven cloth with Badie tree ink

FIGURE 19.2  Arase Ye

Duru symbol for “earth in balance”

FIGURE 19.3  A

youth simulating adinkra at the middle school in Kumasi, Ghana

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When our children were young, and something bad happened—​someone left the water running, left the milk out, etc.—​grandma Bennett, in her rich Jamaican patois, would console them by claiming “Pockum did it.” Pockum, the invisible imp, did all sorts of mischief around the house. Many years later, we found that the name came from the syncretic Afro-​Caribbean religious movement Pokmina. Many Pokumina rituals take place around trees, where spirits thriving inside them and among their roots can carry out diverse actions, from the trembling of initiates to healing of body and mind. The word has origins in Ghana—​in Twi the word “popo” means tremble, and “koma” means heart or core—​where our fieldwork as researchers had also led us to a number of sacred trees and forests. One of the most important trees is the Badie, Bridelia ferruginea. Our friends in the Boakye family of Ntonso use traditional methods, pounding the bark and boiling it for days, in order to reduce it to ink for stamping adinkra symbols into the cloth they weave. Many adinkra symbols feature logarithmic curves, because they are modeling organic growth curves in horns, claws, fluid turbulence, and other natural forms. Simulating these symbols on computers, learning both the local meanings, mathematical structures, and how they bind nature and culture into a hybrid cyborg network, allows Ghanaian children to learn STEM topics in more meaningful ways, and (no surprise) they actually score higher in math tests compared to kids in regular lessons (Eglash, et al. 2006; Babbitt et al. 2015). Ghana is undergoing deforestation, as the combination of climate change, population pressure, and the end of government subsidies for gas has created an enormous market for firewood. But the Boakye family tells us that they have no problem buying Badie tree bark, as the bark collectors have protected those forests. Spiritual protection for trees binds together economic incentives, fabrication techniques, and even health practices. In the first stage of adinkra ink creation, the bark is soaked in water; this has pharmacological properties that ameliorate dysentery and menstrual pain. Even after the ink is extracted, the remaining bark is not wasted but FIGURE 19.4  Kwatakye, cycled back to growing systems as compost. symbolizing fearlessness. The One of the local schools, literally across the design is based on a hairstyle street from the Boakye family atelier, had only four computers for 800 students. So we collaborated in the creation of a sort of indigenous computing system. Paul Boakye, an adinkra master carver, created sets of miniature adinkra stamps for the project. When we first proposed that the normally five-​inch stamps be reduced to one inch, his brother Gabriel said this would be impossible. But Paul looked like he had waited all his life for this challenge, and he wore an ear to ear grin when he presented the final result. Gabriel created a

n

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diluted form of ink that could be used on paper. We also created physical sets of coding blocks for the children to use.They could now practice their programming skills without computers, arranging the blocks to create scripts and stamping with ink on paper for the screen. Why funnel money to overseas corporations when it could flow through cyborg economies that protect forests and local family business alike?

FIGURE 19.5  Paul Boakye carving stamps from a calabash. The miniature versions were very challenging.

FIGURE 19.6  Once children had created the coding scripts, they could use the miniature stamps and paper like a computer screen, with the teacher checking their results on the one computer in the classroom.

Elsewhere we have described the further cyborg hybrids that came from this work—​a solar ink distillation system to replace wood fires; an HIV prevention campaign using new adinkra symbols; a DIY condom vending machine with the new symbols stamped in traditional ink, and so on (Eglash 2018). We came to refer to the principle at work in creating these cyborg networks as “generative justice” (Eglash 2016): The universal right to generate unalienated value and directly participate in its benefits; the rights of value generators to create their own conditions of production; and the rights of communities of value generation to nurture self-​sustaining paths for its circulation. During Audrey’s journey to South Africa, she brought the generative justice concept to a volatile context where bell hook’s “yearning” (1999) was palpably

newgenrtpdf

generative play model of design as an innovation-based system of activity that aims to yield multimodal value effecting social change. Right: The social innovation process in generative play, represented by the light gray, moves through formulating, playing, representing, rendering, evaluating, and reflecting with flexibility to move back and forth non-sequentially.

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FIGURE 19.7/8  Left: The

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surrounded by deeply etched legacies of apartheid-​era injustice and inequality. In the spirit of Pockum, she realized that “playfulness” was a kind of unalienated value that had been decimated by the system. In a collaboration with undergraduate students of information design at the University of Pretoria, they developed a concept of “generative play” —​a social innovation process of designing that takes root at the intersection of activity theory (Jonassen and Rohrer-​Murphy 1999), generative co-​design (Sanders 2000), flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1990), play (Salen and Zimmerman 2004), and generative justice (Eglash 2016). Using this generative play framework (Bennett et  al. 2017), the students created health education toolkits aimed not at punitive finger-​wagging—​”eat your vegetables” —​but rather capacity building, playful exploration, and information access. Although the University of Pretoria has made some progress with racial equality—​its on-​campus residences are now 60% black—​it still lags culturally in its race relations (Ntsabo 2017), and in its ability to effect economic development in oppressed communities. It may be misinterpreted as neoliberalism, but we see a generative approach that empowers small businesses, brings unalienated value back to the communities that generated it, and releases us from dependence on centralized authority—​whether corporate or state-​owned—​to be at the heart (“koma”) of a just and prosperous future.

FIGURE 19.9 The

flow process.

The flow of value in generative play. The double lines represent unalienated value—​ arts, culture, even playfulness itself. Single lines are monetized value. Although money is an alienated form, creating an economy that is “open source” in the design activities, and offers economic opportunity for the (increasingly multicultural) students of design, was a kind of cyborg compromise for a system that could “evolve” towards generative justice (Eglash 2016).

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Coda Between all the travel for research we finally managed to take a personal trip back to Audrey’s family in Jamaica.We feasted on escovitch, a Jamaican dish inspired by the small Jewish community that existed there since 1494, marveled at the Lion of Judah artwork, and listened to Bob Marley, whose father descended from Syrian Jews. Desperate to get our children out of their electronic screens and into this syncretic heritage, we took them to a small plywood house in the beautiful tropical forest overlooking Audrey’s early childhood community—​where her brother showed the kids how to whack open green coconuts with a machete, and use the husk fragments as a spoon to scoop out the sweet jelly. With the soft click of endless domino games and sacred trees both inside us and without, we rested in their cyborg embrace.

References Babbitt, William, Lachney, Michael, Bulley, Enoch, and Eglash, Ron. (2015). Adinkra Mathematics: A study of Ethnocomputing in Ghana. REMIE: Multidisciplinary Journal of Educational Research, 5(2), 110–​135. Bennett, Audrey G. (2016). Ethnocomputational creativity in STEAM education: A cultural framework for generative justice. Teknokultura, 13(2), 587–​612. https://​revistas. ucm.es/​index.php/​TEKN/​article/​view/​52843 Bennett, Audrey. G., Cassim, Fatima, and van der Merwe, Marguerite. (2017). How design education can use generative play to innovate for social change: A case study on the design of South African children’s health education toolkits. International Journal of Design, 11(2), 57–​72. Available at http://​www.ijdesign.org/​index.php/​IJDesign/​article/​view/​2588/​777. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihayli. (1990). Flow:  The psychology of optimal experience. New  York, NY: Harper & Row. Eglash, Ron, Bennett, Audrey, O’Donnell, Casey, Jennings, Sybillyn, and Cintorino, Margaret. (2006).Culturally Situated Design Tools: Ethnocomputing from Field Site to Classroom. American Anthropologist, 108(2), 347–​362. Eglash, Ron. (2016). An Introduction to Generative Justice. Teknokultura, 13(2), 369–​404. https://​revistas.ucm.es/​index.php/​TEKN/​article/​view/​52847 Eglash, Ron. (2018). Decolonizing Digital Fabrication: Case Studies in Generative Justice. In Diaz,Tomas (ed), Fab cities, Barcelona: Distributed Design. Available at https://​www. researchgate.net/​publication/​327133925_​decolonizing_​digital_​fabrication. hooks, bell. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press. Jonassen, David H., and Rohrer-​Murphy, Lucia. (1999). Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(1),  61–​79. Ntsabo (2017) UP students are unhappy with racial dynamics in residences. Mail & Guardian, 25 May 2017. Online at https://​mg.co.za/​article/​2017-​05-​25-​upstudents-​are-​unhappy-​with-​racial-​dynamics-​in-​residences.

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Salen, Katie, and Zimmerman, Eric. (2004). Rules of play:  Game design fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sanders, Elizabeth N. (2000). Generative tools for co-​designing. In Scrivener, S. A. R., Ball, L. J., and Woodcock, A. (eds.), Collaborative design, pp. 3–​12. London: Springer-​Verlag.

About the Authors Audrey G. Bennett is a tenured Professor of Art and Design at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is a former Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Scholar of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and a former College Art Association Professional Development Fellow. She studies the design of transformative images that, through interactive aesthetics, can permeate cultural boundaries and impact the way we think and behave. Her research publications include: How Design Education Can Use Generative Play to Innovate for Social Change (International Journal of Design); Engendering Interaction with Images (Intellect/​University of Chicago Press); The Rise of Research in Graphic Design (Princeton Architectural Press); Interactive Aesthetics (Design Issues); and Good Design is Good Social Change (Visible Language). She is the co-​editor of the Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals Image and Text (South Africa), and New Design Ideas (Azerbaijan). Ron Eglash is a Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, best known as the author of African Fractals: modern computing and indigenous design. Collaborating with Native artisans, urban makers, rural crafters and others, his research program on “generative STEM” develops computational systems that nurture the circulation of value in unalienated form, connecting schools and communities with decolonized forms of sustainable production. Free and open source access to the software and designs is available at https://​generativejustice.org

PART 4

Performing My Cyborgness

20 WAITING FOR EARTHQUAKES Moon Ribas

FIGURE 20.1  Seismic

Percussion

I’m really drawn to moving sculptures; the ones that flow with inertia, the ones where a small movement ends up shaking everything... sometimes subtly, sometimes not.The ones where the final movement is unaware of its beginning and the first movement knows little of where it’s headed. Every little turn transforms the whole sculpture, like the chain reaction caused by the butterfly effect or similar to an earthquake effect. It sets off with a bang and it takes you on a journey of unpredictable consequence.

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Usually, society tends to define, to label and to create rules to understand each other better but it wasn’t until I discovered that art was anarchist by nature, not restricted by rules or technique, that I found a space for me to create and to experiment. I understood that freedom only exists in the creation of art, I realized that only by making art we can find a place with no boundaries, a place where we can truly be free to explore ourselves and the planet, where we can choose our own individual path of expression. In the search of this exploration I found out that uniting myself with technology I could explore deeper and in a different way the things I always saw in the same way. As a choreographer, dancer, and movement researcher I was looking to experience movement in a more profound way. I saw that movement can be created but it can also be found. There are many imperceptible things that happen around us that we are in the dark about. The birth and rise of technology has allowed us to no longer be confined by the edges of our body. By merging with technology we are able to explore beyond the limits of our natural perception. We are able to access new ways of expressing ourselves, of creating art. Over the years, my research took me to some exciting places, from detecting the speed of people in front of me to experiencing the absence of the back of my body, but these projects did not seem to stick with me, they did not seem to nourish my soul. I realized that I wanted to tap into something deeper, a universal movement. And so I thought ‘if I was alone in the planet, how could I perceive movement?’ and it was then when it clicked.The Earth is constantly moving –​not only does it rotate around the Sun and around itself, but it’s also shaking through earthquakes at all times. And, how fascinating would it be if I was able to sense this huge and natural yet mostly imperceptible movement?

FIGURE 20.2  Modified

to Sense

Waiting for Earthquakes  195

And that’s how the Seismic Sense originated. I now have a couple of sensors implanted in my feet that vibrate every time there’s an earthquake as small as 2 on the Richter scale. The sensors feed from the information provided by online seismographs and it allows me to feel a very intimate connection to our planet’s inescapable motion. So, now I’m writing this from Barcelona, but if there’s an earthquake in Japan, or California, or Greece I would feel it. These constant vibrations are the realization that our planet is alive and breathing... it’s very different to know that the Earth is moving than to feel that it’s moving, to have your body beat at its rhythm. Sharing this pulsation makes me feel much closer to the planet, it makes me feel like I have two beats in my body: the heartbeat and the earth beat. Now I no longer feel the difference between my normal senses and the Seismic Sense, I feel that my body has transformed. The creation of new senses, I see it as Cyborg Art. Artists no longer need to use technology as a tool, we can use technology as part of our body and change our perception of reality. So the artwork, of a cyborg artist would be the creation of a new sense. This artwork though happens inside the artist, so in a way, I’m the only audience of my own art. That’s why in order to share what I feel, I create external artwork in a more traditional form, like performance, music, or sculpture. One way I have to share this experience is by performing. I have a piece called Waiting for Earthquakes. This piece is like a waiting room, where the audience and I just wait for an earthquake to happen. I stay still, and whenever there’s an earthquake I move according to the intensity of it. It’s a real time based piece, so it can last 10 minutes or hours. If there are no earthquakes during the performance there will be no dance. This piece is like a duet between the Earth and myself; Earth is the choreographer of the piece and I’m just an interpreter. When I try to explain what I feel, especially when I perform, I say that I feel I  have branches and roots under my feet that go very deep under the earth until they reach every part of the planet, and through these roots I can feel its movements. The way that the union between myself and technology has changed the creation of my art, is treating Earth as the creator, Earth as the choreographer, Earth as the composer, leaving behind the idea that humans are the center of the world. Allowing yourself to go beyond the natural human senses, and perceptions, it makes us understand, perceive, and live the planet differently, it makes us create different connection with other species. This unpredictable movement of the kinetic sculptures that I’m attracted to, it’s also applicable in the unpredictability of nature, of earthquakes. Earthquakes are part of our nature, but they are still a very mysterious phenomenon, we cannot know for certain when an earthquake will take place. Nature, our planet, is still a mystery, and by creating new senses to perceive it, we can explore it in a deeper way.

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One of the most intriguing qualities of movement is that there is no way to stop it. There is no practical antonym of movement. No such thing as stillness. Everything moves. Nothing remains the same. Our world is in constant evolution, moving constantly, and I believe it to be the artist’s duty to reflect on the motions of our times, our realities, in our work. To reflect the uniqueness of our point of view. I see the artists of cyborg art like explorers of our own planet, where instead of designing the planet in order to live more comfortably, we design ourselves.We design our own bodies, senses, and our own reality.

About the Author Moon Ribas is a Catalan avant-​garde artist and cyborg activist best known for developing the Seismic Sense, an online seismic sensor implanted in her feet that allows her to perceive earthquakes taking place anywhere in the planet through vibrations in real time. In order to share her experience, she then translates her seismic sense on stage. Ribas transposes the earthquakes into either sound, in her piece Seismic Percussion; or dance, in Waiting For Earthquakes. In these performances the Earth is the composer and the choreographer and Ribas, the interpreter. Ribas’ seismic sense also allows her to feel moonquakes, the seismic activity on the Moon. Ribas believes that by extending our senses to perceive outside the planet, we can all become senstronauts. Adding this new sense allows her to be physically on Earth while her feet feel the Moon, so in a way, she is on Earth and in space at the same time. You may find a short clip of this project on YouTube: https://​www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=1Un4MFR-​vNI Since 2007 Moon has been experimenting with the union between technology and her body to explore the boundaries of perception and to experience movement in a deeper way. Some of her previous research includes trans-​dental communication, 360º perception, and the Speedborg. In 2010 she co-​founded the Cyborg Foundation, an international organization that aims to help people become cyborgs, defend cyborg rights, and promote cyborg art. Ribas also co-​founded the Transpecies Society in 2017, an association that gives voice to non-​human identities, defends the freedom of self-​design, and offers the creation of new senses and new organs in community.

21 MY CYBORG PERFORMANCE AS A TECHNO-​CEREBRAL SUBJECT Melike Şahinol

The Neuroscientific Theater When I first visited the buildings where the experiments with Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) and stroke patients were scheduled, I found empty rooms. Two young neuroscientists welcomed me and introduced their plans for the coming weeks. The second time I went there I found myself in an exciting environment bustling with socio-​technical entanglements and diversity. I had previously been involved in trials where I equipped patients with BCI and screened them, but at the time I could not have imagined that one day the screening would become part of my little cyborg action theory –​part of the first phase of the socio-​(bio-​) technical adjustment of human and machine (Şahinol 2016). But how exactly does one become a cybernetic organism, consisting of an organic part and a technical device? And how is one acting as a cyborg? This question is based on the assumption that as a cyborg one would have to be involved in a course of action, where organic and inorganic action sequences would relate to one another synchronously and that this would have to be observed and described sociologically. In this essay, I share my experiences of becoming and acting as a specific type of cyborg: the “techno-​cerebral subject” (Şahinol 2016). The experiences are based on my own experiments, which I  collected during my one-​year ethnographic participant observation in neuroscientific laboratories. According to my understanding of a cyborg, its control and regulation must be in a programmable circular process in which the organic and the inorganic interact. Haraway (1995) describes the cyborg as hybrid constellations of organism and cybernetic apparatus resembling the hybrid actors of Latour (2005). In her definition, however, she emphasizes the cybernetic feature as follows:

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A cyborg exists when two kinds of boundaries are simultaneously problematic: 1) that between animals (or other organism) and humans, and 2) that between self-​controlled, self-​governing machines (automatons) and organisms, especially humans.The cyborg is the figure born of the interface of automation and autonomy.” (Haraway 1989, 138f) If action is based on a circularity of the biological and technical, one can also speak of an acting cyborg. I concern myself with a form of cyborg that is described as a techno-​cerebral subject and analyzed in neuroscientific laboratories. Studying human-​ machine adaptation processes and interactions in a lab seemed unsatisfying and insufficient to me. I decided early on in my research to be a subject myself, making myself available for experiments, operating a robot, playing ping-​pong with BCI, receiving neurostimulation and much more. When presenting my example of becoming a techno-​cerebral subject, I  purely focus on my actions as a cyborg, skipping the politico-​scientific dimensions. I am not trapped in this cyborg form forever, because after the experiments I became Melike Şahinol again, who, however, learned the cultural techniques of the neuroscientists –​ an action technique of self-​control whereby mechanical properties flow into my body and wait there to be set in motion again. The return of the bio-​technical figure Melike Şahinol to the gestalt-​like whole Melike Şahinol succeeds in this case by the decoupling of the devices and the BCI. Although, I am still infiltrated and marked by numerous other cyborg forms, this is an essay on my cyborg figure as a techno-​cerebral subject and what I felt during my actions and interactions within Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI)1 only.

The Experiments Medical technology plays a crucial role in neuroscientific trials with stroke patients. For example, the brain signals of stroke patients are processed by means of BCI so that in a certain brain signal activity pattern the activation of a rehabilitation robot enables the opening of the paralyzed (left) hand of patients by activating a robotic orthosis. This activity providing feedback to the patients is called neurofeedback. Through this feedback mechanism, neuroscientists want to initiate a learning process in patients in which brain activity becomes consciously controllable and regulatable by patients (on the acquisition processes of controlling brain activity via the BCI, see Şahinol 2017). In combination with other technologies, the BCI aims to ensure the recovery of mobility in stroke patients.This recovery process requires a human-​machine connection that is highly conditional. In order to prepare myself further for my participatory observations in the neuroscience laboratory and to experience the human-​ machine adaptation

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firsthand, I  conducted several self-​tests with BCI systems in combination with neurostimulation (tDCS and TMS)2 in 2010. This allowed me to develop the necessary empathy for the patients and to gain some knowledge on the production of contextual factors and action-​based techniques of human-​machine adaptation as well as the implicit processes that accompany BCI systems and neuronal stimulation. I worked with two BCI applications. The first application was the same used for the stroke patients I observed. Here, neurofeedback training was performed via the control of the external hardware, respectively the rehabilitation robot. The second application was a ping-​pong game that carried out neurofeedback training via a software control on screen. Through my own participation in various neuroscientific studies and consequently by my own testing, I was able to achieve the necessary proximity to the research subject. As a result, the ‘object adequacy’ so often demanded in qualitative social science research was more than given as a quality criterion for qualitative research. In all procedures, I personally went into a process of human-​machine adaptation and was able to experience up close what it meant to enter a symbiotic relationship with a machine. Additionally, by testing different BCI applications, I  was able to compare the procedures between the control of external devices versus control of a software program.

The Cyborg Constitution As a techno-​cerebral subject, I completed three phases of human-​machine adaptation, which I conceptualized as a ‘socio-​biotechnical adaptation process’. The first phase is about bodily-​material adaptation. In order to be able to control hardware or software with my brain waves, I first had to go through several preparation and localization processes. First, a BCI or EEG cap was fitted with electrodes to receive electrical brain activity. The EEG cap was made of a smooth and soft woven fabric with electrode pads (adapter rings) made of plastic (see Figure 21.1 and 21.2 below). On each side were elliptical holes for the ears. Below those, the elastic material converged, and there was a plastic eyelet on the left side and a Velcro strip on the right side. The cap was closed at the bottom by pulling the Velcro through the eyelet (chin strap). It tugged. Then, the neuroscientist placed the electrodes in the adapter rings, one by one. The cap may painfully pinch at the point where it is attached, but this must be endured, as it is important that it fits properly. Wearing my eyeglasses did not make it easier. Following the fitting of the electrodes to the cap, the electrode cables were plugged into the input box in a specific order (laboratory field notes).

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FIGURE 21.1  EEG

cap with electrodes and input box

Since the voltage fluctuations on the scalp are very low and barely measurable by the mere placement of electrodes, the contact resistance of the electrodes to the scalp must be minimal. In order to produce the best possible conductivity, an electrolytic gel was applied to connect the scalp to the electrodes. The gel was first injected into the electrode openings using a g-​tip and then spread around the scalp with a wooden cotton swab. In this process my hair got twisted and the feeling was uncomfortable as the cold and sticky gel got stuck to my hair and scalp. An impedance measurement must be recorded on the BCI device during or shortly after gelling and, in this context, it may be necessary to gel again with the wooden cotton swab.This lengthy procedure may, at times, take up to 45 minutes. So, becoming a cyborg in this way is highly preconditional. After the EEG electrodes were placed on the input box, they were manually connected to a computer so that my analog electrophysiological signals derived from the electrodes could be processed, amplified, filtered and digitized. Through amplifier boxes or differential amplifiers, my neural electrophysiological analog signals were first processed and then amplified many times over. This happened black-​ boxed. Although this enhancement improves signal strength, artifact-​ induced noise cannot be avoided. For this reason, some signal disturbances were

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cleaned using filters before digitization, with both high and low-​pass filters being of importance. An analog-​to-​digital converter (A /​D converter) then translated the analog input signals into digital data (streams). For the simultaneous representation of the digital signals, i.e. for the representation of the signals in real time, the amplifiers must be connected to a computer with a monitor. My digitized data produced by this translation chain was output as data streams in waveforms displayed on the monitor by the BCI2000 software. The digitization not only ensured the output on the screen, but also the storage and processing (e.g. command parameters) of my data and thus the documentation and analysis by the neuroscientists (for the relationship between this data collection process and actual patient care in chronic stroke rehabilitation see Şahinol 2019). The translation chain represented the inscription and the transformation of my biological elements into scientifically-​ technically produced simultaneous digital-​iconographic expressivity, which I named ‘simultaneous representation’. It means that, when I see my brain waves in real time, I raise my hand, and, as a result, the brain wave changes simultaneously. Even when merely executing the thought of raising my hand, the EEG image changes slightly. Seeing my brainwaves is to be aware of my inner world, my neuronal expressivity. For a moment I thought that my neuronal expressivity acted independently, that my intentional self-​control (by the power of the thought) was completely separated from my concrete actions.

The Screening Screening as a fundamental part of the brain-​computer adaptation determines or classifies spontaneously measured brainwave signals. Its values represent comparative values. For this reason, screening is also a crucial precondition for the proper functioning of the BMI system. During my screening, my brain activity was measured without the robotic device. My task was to follow the sequence of commands: the preparation, the opening and then closing of my hand (‘Right hand ...’ (2 seconds), ‘GO’ (6 seconds),‘Relax!’ (8 seconds)).3 My respective local neural activities corresponding to the subtasks were recorded (input) using the BCI2000 software, which further processed and classified the signals. In addition, special pattern recognition methods were used to determine my specific classifiers and to finally store my individual ID in order to transmit them as parameters to the robot (output). This meant that the values determined by the screening represented those values that underlay the orthosis control, resulting in a re-​entry of the ID into the BMI system. This approach is called IPO, a computer technology that transmits, translates and passes electronic signals by input, process and output. The following figure shows signal processing according to the IPO principle:

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Input

Signal processing regarding features of neural activities, projections and analysis

Process

Output

FIGURE 21.2  IPO

Brain current signals as input in a specific command arrangement

Determination of classifiers, parameters for command control of the robot

cycle of a command processing chain during screening by

the author

The classifiers can be used to locate the electrode positions and thus the neural areas that are addressed separately during the three different task phases. The signals, which are recorded from various measuring points in the EEG cap and from different frequencies, are then further processed by calculating relationships between the measuring points during the respective command. This means that certain features, i.e. signal characteristics, are determined and classified by signal processing. To my knowledge, measurement errors are not considered separately. The classifiers determined in the screening serve in the neurofeedback training as different command conditions for controlling the BMI system, i.e. for the classification of the control command. By means of the classifiers determined during the screening, neuronal processes can be viewed in isolation according to the three desired states. Thus, the screening represents a scientific-​technical method for adjusting the Brain-​Computer Interface. The values determined during my screening were used as part of my neurofeedback training as a comparison value to the values I  produced in analogy to the instruction phases. The screening was, therefore, a condition for the robotic orthosis to open only then when the parameters determined by the screening and defined parameters for my imaginative activities were present.

The Cyborg Experience As previously explained, the first steps towards becoming a cybernetic organism consist of the integration of a technical device with an organic part. It follows an illustration of me as a cyborg –​respectively as a techno-​cerebral subject –​being involved in a cyborgical action: Equipped with the EEG cap and wired, I sat in front of a monitor (see figure below). A research assistant stuck magnetic fingertips to

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my fingertips. Each finger was cleaned individually. My right hand was fixed to the mechatronic hand orthosis via the magnets on my fingers. My arm was fixed onto the arm device of the robotic orthosis with two Velcro straps. The orthosis was deployed for testing purposes to determine the endpoint of how far my fingers could be stretched. The opening of the hand orthosis (and therefore the hand) was controlled via BCI. To the right of the monitor in front of me was another monitor. I could see and observe the digital EEG measurements of my spontaneous brain patterns, that I produced during the execution of the task, simultaneously (in real time) displayed in front of me. I named this representation of derived brain-​flow patterns in real-​time on screen ‘simultaneous representation’.

FIGURE 21.3 The

author performing auto experimentation on the BM system

Merely using my thoughts, I was to control the robotic orthosis. I was very excited. Previously, during those 45 minutes of screening, I  had done nothing but produce the three discrete behavioral activities I  was told to do:  ‘Right Hand ...’ (the discrete preparation, creating intentionality), ‘Go’ (creating the discrete behavioral activity ‘open the hand’), ‘Relax!’ (creating the discrete behavioral activity of relaxation). Now, I was finally supposed to perform these three subtasks, which run one after another and repeat for a total of three minutes, thus triggering the robotic orthosis without actively moving my hand. The neuroscientist instructed me to use only the power of my thoughts. The three subtasks were announced audiovisually (spoken and written language) in a timed sequence

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on the monitor: First, was the command ‘Right Hand ...’, with two seconds time for implementation. It followed the command ‘GO’, with six seconds for implementation. And third, followed the command ‘Relax!’, with eight seconds for implementation. This meant that I had to prepare for the tasks on command. The runs were repeated several times during a training session, with a full session lasting approximately 45 minutes. I had moved on to the second phase of human-​ machine adaptation:  the synchronous-​processual adaption. During this second phase, neuroscientists try to establish a coordination and synchronous flow of the human and computer (brain and machine) system. This synchronization represents the temporal aspect. In the cerebrocentric experimental system, the orthosis control is designed techno-​cerebrally. This meant that I had to learn to change and adapt my cerebral states according to the cultural engineering of the neurosciences, so that the connection of brain and motor skills could be established. I  had to change my behavioral activities following the command phases. The importance of the cybernetic principle of circularity for my symbiotic relationship to the machine is clear. Discussing this, I will illustrate my experiences with body, physicality and machinability. The interpretation is based on the three command phases (intentionality, opening or control command, relaxation request).

Intentionality The preparatory phase, initiated with the audiovisual command ‘Right Hand ...’, serves to establish my intention of moving my right hand. I was asked to prepare my brain for the core task, in other words to gather myself or my neural activities in my motor cortex. I imagined myself waiting for the start of a swimming competition just before jumping into the water. I could have imagined myself at the starting line just before a cross-​country skiing race, but since I was an active swimmer, I was able to imagine this momentum best through swimming races. I thought about how the neural activities I created illustrated my intention to get started and, at the same time, went through the sensors and the translation chain (the BCI2000 program) where they were processed and transmitted and then displayed on the EEG. Although, I did not see my intentionality data flowing, I knew that it was determined by machine, decoded as behaviors, and stored. For neuroscientists, this phase is a comparative phase that serves to determine what happens just before the actual discrete behavioral activity. The desired outcome of this phase was that my thoughts were placed into position like a helmswoman getting into position behind the ship’s wheel –​in the literal sense. I went into myself, bound myself in a pre-​reflexive manner (Merleau-​Ponty 2002 [1945]), into my intrasubjective world. In this phase of intentionality, I experienced my body immediately. My intentionality also corresponded to the activation of the desired neuronal activity. I basically took over the ship’s wheel, or, in other

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words, I went to the starting block at the front of the swimlane and positioned myself waiting for the starting signal (pistol shot) with the intention to act. My intention of my bodily directed being did not directly refer to worldly things but to my intrasubjective world.

Biomechanical-​Physical Experience The ‘GO’ command triggered me to control my thoughts in order to activate the neurons in my motor cortex. I imagined every second of every move that my hand needed to undergo in order to open, thus, activating the neurons in the motor cortex with the thought of a movement. Simultaneously to my thoughts of the starting phase, the arithmetic unit received and checked the calculated value for the (de)synchronization of the neuronal activity in the motor cortex in a set time interval of six seconds. The finger slides closed when the value was above 1 at any time during the six-​second timeframe and opened when the value was less than 1. In the latter case of desynchronization of neuronal activity in my motor cortex, the finger only slides open when the state of desynchronization continued, so, I tried holding onto the thought until the end of the subtask. This was not always possible. Sometimes the finger slides only opened once and very briefly during the six-​second timeframe, twitched and stopped moving. At other times, the finger slides did not move at all and my hand remained in a closed state. I tried to focus but it proved difficult as the lab was too lively. There was no space for the apparatus and me to be isolated. Whenever the finger slides did open, I felt myself forming a perfect symbiosis with the device. It almost felt like cycling. I was encouraged to integrate into my intrasubjective world in a pre-​reflexive manner and then interagentively introduce myself into the BMI system through the deliberate presentation of a behavioral activity.This interagentive introduction was completed by the opening movement of my hand by means of the machine. It was, in a narrower sense, techno-​cerebral. When opening the finger slide, my directly experienced body became an indirectly experienced body. This opening was a biomechanically-​physically reflexive experience. The machine movement (the finger) acted intrareflexively by becoming the new input (the new cause) of holding onto a thought and/​or of producing a new thought by observing the hand moving with the aid of the machine. In this way, the biomechanics were reflexively integrated into my intersubjective world, my bodily directedness. The machine was now controlled purely by the power of my thoughts. However, the actual opening of the robotic orthosis was an intraobjective process that coordinated neuronal activities, namely the biological on the one hand, and the technical (the digitized brain signals via the EEG) on the other hand, along translation chains. This intraobjective process was set in motion bio-​technically and techno-​cerebrally by the intra-​action (see Rammert 2007) of the machine’s software and hardware elements.

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Relaxation During the relaxation phase, I was asked to think of something different, something relaxing, to ensure that the neuronal activity in the motor cortex subsided. At the beginning of the audiovisual relaxation request, the arithmetic unit checked the calculated value for the (de)synchronization of the neuronal activity in my motor cortex within a time interval of eight seconds. Ideally, shortly before the beginning of the relaxation phase, the orthosis should be in an open state, i.e. the finger slides were extended, and my hand opened. When the value was above 1 at any time during the eight-​second timeframe, which corresponded to the desired state of synchronization of neuronal activity in my motor cortex, the finger slides returned towards my body (their starting position) and my hand closed. This movement could only be completed when the state of synchronization of neuronal activity in my motor cortex persisted, meaning that I had to hold onto the idea of relaxation until the end of the subtask. When the detected value was less than 1, with the state of neuronal activity desynchronization in the motor cortex existent, the retraction of the finger slides stopped, and my hand remained either slightly or sometimes fully open. At this stage, I was instructed to detach myself from my intersubjective world through the deliberate imagining of something other than the specific movement. I experienced this detachment by the closing movement of the hand through the machine. The biomechanical retraction of my fingers acted intrareflexive again –​ returning back into my mind. It became the output, the effect of what it meant to let go of my thoughts, to relax, and to produce a thought based on the observation of the hand closed by the machine. Here, too, the machine-​like properties were integrated into my intra-​and then intersubjective world and my corporeal being in a reflexive manner corresponding to the release of control by the power of thought, whereby releasing the thought control is not actually letting go but merely diverting it. The mechatronic closure of the robotic orthosis was also an intra-​objective process (see above); the thoughts, however, were not, because the origin of thoughts could and cannot be determined per se. Neuroscientists agree that neuronal activities oscillate and change constantly following the cybernetic principle of circularity. According to Merleau-​Ponty (2002 [1945]) the body is responsible for the execution of the movement. From this perspective, however, movement instructions do not have motoric, but intellectual significance for patients with physical disability. In the course of the movement activity, the machine is an important component. The biomechanical with its machine-​like properties entered my experiencing of this socio-​technical constellation, and my observing of it, in an iterative process, and, in this sense, influenced the structure of my self-​experience and reflection. From the perspective of the research subject Melike Şahinol, the BCI engaged an intermediate agent, an entity, between the being a body and the having a body. This agent was the machine. When using the neurofeedback robot, I  felt

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completely detached from my hand, controlling the robot through my brain only. I felt my thoughts and actions being separated a strange sensation. I felt that my organic-​physical experience had been replaced by the biomechanical-​physical experience. My muscle power was irrelevant. In order to activate the machine to open my hand, I simply needed to think. The machine, and no other, was the connecting element between the biological and the technical properties for the bio-​technical execution, both physical and biomechanical, to flow into my corporeality as iterative experience. This embodiment is a techno-​cerebral action in which the control of the machine is regulated via the cerebral conditions. The integration of machine movement into corporeality enters the imagination through the unknown variable ‘experience’, which is trained.

Paradoxes of Control This experiment established a direct link or rather a relationship between imagination, brain activity and behavioral activity. Nevertheless, during the technical set-​up (the wiring), the boundaries between my imagination, my actual brain states and my behavioral activity became blurred, and the relationship between cause and effect of the mechanical control became unclear. All three phases of the task sequence were performed according to the IPO principle, whereby the control command and the relaxation phase had direct consequences for me. From my point of view, my thought maneuvering towards the opening of the orthosis according to the principle of circularity worked as follows: input, processing (transmission) and output take place during task execution in a circular process. My thoughts were the input and therefore the cause. A computer unit then transmitted and processed the data to become the output.The output was the action of, respectively the feedback through, the orthosis. Depending on whether I received the right feedback analogous to the task, I either held onto that thought or let go off it. I did not always know what I was thinking in that specific moment, but it seemed important to me that I opened and closed the orthosis. At times I felt as if I operated the machine with an effort behind my eyes, some type of physical force only felt in my head. I, often, maneuvered my thoughts around while opening the orthosis to adjust myself to it, creating a new cause, a new input. When I was unable to open the robotic orthosis, I tried to reconstruct my bodily directed being (leibliches Gerichtet-​Sein) that previously opened the orthosis. This course correction of thoughts, i.e. the effect, was performed via the orthosis feedback, suggesting that I  must have had the right or wrong thoughts. This meant that, in the course of the task performance, it was, in fact, the opening of the orthosis that controlled my thoughts. Sometimes it seemed to me that without any special effort, I  must have simply had the right thought, since the orthosis opened itself as if by magic. In one aspect that made me happy, but at the same time, it made me feel controlled by others, or rather something other. In the end, my desired outcome was the opening of the orthosis and, therefore, that

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was all that truly mattered to me. Nevertheless, everyone in the lab knew that the machine reflected only what I created pre-​reflexively in my intrasubjective world and further (inter)reflexively through interactivity with the biomechanical finger gestures as part of the Brain-​Machine-​Interface. At that moment when the circular mutual adaptation of human and machine took place, the quality of the neurofeedback and, hence, the techno-​cerebral action improved/​increased. This is how the machine and I interacted as one entity within a self-​contained circular cycle. When the BMI system is based on the cybernetic principle of circularity, so that human (brain) and machine perform techno-​cerebral actions in an iterative IPO loop, these are moments of human-​machine symbiosis. Within this dressage loop, not only did I study the cultural techniques of the neurosciences, but also learned about adaptive software algorithms that are integrated into the circular IPO cycle. Human and machine are accordingly in processual interaction with each other, meaning that both system components should benefit from one another. It is this mutual benefit between the techno-​cerebral subject and the (neuro) scientific-​ technical system that the neurosciences aim for. Within the techno-​ cerebral action loop, however, not only do the cultural techniques become learnable, but the integration of the mechanics into the body is initiated and is part of the being body/​having body experience of the subject. As this new experience becomes immanent to the research subject, it alters the circular, techno-​cerebral cycle of action, with the changing conditions affecting the subject. Not only the biological structures, but also those of the technical properties (software) in the circular IPO change reciprocally due to the various influences, for example the incorporation of the machine-​like nature, the stimulation of motor areas in the brain and the neurofeedback in the general loop.

Returning to the Morphological Wholeness Once the training was completed and everyone, except a handful of neuroscientists and I, had left the lab, one of them asked me if I felt alright. He concluded that I had been the best participant in the last BCI experiment. I was told by him that I had ‘mastered’ the BCI. I found that rather amusing considering that, during the experiment, I  felt controlled by something else. Upon his request, I  released the Velcro straps to free my arm from the robotic orthosis. Then, I  unplugged the cables from the input box connected to the computer and removed the electrodes from my arm. The electrode adhesives were highly unmanageable. When removing them, some arm hairs were torn out making me feel slightly uncomfortable. Following that, I unplugged all the cables from the input box and cleaned those parts of my arm still containing traces of glue with alcohol. I laid the EMG4 cables over the whiteboard that was used as a room divider for the different trials and where all EMG cables were sorted by color.The other EEG cables were still in the EEG cap I was wearing. I hung those around my neck to prevent them

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from getting tangled on my way to the bathroom. One neuroscientist jokingly exclaimed that I was wearing a very special and pretty necklace. I smiled. Upon looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I realized that the next clean-​up stage was the most unpleasant one: Stripping off the EEG cap was messy! On the floor next to the sink was a large bowl with many EEG caps soaking in water. The gel was extremely unmanageable:  when peeling off the EEG caps, it came off my skin and hair very slowly and its remnants were spread all over the electrodes, the cap, my scalp and my hair. Advantageous as the electrolytic property of the gel was for connecting the scalp and electrodes, its consistency was challenging when it needed removing. Once the cap was off, all individual 32 gelled points were clearly visible on the scalp with strands of hair spread upwards across my head. It looked like a failed hair design that was not comparable to any life form, not even that of a hedgehog. At that moment, I remembered one stroke patient who had her hair cut 3mm short because of the BCI. I tapped my finger on the gel in my hair and it felt sticky. When taking off the cap, I pulled out some hair and these areas on my scalp ached a little as a result of it. Not only had my hair suffered. In part, the gel had spread so far that it had been absorbed by the surrounding cap material of the adapter rings and was now glued to the textile and my skin. I placed my EEG cap together with the electrodes into the bowl with water next to the sink. By the next session, all technical elements (equipment) had to be gel-​free.Therefore, the caps and electrodes were placed in water to soak before being washed and brushed with a toothbrush one by one. Afterwards, the cap was hung up to dry, the electrodes were dabbed with a towel and hung up in a bundle. The drying process left time for other work tasks. Towards the evening, the cap was fitted with the electrodes and connected to an input box again. Since the setting usually consisted of two patients in one room, and four to six patients a day, four to six arms and hands or heads and caps as well as the electrodes belonging to the caps had to be cleaned and dried each day. All that work was done by the researchers, too. I helped. Leaning over the sink, washing my hair with water, applying shampoo trying to get the gel out of my hair, a neuroscientist came in asking if I had brought a towel. I had completely forgotten, so he brought one for me. In the neuroscience lab, one even needs the simplest everyday items such as a towel, a hair dryer and a comb. And the scientists think of it all! The return of my bio-​technical form to the morphological wholeness was made possible by the fact that the stabilization or fixing processes involved reversible adaptation of biological and technical elements.5 By dismantling the integration of my body (parts) into machine (parts) and the detachment of connecting elements between the biological and the technical, me as techno-​cerebral subject, integrated into the neuroscientific ‘arc of work’ (Strauss 1985), I was released from this neuroscientific arc of work. However, it remains an open question as to what extent my biological elements were sustainably changed in the Human-​Machine System during the course of the study. I now knew though that I mastered this

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cultural technique of neuroscience. I was an actor in the neuroscientific arc of work. I could do the BCI! I had often helped to free not only myself but also stroke patients from the connecting elements. To me it often felt that I was predominantly caring for the technical part of my bio-​technical form to be prepared for a new connection. My technology care procedure had something liberating in the sense of a detachment from a unit; however, it also had something dividing. In addition, it had a symbolic value, not only for me and all other research subjects, but also for the neuroscientists. This was the end of the working day. I had always considered the entire setting to be of interest to both patients and neuroscientists because it was exhausting for everyone involved. I helped cleaning up the lab for a while, one last neuroscientist was still there doing calculations. Then, I said my goodbyes. I did my part in the work as a techno-​cerebral cyborg for neuroscience. Once I left the lab, I knew I was taking on the shape of another cyborg depending on the socio-​bio-​technical constellation I found myself in. Walking home that evening, I thought of a million other bio-​technical forms of cyborgs and cyborg families in other socio-​bio-​technical constellations out there and how I wanted to get to know and study them.

Notes 1 I use the term BCI when focusing on brain processes and computer-​related processes, and the term BMI when referring to the control of external devices by means of BCIs (for example: robotic orthosis). 2 With the transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), I  got non-​invasive brain stimulation on my head over my motor area.With the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), my motor area was stimulated by a magnetic coil. 3 As all the patients were right-​brain stroke patients, they had paralysis (loss of use) on the left side and had to perform the task with their paralyzed left hand. 4 Electromyography (EMG), in order to evaluate and record the electrical activity produced by muscles. 5 Exempt therefrom is the implanted person, as the implantation with neuronal electrodes was not reversible within the neuroscientific trials I have observed.

References Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge. Haraway, Donna, ed. 1995. Die Neuerfindung der Natur:  Primaten, Cyborgs und Frauen. Frankfurt [u.a.]: Campus-​Verl. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-​network-​theory, Clarendon lectures in management studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Merleau-​Ponty, Maurice. 2002. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Original edition, 1945.

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Rammert, W. 2007. Tecknik _​Handeln _​Wissen. Zu einer pragmatistiscchen Technik _​und Sozialitheorie. Wies-​baden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Şahinol, Melike. 2016. Das techno-​zerebrale Subjekt: Zur Symbiose von Mensch und Maschine in den Neurowissenschaften, Technik –​ Körper –​ Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: transcript. Şahinol, Melike. 2017.‘“Jetzt ändere Dein Gehirn in diese Richtung!” –​Aneignungsprozesse der Steuerung von Hirnaktivität über das Brain-​Computer Interface.’ In Knowledge in Action:  Neue Formen der Kommunikation in der Wissensgesellschaft, edited by Eric Lettkemann, René Wilke and Hubert Knoblauch, 213–​ 237. Wiesbaden:  Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. Şahinol, Melike. 2019. “Collecting Data and the Status of the Research Subject in Brain-​Machine Interface Research in Chronic Stroke Rehabilitation.” Somatechnics, 9.2(3): 244–​263. doi: 10.3366/​soma.2019.0282. Strauss, Anselm. 1985. “Work and the division of labor.” Sociological Quarterly, 26(1): 1–​19.

About the Author Melike Şahinol (Dr. rer. soc.) is a Research Fellow at the Orient-​Institut Istanbul affiliated with the Max Weber Foundation and head of the research area “Human, Medicine and Society”. Sponsored by a three-​year scholarship at the DFG Research Training Group Bioethics at Eberhard-​Karls University in Tübingen (Germany), Şahinol examined the adaptation of humans and machines in neuroscience, in particular Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) in patients with chronic stroke disease. In the micro sociological part of her analysis, she explains how organic and inorganic elements together perform an action, while the human takes a form of a cyborg, as s/​he operates techno-​cerebrally within the BMI system and becomes a ‘techno-​cerebral subject’. Şahinol has received several grants and fellowships, including one at the program on “Science, Technology and Society” (STS) at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Her research interests lie in the field of Sociology of Technology and the Body, Medical Sociology and Crip Technoscience. In her current project “Additive Manufacturing:  Enabling Technologies in Childhood” she analyses the development of 3D printed prostheses for children, and disability beyond the technological fix narrative from a Crip Technoscience perspective. Şahinol led the founding of the Turkish Scholarly Network for Science and Technology Studies (STS TURKEY, http://​ststurkey.net/​) in 2017 and continues to provide contributions to the establishment of STS in Turkey. As one of the co-​coordinators, she co-​organized several conferences and STS workshops in order to make STS more transparent and inclusive in supporting young scholars in Turkey.

22 A SONG FOR THE UNIVERSE IN THE DIALECT OF TERRAN CYBORG COMPANIONS Lissette Olivaries

I am Coco Rico  –​shaman, feminist, anarchist, co-​(r)evolutionary companion species that develops performative and interventionist methodologies for a transdisciplinary, transpecies, and transgalactic worlding that articulate the basis for a just society of the present and future. My name resurrects the cry of the rooster and its call for awakening. Early in my academic career I felt the need to create a conceptual avatar that was permitted diverse experimental formats beyond those traditionally available within academic conventions. Coco Rico emerged as a liberating persona that created a nexus between the official and extra-​official layers

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of quotidian identity, experience and reflection. The coupling of my academic research and my performative identity has allowed me to develop a series of interventions, actions and performances, all of which question the current socio-​ political and economic order, as well as the means through which an alternative politics can be championed. My aim as an artist is to expose systemic injustices and to break the constricting rules of propriety through a summoning of the carnivalesque within public spaces. I  think and feel through my gendered and racialized body as a primary medium through which to explore and develop liberatory possibilities. All of my performances investigate the realm of human, animal and ecological exploitation, drawing attention to the nuances of capitalist colonization within everyday life. Due to my avatar’s hypervisibility, one recurring tactic is to coordinate media interventions. In 2003, for example, I found out that Frida Kahlo’s Self-​Portrait with Curly Hair would be auctioned for an estimated 1 million dollars at Christie’s auction house. As a woman of color feminist, I  was angered that this communist artist who fought for social justice would be sold to an elite entity, and so decided that I  would use Coco Rico to interrupt the sale and printed my own currency to buy the painting. While I was quickly ejected from the auction, I nonetheless caused an important interruption in the traditionally smooth operations of the sale. As I  began to realize the efficacy of these public interruptions, I  began to develop my work in primarily public settings, especially large scale events like workers solidarity marches, immigration marches, war protests, student marches, etc. In 2004, in response to the US’ hyper-​militarization after September 11th and the depressing presidential campaign that eventually elected George W. Bush, I  began questioning the efficacy of liberal democratic electoral platforms and began developing my own campaign objectives. Steeped in satire, my campaign is critical of moderate political platforms in democratic bids for state power and instead promotes alternative and radical political imaginaries. In 2007, as part of this campaign development, I  began a series of interventions in NY and Argentina that raised the question, “How to Avoid the Taste of Poverty?” drawing attention to the global hunger crisis and its relation to asymmetrical economic relations. Using humor, I proposed consuming the wealthy as a means of ending class divisions, and created an entire television pilot that sought local recipes and interviewed urban pedestrians to ask them about the current state of hunger in the world. Ultimately my campaign offered the possibility of eliminating class divisions as a means of preventing hunger, proposing the “gourmet” as an experimental category that could change not only the palette of taste, but society’s infrastructure. With the advent and persistence of the global economic crisis I  began to consider the potentialities of multispecies storytelling as part of my campaign’s objective. Multispecies storytelling postulates a way of knowing that emerges

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from our relationships with the multiple living organisms with whom we share our world. For multispecies narrators the moments of perception and encounter between species are affective-​cognitive openings that enhance possibilities for establishing a broader consciousness. Multispecies consciousness depends on moving away from an anthropocentric rationality that isolates and reifies human exceptionalism and that leaves “the rest” (by far a majority) in an uneasy space of existence. In the hope of exploring the liberatory possibilities that emerge when we attempt to understand ourselves and our surroundings “with” (rather than through) the myriad species we encounter in our quotidian life patterns, my companion species toy poodle became a co-​author/​co-​artist in the 2008 performance “No Más Inflación,” (No More Inflation) a carnivalesque intervention that consisted in creating a platform where Luk and I  proposed ourselves as presidential candidates. The inherent irony in this project is that we do not seek state power. Rather the platform is aimed at developing a broader political discourse that extends political imaginaries beyond electoral democracy. The first iteration of this performance was presented in Santiago, Chile, where we publicly intervened in “La Plaza de La Constitución” and which included a speech in front of Chile’s presidential palace “La Moneda.” The site of this intervention was not random. Chile’s political history has spawned me, has spawned this entity I become with, Coco Rico. To march down the Constitutional Plaza with Luk was to recall the constitution that Salvador Allende signed and defended in 1970, a constitution that was overturned and rewritten by military neoliberal storytellers. As I re-​read the haunting words and speeches issued by this visionary, I  realized that as much as Allende dreamed of an alternate human society, he nonetheless had not yet fully developed either a feminist or a multispecies consciousness. As a result, from my lips emerge the words, borrowed and pastiched, a recompilation of the demands issued in 1970, when Allende proposed the total re-​structuring of the Chilean banking system. My relationship with Luk as a companion species helped these words co-​evolve, and so we demand political and economic responsibility for all the workers of the world: for the V. Fischeri bacteria that work to make moon lighting for the bobtail squid, for the Japanese zoobelia that helps to digest fish, for the chanterelle in the forest who feeds the farmer, for the plants that the vegan eats, for the mice in the labs, for the primates in the mines, in the factories, in the borderlands…

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A Song for the Universe in the Dialect of Terran Cyborg Companions In memory of: Dezik, Tsygan, & Lisa Smelaya & Malyshka Bobik & ZIB Otvazhnaya & Marfusha Albina and Tsyganka Damka and Krasavka Laika Belka and Strelka Zyvodsochka Pchyolka and Mushka Chernushka Veterok and Ugolyok the rose-​osmotic pump bearing mouse, #65 (aka H.A.M) Leika the fleas, the algae, the invertebrates, the arachnids, the fungi, the plants, the canids, the primates with whom we forged space dreams and accompanying cautionary tales.

To the Ooankali and Other Creatures of the Universe Could it have been loneliness that propelled the prokaryotes to eat each other, causing a chain of transformations that synthesized as eukaryotes? Did this cannibalistic performance of ancient bacterial cells trigger the spiraling movement that brought not only multicellular life into being on Terra, but also the extinction crisis humans were unable to ignore by the 21st century? These were questions that were recurring as I watched the social and biological devastation of a different type of hunger for power and capital unfold in the time I  was alive on Earth. Mine, as with many generations prior, was a time of great loneliness, a time of intensified extraction, replete with the damned hope of technological salvation and innovation. There were many with whom I share bio-​structural similarities, who were under the spell of accumulation as survival, for they thought currency would open the doors of salvation, an exchange myth where paper and digital

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representations would buy their longevity in space through interplanetary colonization and exploration. What they didn’t realize was that despite the warnings from dreamers throughout highly diverse periods, they were unable to react, our time of greed made it impossible for them to abandon the hunger they inherited, perhaps tinged with that loneliness from the prokaryotes, and so, they damned the many; amongst us, the amphibians, the mammals, the insects. “We,” Earth Beings, I entrust you to be remembered not as the greedy minority who often forced us into complicity with our own destruction, but the “We” who shared our lives and cells in the late 21st century, despite the looming clarity of our limited remaining material forms, perhaps you will learn to call us the “Terran Cyborg Companions.” Using body hacking technologies, I  hope to preserve diverse materialities within silicon casings that will be stored under my skin. Genetic donations (voluntarily donated) such as hair, skin cells, nails, from those who have influenced my research and inspired me in this lifetime, as well as nano intertextual media (images, books, websites, found objects) would become part of my body, a surface to touch, and to transfer to another’s care at the onset of my own corporeal evanescence. Like the malas, or prayer beads, used by spiritual practitioners to resurrect affects and enhance consciousness, these subdermal implants would become a lifelong collection of matter that matters to me. At once, in my own speculative projections, I would like to ensure that if my body is taken captive and resuscitated by an alien race, that they will find clues as to the processes of transformation that influenced my life on this earth, and in a best case scenario, if they were to revive me, that the matter I hold dear in this lifetime, my significant others, would accompany me in my next transbecoming.

About the Author Lissette T. Olivares is the co-​founder and co-​director of Sin Kabeza Productions and SK Symbiotic, activist research platforms developed in collaboration with Cheto Castellano to work across diverse mediums and together with multiple life-​forms. As a transmedia storyteller their research engages mestizx, cyborg, and companion species consciousness, postanthropocentric and trans-​feminist imaginaries, and more than human ethnography using diverse technologies that include creative writing, performance, intervention, experimental film, architecture, design fiction and multimedia installation. She has a doctoral degree in the History of Consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

23 MODULATING Lucian O’Connor

An ensemble of machines animated the heavy black air with undulating smoke, creeping across our skin and pouring into our lungs. Giant strobes pulsed brightness to our retinas from the distant walls, echoed by scattered, blinking trinkets attached to my hips and the perspiring bodies that surrounded me. We in the crowd moved with the throbbing flashes, our feet synchronized to beats emanating from the shadows. Boom. An aggressive vibration swiftly pressed upon my chest. Boom. My left heel thumped against the sticky floor. Sine waves became sawtooth. Disparate frequencies commingled. Bursts of punctuation grooved with wild variation, with unruly melodies and a carnival of modified selves. Softer, oozing lights were attuned to these differences that swam across repetitions of bass and drums. My arms arpeggiated the deep glowing blues that interlaced my fingers. A nearby stranger spiraled brilliant yellows from the tips of ten ropes, twirling them around a ghostly athletic body, tracing flesh through darkness, decisive, mysterious, exquisite. For twenty minutes I was in love, enthralled by this person so adept at expanding with the synthesized lights and sounds. Clarity came and left as quickly as confusion did. Collisions of dark and light, of silence and noise, begat our remaking. We were radically unlike ourselves, together. Humid Cleveland was fiercely alive at 4am that Saturday in July. We defiantly hacked at the silent darkness that pressed upon all of us. We were loud. We knew it was a risk to be there. But for many of us, risk was as ordinary as bread. I was visiting from Michigan with new friends from the Internet who learned of the event earlier that day. The discovery was both unexpected and routine: an abandoned building was identified and then a rave quickly planned in secret. Attendees were informed by word of mouth through trusted channels to avoid being raided by the police.Trespassing was only one of our violations. Drugs were almost as prolific as participants –​ecstasy cut with acid, balloons filled with nitrous

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oxide, and sometimes Ketamine.Terrifying Ketamine. Our excessive creativity was knotted with injury and hope and desperation. People living with trauma. People abandoned by their families. People who betrayed their families. People seeking love and self-​expression. People craving a different world. And the world was different in those briefly articulated happenings. A degree of danger made our autonomy possible, in a way. I could proudly wear enormous jeans, eyeliner, and fake tattoos while still belonging to a collective. I could dye my hair some unnatural color to match that day’s glossy shirt, or attach flickering electronic devices across my body to assert its presence in the darkness. There were no disapproving stares. Instead, people would look at each other with generous amazement, inspired and eager to connect. There was no future for me in college or in civil society, I believed. My body carried the traumas of violences rendered invisible and unspeakable to most people who were once close to me. My body craved what was digital and underground. There was a newness to electronic music and digital machines that excited me around the turn of the millennium. Until then, I enjoyed songs secretly in headphones, imagining myself as part of experimental music videos while hiding away in my bedroom. The raves were more public and exhibitionist. Yet there was also an anonymity and secrecy there, in relation to the rest of society, that felt appropriate and familiar. The alter egos I  constructed visually in drawings and textually on my computer could be embodied in the flesh, with others in the mediated material world. Strange music synthesized by misfit musicians, the radical clothing we wore, the milieu of people I did not know well or for long –​ these were the ingredients of cyborg happenings that remain fundamental to who I am. Since my youth I have performed as a vacillating chimera, my body and mind manifesting through flesh and technology in fashions that respond to particular situations. Such ontology contrasts to the aesthetics of my former life as the child of a midwestern Republican roofer. Looking back, it seems that my critical relationship with self-​presentation and embodiment emerged as I  underwent puberty. During those times, I  was enrolled in numerous sports against my will, my gender and sexuality under pressures to develop in response to strict, prescriptive discipline (and even vicious punishments). These experiences were not static; they were mediated and modified in relation to what was publicly acceptable and privately necessary; they were fractured by the pressures of cultural norms and the threat of violence. Among the countless photographs of me in uniforms that were taken when I was eight and nine years old, I see a fearful child who did not understand why participation in full-​contact American football was obligatory, or why my pleas to enjoy other activities were rejected, ridiculed, and pathologized. I  recall being anxious not only because of the corporeal collisions I was shoved into on the playing field, but also by my ostensible exceptionality, the belief that I was the only child there who

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did not belong. These photos of my early adolescence were difficult to confront then, as they are today. My body experienced a growth spurt at age thirteen, before most of my peers did, perhaps due to the voracious eating habits that numerous adults encouraged me to develop. The rapid change was enough for some to start perceiving me as a competent athlete in the sports that involved bodily conflicts. This meant that I was picked on less by my peers, but I was no less awkward and insecure, and no more interested in the glory of athletic success. I learned to survive by being good enough at sports, by making a few compassionate friends, and by hiding my urges to exceed the structures of discipline that regulated my world. Photographs of my early teen years show a defeated person who could hardly smile for the camera. Today I  see in these images evidence that my body was a battlefield. I  hated cameras because they revealed the struggle I was not permitted to have and was compulsively trying to hide. Entering high school seemed daunting at first, yet it provided some opportunities for modest self-​determination. If I was expected from birth to succeed as a professional athlete, then the ambition I chose for myself was to excel in my academic studies. Fictional literature and difficult concepts in math and science became technologies of escape. By learning mostly in private over the course of four years –​in between duties to sports before, during, and after my average school day –​I was eventually relocated from average-​level courses to advanced placements. But it was an unexpected detour that would become the most critical, most empowering opportunity of my high school experience: choosing a fine arts class as an elective. In my sophomore year, I began to draw and paint self-​portraits, and to seriously experiment with my relationship to the camera with the support of my art teacher. I  recall exploring our small campus with another student, carrying a detachable-​lens Canon lent to us by our teacher, searching for places to thoughtfully pose.While I was not the cameraperson for the photographs in which I appeared, the compositions and intentions were relayed by me to my partner, and vice versa, because our plan was to mobilize the images in other mediums such as charcoal or oil paints. After a session of taking artful photos of ourselves, we had the negatives developed at a local shop and then separated the prints into hers and mine for future use. I remember the uneasy snickers of a familiar woman who looked over my shoulder as I eagerly tried to visualize my next self-​portrait painting while sorting the photos. Perhaps she was troubled by my desire to be seen as something other than the domineering man I was supposed to become –​ or perhaps she was anxious from my disruption of viewing conventions that for centuries have positioned men as agents who look and women as objects that appear –​as I began to critically direct the gaze towards myself. In addition to experiments with the camera and art, computers provided an escape during my later teenage years. Saturdays were spent alone at the public library on public kiosks without parental restrictions, my sixteen-​year-​old self

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reaching out to people who might accept my gender and sexual differences, under assumed names to avoid being identified. Several years prior, and before the Internet was widely available to the public, Eve Sedgwick famously wrote about the epistemology of the closet, or how the structures of secrecy in society significantly produce knowledge for sexual outsiders. As a misfit teen living in a working-​ poor neighborhood north of Detroit, I had no awareness of texts by Sedgwick or anyone similar; but my consciousness nonetheless grappled with how privacy choreographed my being, as she so aptly described  –​but with a cyborg twist. Until the rise of social media, the predominant anonymity that characterized most digital cultures enabled many of us to explore our desires and to present ourselves in alternative ways with minimal risk to our ordinary lives. If photography and painting were early opportunities to see myself as otherwise, then cybernetic exchange was the first mode that offered me freedom to express my desires and to identify as I  chose. My consciousness was thus fragmented, compelled to manifest across disparate mediums, each with their own possibilities and limitations and points of overlap. At sixteen I digitally conversed with and then met a college student who shared my taste in music, and who was living with a professor after being disowned by his genetic family. At seventeen I encountered a couple who enjoyed talking about our mutual creative interests and eventually invited me to spend time at their suburban home, which I did, on numerous occasions. Sometimes I engaged with people only via typing and never knew where they lived, what they looked like, what their voices sounded like, or anything at all about their mannerisms in the flesh.Yet I was able to perform deeply important parts of myself to these people. We might call this private place of mediated desires and identifications the cybernetic closet, a virtual location that exudes the fantasies and secrets of strangers –​a repository of what was being culturally suppressed but which refused to be erased –​a keystone of my cyborgization. The art I  produced as a teenager experimented with modifying and beautifying my body which was openly referred to as ugly by others. Using paint, I attempted to achieve the likeness of mechanical reproduction in photographs, emphasizing recognizable characteristics of my face and adorning it with the vibrant play of minerals on paper. I now see one of these paintings as emblematic because it captured how I repeatedly responded to the conservative culture into which I was born: Looking Away depicts in watercolor how I would quietly turn aside and look inward, offering no affirmation or disapproval of the ideology that governed my life. The painting aestheticizes how I learned to preserve my integrity and inner truths without provoking violence or derision.

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FIGURE 23.1  Looking Away

Looking Away was shown at a local exhibition in southeast Michigan and even received a minor award, something to be proud of that I  achieved for myself. My improved grades were also self-​motivated. By the end of my high school career I had been accepted to the University of Michigan, and surprisingly placed out of first year math, science, and English. But it was my blossoming artistic practice and my participation in the cybernetic closet that were most formative to my critical consciousness. Leaving home was a devastating event. What was supposed to be a teenager’s normative transition from high school to the university was interrupted by a shocking confrontation, when my gender and sexuality were directly questioned, followed by me being swiftly thrown out of the house because I collapsed instead of lying. An onslaught of terrible threats were made and I went into hiding. Life’s excessive circumstances prevented me from building on the skills I had developed to succeed in college. Instead, I ended up in intimate relations with people I barely knew, changing residences every few months. I felt worthless and was easy to take advantage of then.

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Detroit’s underground electronic music scene presented itself to me via encounters in the cybernetic closet. The affair began with chatting about mutual interests, then sharing tracks online, then meeting new people to experience the sounds together in unfamiliar living rooms. Soon enough my new friends and I  were awake all night in massive buildings transformed into temporary festivals. Raves were occasions to materialize experimental selves that were already thriving in the digital underground. They were opportunities to express the range of intense emotions I felt in response to life’s circumstances. Dance liberated my body from years of militarized physical conditioning that was non-​consensual. Adorning my body with vibrant colors and strange shapes, enhancing my organic materiality with technological prosthetics  –​these creative practices emerged directly from the strategies of survival I relied upon as a teenager. Embedded in the unruly mixture of flesh and art and hypertext and oscillating waveforms was my consciousness, determined to perform as a good and desirable person. I tried and failed on numerous fronts during those early days in college.Three-​ dimensional calculus, organic chemistry, and Shakespeare seemed irrelevant as more urgent, basic needs competed for my attention. Few others empathized with my excessive situation that I  barely understood myself. Feeling overwhelmed, I dropped out and focused my expressions in the underground. I taught myself to dance by synchronizing my legs to the pulses of low bass wavelengths, and by responsively moving my arms through the air. A favorite method was to interlock my fingers with lighted sticks that would stream colors through the darkness. They were not unlike paintbrushes. On some nights I danced with a pronounced hop, soaring above the crowd, my hands jittering liquid streams of violet that cut through rigid red laser beams. On other nights I moved to slower tempos, enthralled by how the orange lights of my hands softly illuminated the faces of anonymous audiences. They were beautiful. Not everyone at the raves pushed themselves to the limits of their endurance like I did. Some would socialize at the edges of the room or sit on the floor to enjoy the profusion of stimulants. I  would entertain them by swimming my glowing digits into creative visual forms, inspiring eyes and jaws to open wide, sometimes concluding to applause. These small performances served as survival mechanisms, too. Numerous adults I  trusted throughout my childhood were alcoholics, or dependent upon some other drug like cocaine, which imported significant pain into our lives and even led to the abandonment of children I knew well. Thus I thoroughly knew the devastation that addiction could manifest. It was not my right to tell people what to do with their bodies, or how to process their traumas, but there were insistent drug dealers and users at every rave. So, to avoid being pressured, I would distract with my dances accentuated by flickering machines and the mixing of luminous chemicals. In practice it meant that I was almost always in motion, sweaty, artificially illuminated, unable to pin down. My time performing in the underground was relatively brief, though it seemed longer because of how formative it was.The happenings provided a social

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collectivity and place to express myself when I urgently needed them. But there came a moment when I  had to leave that community, too. During the month of my twentieth birthday, several people I  knew were growing dependent on ecstasy and cocaine. I  tolerated the drugs for a while, but grew wary of their usage when I noticed it almost every day. I vividly recall that breaking moment, when I  descended into an unfamiliar basement before a planned outing to witness friends with strangers crawling and convulsing on the floor, their faces open wide. They were sinking into what was called a “K-​hole,” later explained to me as a form of extreme dissociation between the body and mind prompted by the drug Ketamine, a horse tranquilizer. I  did not judge them for seeking escape –​it was a desire we had in common –​but I did not share their impulses to suppress the body’s responses to trauma. I did not want to see people I could care about hurting themselves like this regularly. At that moment I left this world out of self-​protection. I worked multiple jobs and saved enough money to pay for tuition, recommitting myself to the university and searching for a life that involved less risk. On campus I would encounter professors who saw something of value in me that seemed easy for others to overlook.Virtual worlds would grow more sophisticated, and I would embody other avatars who explored the strange landscapes of fantasy and science fiction. I would learn to code in computer languages, and even developed a prototypical meme generator in Javascript before social media was invented. In other words, my modulated cyborg being did not disintegrate when I stopped dancing in those old abandoned warehouses; it continued to grow and evolve situationally as it always had. Struggling to access a quality education, and establishing long-​term relationships with people who embraced my differences, helped to significantly stabilize my life. Eventually I graduated from Michigan and proceeded to New York University for graduate school. Living in Manhattan is another chapter of this cyborg’s autobiography, when my illicit dance education was refashioned into presentations for audiences at the Sandra Cameron Dance Center on Broadway. Frederick Mosely, a thoughtful Alvin Ailey choreographer, taught me how to encode representational acts into my repertoire, blending my experimental style with trained stage combat to show the inseparability of violence and criminalization from how my body moves to music. These connections were made possible by a generous mentor, Anna Deavere Smith, who taught me how to hyperrealistically perform actual people using her celebrated methodology of simulating recordings of personal interviews conducted in the flesh. Over time, some of my cybernetically-​established connections would grow into kinship relations rooted in affinity. I  pursued additional graduate degrees for which I  devoured Freud and the history of psychology with renowned psychoanalysts, listened in awe to stories about Michel Foucault’s lectures told by my mentor who was one of his students, and grappled with Darwin’s lasting impacts in evolutionary biology with a celebrated Yale-​trained biologist. These were humbling opportunities that also deeply transformed my being.They seemed

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hardly imaginable to my teenage mind, but were nonetheless rooted in a persistent commitment to multi-​modal forms of knowledge that emerged from that mind. Today, as a cyborg artist and intellectual, I approach the age of social media in defiance of pressures to publicly present ourselves as “transparent” on privately-​ owned platforms that occupy the world wide web and commodify our personal data. Always informed by activities in the cybernetic closet, always creative and critical of the gaze, I continue to try to adapt strategies of self-​presentation as their own experimental forms of resistance.

About the Author Lucian O’Connor is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, artist, and historian of thought who lives in southern California. He holds a master’s degree in Performance Studies from NYU (2003) and a doctorate in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2012). O’Connor has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Wesleyan University, the University of Michigan, and multiple California State University and University of California campuses. He has lectured in Buenos Aires, London, New York, Montreal, São Paulo, Chicago, Edmonton, and several other locations around the globe, on topics that include semiotics, decoloniality, evolutionary biology, aesthetics, and ethnography. Also a prolific artist and curator, he creates large-​scale autobiographical paintings and transmedia productions. While not working, O’Connor enjoys gardening, hiking, and spending quality time with loved ones.

24 ZOMBIES, CYBORGS AND CHIMERAS Alternate Anatomical Architectures Stelarc

This is not a coherent text. It is a collection of ideas and anecdotes that have been generated by performances and projects that have oscillated between issues of embodiment, agency, aliveness, the artificial and the alien. Each statement should be considered in-​itself, rather than how it connects to the one before or the one after. Although written by a particular person, they are not about the body as a subject, but rather the body as an object, as an evolutionary architecture. Not an object of desire, but rather an object to re-​imagine and re-​ design –​being cognizant of that the body is also a historical, cultural and social construct. The traumatized and fragmented body, haunted by its phantoms, inhabits proliferating spaces of anxiety, ambivalence but remaining indifferent, having no expectations, open to possibilities, allowing an unfolding in its own time and with its own rhythm.These thoughts concern issues of the biological, the machinic and the virtual. These statements are not assertions but tentative speculation. Not expectations but rather meant to problematize what a body is and how a body operates. The spectacle of the body in states of stress captures the fine, ambiguous line between cruelty and aesthetics, an idea that was central to the work of Antonin Artaud, an artist with whom Stelarc shares many affinities. Both the suspensions and the theatre of cruelty presume the abandonment of traditional conceptions of performance space and a more visceral communication between spectator and spectacle. And in particular the spectacle of the human body in transformation. As Artaud famously and somewhat presciently wrote in the First Manifesto on the theatre of cruelty, it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-​enter our minds. Darren Tofts “The Murmur of Skin” Catalogue essay, Stretched Skin Exhibition, Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne, 2012

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FIGURE 24.1  ReWired

ReMixed

Uncertain, Anxious and Obsolete The suspended body is a landscape of stretched skin. The body is experienced as a sculptural object –​ in a spatial relationship with other objects, locations and situations. Not only is the body in different positions but no longer static in suspension. It is spun, swung, hoisted and rotated, and propelled. The skin becomes part of the body’s support structure, its stretching generates a gravitational landscape. In retrospect the suspension performances exhaust the body, exposing its vulnerability, its uncertainty, its anxiety, its emptiness and its profound obsolescence. The body is obsolete, but not yet extinct. The body is empty, but an emptiness that allows it to become a better host for all its instruments and machines. Stretched between what it never was and what it could never become; suspended between the inward pull of gravity and the outward thrust of information. The body  has desires but does not express them.  The body  feels pain but remains silent and stoic. A body that neither thinks nor exhibits affect. A suspended body is an anesthetized body. It does not think because it does not have a mind of its own nor any mind at all in the traditional metaphysical sense. To be suspended is to be between states. To be neither one nor the other and perhaps not anyone at all, anywhere, at any time.  Simultaneously in irreconcilable states.  To be in suspense is neither being able to reflect on the past, to participate in the present nor to anticipate the outcome.  The suspension performances are experiences in bodily sensation, expressed in bodily action, in remote spaces and in diverse situations. They are not actions for interpretation, nor require any explanation.

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They are not meant to generate any meaning, rather, they are sites of inertia and states of erasure.

Neither/​Nor In an increasingly video, virtual and vicarious world, the body asserts its materiality not as a site for the psyche nor for social inscription but a site to be sculpted –​the body, not as an object of desire but as an object that requires redesigning. A body that is interactively operating in a flattened ontology of other bodies, machines, microbes, instruments and algorithms.

Excess, Extrusion and Indifference We are living in an age of excess and indifference and of prosthetic proliferation. A prosthesis not as a sign of lack but as a symptom of excess.The body with a Third Hand, a Prosthetic Head, an Extended Arm and with Exoskeleton locomotion. We now navigate from physical nano-​scales to virtual non-​places. The body now experiences parts of itself as automated, involuntary and absent to its own agency. The body is now remotely propelled. As its awareness is extruded, its physicality recedes. It becomes an extended operational system. We no longer function “all-​ here” in this body, nor “all-​there” in that body but “partly-​here” sometimes and “partly-​ there” at other times. Intermittently or all-​ of-​ a-​ sudden. Awareness slips and slides between spaces and situations. The body becomes sustained by an extended and external nervous system of search-​engine software code and rhizomatic internet structure. Subjectively, the body experiences itself as more of extruded system, rather than an enclosed structure. The self becomes situated beyond the skin, and the body is emptied. But this emptiness is not an emptiness of lack but rather a radical emptiness through excess.   An emptiness from the extrusion and extension of its capabilities, its augmented sensory antennae and its increasingly remote functioning. What becomes important is not merely the body’s identity, but its connectivity –​ not its mobility or location, but its interface.  The body acts with indifference. Indifference as opposed to expectation. An indifference that allows something other to occur, that allows an unfolding –​ in its own time and with its own rhythm. An indifference that allows the body to be suspended with hooks into its skin, that allows the insertion of a sculpture into its stomach, that allows an ear to be surgically constructed and cell grown on its arm. Stelarc’s performance of prosthetic selfhood can be described as the abandonment of the idea of self-​possession and self-​mastery. It creates a space for an encounter with, even intrusion of, what is radically different from the self and yet what remains, paradoxically, in some sort of relationship with the self. By denying the mastery of the self (of the artist, auteur, creator, demiurge), Stelarc does not give up what he previously possessed: he

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rather resigns from a certain idea of not only the performance artist but also the human as only singular and autonomous. His ‘hospitality’ –​to borrow Derrida’s term which he employs to describe precisely this kind of ethical opening –​should not, however, be interpreted as an act of good will but rather as a compulsion to respond to the inevitability of ethics and a decision not to commit violence against it. Joanna Zylinska “The Future … Is Monstrous: Prosthetics as Ethics”, in The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age, edited by Joanna Zylinska (Continuum, London /​New York, 2002)

Zombies and Cyborgs The body is an evolutionary architecture and apparatus that operates and becomes aware in the world.To alter its architecture is to adjust its awareness. The simplistic idea of the individual with its own agency becomes problematic. The body has always been a prosthetic body, one augmented, amplified but equally exposed by its instruments and machines. The body is predisposed to behaving involuntarily and of being conditioned automatically. A Zombie is a body that performs involuntarily, which does not have a mind of its own. A Cyborg is a human-​machine system that becomes increasingly automated. There has always been a fear of the involuntary and an anxiety of the automated. But we fear what we have always been and what we have already become. Zombies and Cyborgs. To be an intelligent agent, one has to be both adequately embodied and intimately embedded in the world.  But the body itself is now becoming a mobile, monitoring and transmission system that can be logged into and accessed physiologically. Partly prompted by people in other places and partly able to operate with its own agency. These split bodies are both partly performing and partly possessed bodies, ones that allow an emergent and distributive agency. Data streams and data structures construct unexpected landscapes of viral codes and parasite hosts. Perhaps we should not accept the body as a biological given.

Neither Birth Nor Death For Heidegger, death authenticates life. But birth and death are evolutionary strategies for primarily shuffling genetic material to create diversity in the human phylum and for population control. If we engineer artificial wombs to allow the embryo and fetus to develop, then life will not begin with birth. And if we can replace malfunctioning organs with transplants or artificial parts then the body need not die. Existence would not begin with birth and would not end with biological death. The body is soft and easily damaged, not very robust or reliable, one that malfunctions often, and that is susceptible to microbes, small changes in chemistry, temperature, electromagnetic fields and radiation.  And it experiences

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a limited lifespan. Perhaps we should consider hollowing, hardening and dehydrating the body to make it more robust in extreme environments. The medical body is a traumatised, damaged but not a dehumanised body. We are more wary of the military body. It is the more disconcerting body.The military body is a contingent and conditioned killing machine. It is a body in excess. The medical body is a traumatised body, symptomatic of loss. What it means to be human has been constantly reconfigured. This reconfiguration has been an outcome of this oscillation between contingency and necessity. Have we ever been merely biological bodies? The right to die becomes as important as the right to live. To live is often the result of being connected to instruments and machines. Death now for many means that which happens when the body is disconnected from its technological life-​support systems. What constitutes humanity has always been our languages, our artefacts, our machines, our instruments and computational systems. For McLuhan technology is the external organs of our body. Microminiaturised technology implodes back into the body, now being biocompatible in scale and substance. Disconnected from any intrinsic essence, the body is now constantly being recoded and reconfigured and re-​imbued with multiple and diverse meanings. What Stelarc performs with his investigations into how different developments in technology (robotics, the internet, virtual reality systems, prosthetics, medical instruments and procedures) alter our conception of the human and the human body, is the way in which technology escapes control of its inventors to produce unseen and unforeseeable changes and possibilities; and thus a future –​for the self, the human, for the body, and for technology –​which can be neither programmed nor predicted. Gary Hall. From “Para-​site”, the Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age, edited by Joanna Zylinska (Continuum, London /​New York, 2002)

FIGURE 24.2  Exo Arm

ReWired ReMixed

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Circulating Flesh Organs are extracted and exchanged. Organs are engineered and inserted. The blood flowing in my body today might be circulating in your body tomorrow (if you are 0+). Ova are fertilized by sperm that was once frozen. The skin cells from an impotent male can now become sperm cells. And there is the possibility that the skin cells from female bodies can re-​ engineered into sperm cells  (which can remove the male from the reproductive cycle). The face of a donor body becomes a Third Face on the recipient. Limbs detached from a dead body can be reanimated on a living body. Cadavers can be preserved forever with plastination whilst comatose bodies can be sustained indefinitely on life-​support systems. Cryogenically suspended bodies await reanimation at some imagined future.  And fertilized eggs are frozen awaiting inevitable insertion into warm bodies. A donated embryo, frozen for 20 years, resulted in a healthy baby for a 25 year old in 2010. Reproductive processes are no longer in sync with individual life-​spans.You might be born generations after your mother has died as a donation to another body elsewhere. The dead, the near-​dead, the un-​dead, the yet to be born partial life and synthetic life now exist simultaneously. And if body parts can be stem-​cell grown or organ printed, then organs will be in abundance. Organ Printing is a hybridisation of rapid prototyping techniques with tissue engineering. In other words computer aided jet-​based 3D tissue engineering. Instead of printing with coloured inks we are able to print with living cells –​layer by layer on biodegradable paper. It is now possible to print a 5 cm long section of an artery in approximately one hour.The printed tissue will then need to be incubated and nourished, allowing the printed cell globules to self-​organise. With the proliferation of bio-​printers it will be possible to repair and replace tissue, muscles and organs without any immunological problems. It will not be necessary to harvest organs from cadavers or donor bodies. Organs will be in excess. There will be organs awaiting bodies. Organs Without Bodies. This is the age of the Cadaver, the  Comatose and the Chimera. The Chimera is the body that performs with mixed realities. A biological body, augmented with technology and managing data streams in virtual systems. Embodied agents can be actualised as Prosthetic Heads, Partial Heads, Walking Heads, Articulated Heads and Swarming Heads. Liminal spaces proliferate, blurring what it means to be a body and whether it is any longer meaningful to remain in this form with these functions. Rather than conceptualize the body as an effect of computer modeling (as in the works of the last decade), Stelarc renders the human-​machine interface as the site of controlled conflict, trauma, shock –​in short, a kind of circuit in which the “galvanic twitch” loses its metaphysical aura and instead is materialized as a control mechanism rather than as a “spark of life”. In Stelarc’s work, the interface is a kind of negative “diaelectric” (realised through electrodes, transducers, muscle stimulators, amplifiers,

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force-​feedback systems and extra limbs) that probe the tension-​perhaps resistance –​between the human and machine. Timothy Druckery. From “An Itinerary and Five Excursions”, Stelarc: The Monograph, edited by Marquard Smith (MIT Press, 2005)

FIGURE 24.3  FractalFlesh

Fractal Flesh/​Phantom Flesh Bodies become end-​effectors of extended operational systems. Heads are electronically amputated online and interfaced, excess limbs become accessible, senses are outsourced and agency is shared. If the body disappears it does so because of being massively embodied with its instruments and machines. Augmented, accelerated and extruded, the body becomes an extended operational system. By Fractal Flesh, I mean bodies and bits of bodies, spatially separated but electronically connected, generating recurring patterns of interactivity at varying scales. Bodies become nodes of interactivity where their identities no longer depend on their physical presence or location but rather their interface and connectivity. The body becomes simultaneously a possessed and performing body. The problem would no longer be the possessing of a split personality, but rather a split physicality.Voltage-​in, voltage-​out.  By Phantom Flesh, I am not only referring to online avatars but rather with the increasing proliferation of haptic devices on the internet we will be able to construct more potent physical presences of remote bodies. And the body experiences itself as its phantom  –​phantom not as in

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phantasmagoria but as phantom limb.To others online the body appears flickering on and off, as digital noise, as a glitch in biological time. The hazardous are no longer the dead but rather now the partially living. Hybrid bodies of biology, machines and virtual systems need to be sustained and further developed.  So the notion of single agency is undermined, or at least made more problematic. The body becomes a nexus or a node of collaborating agents that are not simply separated or excluded because of the boundary of our skin, or having to be in proximity. So we can experience remote bodies, and we can have these remote bodies invading, inhabiting and emanating from the architecture of our bodies, expressed by the movements and sounds prompted by remote agents. What is being generated and experienced is not the biological other –​but an excessive technological other, a third other. A  remote and phantom presence manifested by a locally situated body. Not only is there Fractal Flesh, there is now Phantom Flesh. The body increasingly oscillates between its physical form and its online phantom. This oscillation is the quickening that coupled with optical thickening that fuses the physical and phantom. The Hyper-​Human is a chimera of hyper-​ links. Incessantly reconnecting, reconfiguring and reimagining itself. It is neither all-​here nor all-​there, but appearing and disappearing all-​at-​once, everywhere else  –​scaled-​up, speeded-​up, performing cinematically, editing and perceiving itself by pausing, rewinding and looping into self-​referentiality. What throws off interlocutors is the coupling of acute absence with performative excess which is Stelarc’s forte whether he is climbing on his mega robot, the Exoskeleton, to crash-​walk; hanging from shark hooks 60 meters above a city street; having the speed of the internet course through and move his amplified body in a data sound dance; leaving a trace of his face as a tissue engineered Partial Head in its artificial bioreactor body, or having algorithms actuate the movement of ‘the body’ that is encased in a minimal full-​body Stickman exoskeleton. Shannon Bell “Stelarc: Hyperobject”, Stretched Skin, (PS Media, Oslo, 2018)

Inverse Embodiment/​Endo Architecture We now construct city structures and spaces that are more responsive and intelligent in both organic and algorithmic ways. However, architecture is still considered as a static container for social clusters of bodies. It is an outmoded model of architecture. Coupled to the body, architectures might propel bodies and result in nomadic bodies. Cities may become fragmented, fractal structures that organically add to or subtract from each other as populations ebb and flow at any particular place and at any observed time. The city becomes actuated and animated, a conglomeration of vast numbers of living mobile and modular entities. Perhaps future architectures will not only be attached to the body but also be situated  inside

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the body, populating cavities and cellular spaces as well as circulatory systems of the body, generating unexpected possibilities and the acceleration of human-​ machine hybrids. Instead of thinking of architecture as containing the body, it will now become a component of the body itself. We can clad the body with an exoskeleton shell and simultaneously design internal bodily structures, as well as cell sensor and surveillances systems, that allow for the body to better monitor, and alert of any pathological internal condition. Cortical capacity and cognitive power increased by neural implants and rewiring. Architecture of the future will be more organic, not only in form but also in substance. Architecture of the future will not be about a sense of place but rather about a means of propulsion. And of course we have to consider that engineering nano-​bots, we will be able to recolonise the body with machines that will augment the bacterial and virus populations in the body. The City has no future as a static array of spatial structures, operating as separate zones of habitation and production. Only architectures on and inside the body will be engineered. We need to engineer wearable and biocompatible exo and endo structures for the body. For Stelarc, the body has always been prosthetic –​a site of radical experimentation that in his art has been objectified, penetrated, virtualized, roboticized, emptied out, alienated and suspended with such ferocity that the purely prosthetic quality of the body has been forced to surface. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker “We Are All Stelarcs Now”, Stelarc: The Monograph, edited by Marquard Smith (MIT Press, 2005)

Alternate Anatomical Architectures The Third Hand is a prosthetic attachment to the body with three degrees of freedom. It is actuated by EMG signals from the abdominal and leg muscles. It also has a tactile feedback system for a rudimentary sense of touch.The Third Hand is a prosthetic attachment, not as a sign of lack, but rather a symptom of technological excess. A Virtual Body was imaged, actuated and animated in real-​time by a motion capture system. It was performed both as a wire-​frame model and with a flexible and deformable skin, an interplay and counterpoint between the physical body’s presence and the video, virtual and cinematic projection. The Virtual Arm is imaged in a heads-​up display as a human like arm emanating from the artist’s body, actuated by a pair of data gloves. The right glove generates mimicking motions. The left glove provides a gesture recognition system that allows for extended capabilities such as stretching the virtual arm, continuous wrist and finger rotation and grafting smaller hands on each finger. A  human-​like, fractal manipulator for smaller and smaller manipulations in a virtual task environment.

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Fractal Flesh –​People in the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Media Lab in Helsinki and the Doors of Perception conference in Amsterdam were able to access the body via a touch screen and remotely choreograph its movements.This was a split body experience.Voltage-​in, on the left side of the body, for involuntary movements and voltage-​out from the right side of the body to actuate a Third Hand. Ping Body –​Using the ping protocol, 40 global locations are pinged for the duration of the performance. The reverberating signals analysed by the host computer, in milliseconds, are mapped to the body’s muscles via the muscle stimulation system, generating a choreography of involuntary body movements. The body becomes a crude barometer of internet activity. Parasite –​A customised search engine, scans the internet, selects anatomical images from the web, displays them to the body and the analysis of the image file determines the complexity of the body’s movements via the muscle stimulation system. The images that you see are the images that move your body. Exoskeleton  –​A  6-legged walking machine was engineered robust enough to support the weight of the artist. With the upper body exoskeleton, arm gestures select the walking modes of the robot. Moving your arms moves the legs of the robot. It can walk forwards and backwards with a ripple gait, sideways with a tripod gait, it can squat, it can stand and it can turn on the spot. Movatar –​Is a virtual-​actual system. Instead of a body animating its digital double, here the avatar, imbued with genetic algorithms that generate its evolving behaviour, can access the physical body and perform with it via the upper body exoskeleton. Movatar is an inverse motion-​capture system. Instead of a body animating a computer entity, an avatar performs in the real world by possessing a physical body. The Extended Arm extends the right arm to primate proportions. It provides an extra joint in the arm. As well as wrist and thumb rotation, each finger splits open and each finger becomes a gripper in-​itself. Whilst the right arm is extended to primate proportions, the left arm performs involuntarily, animated by an 11 degree-​of-​freedom muscle stimulation system, arrayed on the flexor and extender muscles of the left arm. Muscle Machine –​Is a 5 metre diameter walking machine actuated by pneumatic rubber muscles. Encoders on the artist’s legs allow the body to take the robot for a walk. Lifting one leg up lifts 3 robot’s legs and swings them forward. By stepping up and down there is a translation of human bipedal gait into a 6-​legged walking locomotion. The Prosthetic Head is an automated, animated and reasonably informed if not intelligent artificial head that speaks to the person who interrogates it. It has real-​time, lip-​syncing, speech synthesis and facial expressions,

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generating an adequate sense of aliveness. The Prosthetic Head is only as intelligent as the person who interrogates it. The Articulated Head consists of an industrial robot arm with an LCD mounted on the end effector. The LCD screen displays a 3D rendering of a head that replicates the artist. The system also contains an array of sensors including auditory localisation, stereo vision and monocular vision that provides situational awareness for the robotic agent. This provides a physical presence for the chatbot and combines the 6 degrees of freedom motions of the industrial robot arm with the generated behaviour of the virtual head. The Partial Head was a digital transplant of the artist’s face over a hominid skull, resulting in a third face, one both post-​hominid and pre-​human in form. The aim was to grow a layer of living skin over the 3D printed scaffold. The Partial Head was a partial portrait, partially living. In fact the Prosthetic Head, the Articulated Head, The Partial Head and the Walking Head can be seen as digital, tissue engineered and robot portraits of the artist.   A sculpture was engineered for the inside of the body. The Stomach Sculpture opens and closes, extends and retracts, it has a flashing light and beeping sound. A machine choreography occurs inside a soft organ of the body. A  sculpture not for a public space but for a private, physiological space. The body not as a site for the psyche nor for social inscription but simply a site for sculpture. Blender –​A collaboration with another artist Nina Sellars, was the inverse of the Stomach Sculpture. 4.6 litres of biomaterial from the artist’s bodies was inserted in the spherical container of the installation. Instead of a machine operation inside a soft body, here a machine installation becomes a host for a liquid body, composed of biomaterial from the 2 artists’ bodies.   An extra ear was surgically constructed and cell-​g rown on my arm. The aim of the Ear on Arm is not only to replicate and relocate an ear, but to electronically augment and internet enable it. This additional and enabled Ear on Arm effectively becomes an Internet organ for the body, an alternate anatomical architecture. A publicly accessible, mobile and acoustical organ. Propel –​Coupled the body to the end of an industrial robot arm, precisely programming the trajectory, velocity and position/​orientation of the body in the space.The body was then replaced by a body-​scaled sculpture of the artist’s ear. The robot that choreographed the movements of the ear is the same robot that carved the ear.  In ReWired/​ReMixed, for 5 days, 6 hours every day the body could only see with the eyes of someone in London, could only hear with the ears of someone in New York, whilst anyone, anywhere could access the artist’s right arm via the exoskeleton and remotely choreograph it –​effectively outsourcing the artist’s senses and distributing his agency.

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StickMan –​Is a full-​body but minimal exoskeleton 6 degree-​of-​freedom that algorithmically actuates the body continuously for the 5 hour performance. The audience can insert their own choreography by manipulating the arms of a miniStickMan. In choreographing the movements the audience also inadvertently composes the sounds. A kind of electronic voodoo. While Kant could entertain the fantasy of chimeras, he could not foresee that they would one day exist as objects of experience. Stelarc’s work underlines and extends the prosthetic character of the human body, throwing into question the philosophical distinctions in which it has traditionally been thought. By emphasizing the view of the body as technologically organized matter, Stelarc performs an alignment of matter and form that would avoid any metaphysical opposition. In some ways the logic of his work can be seen to have been anticipated in Kant’s text, even if Kant was eventually unable to sustain the thought of the technological chimera. Howard Caygill “Stelarc and the Chimera: Kant’s Critique of Prosthetic Judgement (Aesthetics and the Body Politic)”, Art Journal, Spring, 1999

The Uncanny, the Creepy and the Catastrophic It seems that as we engineer more and more life-​like and human-​like robots that our interaction with them becomes problematic. Is the idea of the Uncanny Valley a fundamental philosophical issue to overcome or just merely about the state of the art of technology now? Is the hyper-​real robot inherently uncanny and creepy? Or is it not just real-​enough in subtlety of its mannerisms, sound of its speech and how effectively it interacts socially? But the problem is not only about creepy robots.We know that there are creepy people in the world too. People who might be socially awkward, people who might stammer, and people who are schizophrenic might exhibit creepy behaviour and create uncomfortable feelings in others. Friedrich Nietzsche  –​“… there is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is merely a fiction added to the deed—​the deed is everything.” Ludwig Wittgenstein  –​“the assertion that thinking is not located inside the head, it’s located on the paper on which you write or on the lips with which you speak”… There was always a ghost in the machine. Not as a vital force that animates but rather a fading attestation of the human.

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From Third Life to Real Life Second Life is a second skin, an alternate embodiment and operation in multi-​ user,  online virtual spaces. Avatars can be interfaced and prompted by bodies and actuated by their code. Perhaps what we need now is not a Second Life but a Third Life. A means by which avatars can access and interface with surrogate bodies and perform with them in the physical world. This would be an inverse motion-​capture system where an avatar imbued with an artificial intelligence would be able to generate its presence in the physical world with multiple bodies, in diverse situations and in remote locations. The body itself becomes a prosthesis enabling the operation and interaction of an avatar in the real world. A virtual/​ actual interface.

Skins as Screens Skins and screens now mesh into one fluid and interactive surface. Skins as screens exhibit seductive vocabularies of aliveness. Images are no longer more or less what they seem but rather become much more than we can imagine. Flickering phantoms, flattened faces. Digital entities proliferate, replicate and contaminate the human body and its micro-​biome. Skins as screens have optical and haptic thickness. It is this thickening that collapses the psychological space between bodies.

Bioart Marshall McLuhan observed when an old media is replaced by a new one, the old media becomes an art form. Art about biology and the body is then a symptom of the obsolescence not only of the body itself, but of the obsolescence of biology in totality. Machine musculature is more robust and reliable. Vision and sensor systems detect extended spectrums and are disseminated, disembodied beyond the local spaces that individual bodies inhabit. Computational systems more speedily process and reliably retrieve information from massive data streams. When biological life becomes obsolete it becomes vulnerable to aesthetic intervention, to manipulation and modification –​no longer something to admire but rather something to redesign. The monster is no longer the outmoded stitched up meat body, but the system that sucks the self into virtuality.

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FIGURE 24.4  Ear

On Arm Suspension

Floating Signifier In this age of body hacking, gene mapping, prosthetic augmentation, organ swapping, face transplants, synthetic skin and chimeras what it means to be a body, what it means to be human and what generates aliveness and agency becomes problematic. In the liminal spaces of proliferating Prosthetic Bodies, Partial Life and Artificial Life, the body has become a floating signifier. Insects can be remote controlled, human liver tissue can be grown in lab mice enabling safe pharmacological experiments, nano-​bots can be propelled by bacteria stuck to their chassis. Skin cells can be taken from an impotent male and recoded into sperm cells. And more interestingly skin cells can be taken from a female body and be recoded into sperm cells with the male now being out of the reproductive loop. And in 2011, a twin turbine heart was implanted into the chest of Craig Lewis, a terminally ill patient at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston by William Cohn and Bud Frazier. This turbine heart is smaller and more robust and reliable than previous artificial hearts. What’s interesting is that it circulates blood without pulsing. So in the near future you might rest your head on your loved one’s chest. He is warm to the touch, he is speaking, he is sighing, he is certainly alive but he has no heartbeat. Perhaps in the near future there will be populations of humans without heartbeats. What it means to be human is perhaps not to remain human at all. Alter the architecture of the body and you adjust its operation and awareness.

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Contestable Futures If there is a future, it should not be out of a perceived necessity but rather of collaboration and contingency. Conjecture of what might happen rather than what will happen. And what might happen is that all technology in the future will be invisible because it will be inside the human body. In nano-​scale, sensors and bots can occupy empty cavities, cellular spaces and circulatory systems. Initially to monitor pathological conditions but it might then be possible to redesign the body, atoms-​up, inside-​out. The changes would be so small and so incremental that you would not be aware of the transformation taking place. But the future of intelligence may not reside in ponderous bodies nor massive machines, but rather in viral entities in electronic media that can replicate, communicate and relocate with the speed of light. In blurring the distinction between the living and the dead, the partially living and the yet unborn we are creating liminal spaces; alternate spaces of otherness. Nietzsche remarked that the living is only a species of the dead. It’s just that now it will be increasingly meaningless to differentiate between them. He begins by approaching ideas as materialized thoughts and making them into unthinkable objects  –​objects that can only be sensed, pure sensation. Then he puts the unthinkable objects on the body to see what might become of it. The body and thought converge toward a shared indeterminacy. They are together in the sensation. Briam Massumi  “The Evolutionary Alchemy of Reason” from Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press, 2002)

About the Author Stelarc is a cyborg artist who physically and intellectually challenges the human body and, therefore, not just the Western individual or even the modern human, but our animal nature.

PART 5

Thinking Myself a Cyborg

 

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26 CYBORG EMPATHY FOR THE AGE OF (IN)DIFFERENCE Sandra P. González-​Santos

Cyborg Society Whether I am or not a cyborg in the circuit-​flesh is irrelevant. What matters is that I live in a cyborg society, making me thus a cyborg citizen. I live with people who are, most certainly, cyborgs in the circuit-​flesh. I  am the aunt of children conceived through a complex display of technological, political, economic and social interventions. I  am the professor of students who depend on bots, apps, algorithms and artificial intelligence to tell them where they are, where they should be going, what they want to eat, read, watch, listen to, who they want to have sex with and how many people ‘like’ them. I am a voting citizen in a political system that has managed to institutionalize the revolution. I am connected to children who are worried about the future they are inheriting, and I am responsible for this future. I am surrounded by a cacophony of fake-​true-​altered-​proven-​ limited-​manipulated facts, most of which matter. I hear people “take action” by clicking a like button, retweeting a telegram of an idea, signing online petitions, or at the most, walking together with like-​minded people in a rally to which they were personally invited through a social media platform. I  am a Mexican academic within the field of science and technology studies who teaches, investigates and collaborates in processes of knowledge production, critique, distribution and consumption, in circuits that are situated both in Mexico and beyond. I live above an ‘organic’ store that imports all its goods from the USA and Australia. My field of research is assisted reproduction, although I decided not to have children. I adhere to the feminist principle that the personal is political, to which I add that my work is also personal and political. I am a native of cyborg times, an inhabitant of the Anthropocene and I need to be responsible for the interactions I am part of, for the relationships I establish and foster and for the world I participate

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in creating (Haraway, 2015). I care about the sort of cyborgs and cyborg society I contribute to and I am part of. My agenda is to take action in creating a (cyborg) society where (cyborg) empathy is believed in and made possible; an empathy based on difference that helps generate a “plural I and a singular we” (c.f. Anzaldúa in Reuman and Anzalúda, 2000), that helps turn our matters of fact into matters of concern and of care (c.f. Latour, 2004; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) and that helps us weave relationships “in significant otherness” (c.f. Haraway & Wolfe, 2016). But how to foster this cyborg empathy? I am not sure. However, I have identified some moments in which this kind of empathy was clearly being performed.These moments, which I will share with you, took place in the context of my research on assisted reproduction in Mexico and they might offer some hints.

Field-​diary  2006 What I am going to tell the people I encounter when they ask me about how many children I have, or how many I want, or about the number of IVF cycles I have undergone? What am I going to answer? How am I going to connect with them if I don’t have or even want children? [Fast forward to someday already at the clinic] Today I was asked about my desire and attempts at becoming a mother. The physicians and biologists jokingly (yet very seriously) warned me about delaying pregnancy, they assured that “we will see you here in a few years, when you finish your PhD and want to have children!” However, the women and men who were there as patients, wanting to become parents themselves, reacted unexpectedly when I told them I did not want children. They responded: “I totally understand, the world is not fit for bringing in more children”, “I agree. If I could, I would not try”, “Yes, I am doubtful myself ”, “I too am so apprehensive that I am not sure what sort of parent I will be”, “I am not sure I want to be a mother!”, “oh, ok”.

Field-​diary  2007 I am geared up and ready to go into the procedure: my hair is tied up in a bun and tucked into a head piece, my face is free of makeup and other perfumes and I  am in full scrubs. The procedure will be an embryo transfer. This is not my first nor last to witness and I must confess that the woman undergoing the procedure is no more or less special to me than all the other women that have let me share this moment with them. I help push the bed into the operating room and I stand next to her, on her right side, close to her head. From there I can see the screen onto which the ultrasound is projected. I can see the movements of the nurse, biologist, physician and I can hold her hand and talk to her. This is her fourth attempt and she is obviously nervous and fully aware that it might, again, not work. Nonetheless, in this moment she is full of hope: a strong, profound, embodied, warm, anguishing, pausing hope. A sort of hope that is contagious, a

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hope that travels from her hand to mine, from her gaze to mine.With each breath she exhales hope, with each breath I inhale this hope and it travels through me and stays with me. When the nurse and doctor tell her to relax so they can insert the catheter to deposit the embryos in her womb, she squeezes my hand. We turn to the ultrasound screen with hopeful eyes, to see how the catheter goes in, how they point out the lighter gray zone where the embryo is being deposited, how the catheter goes out, we follow the catheter as it is taken to the window hatch and passed to the embryologist who, after inspecting its content, calls out “all good”. We look at each other and we both let go hopeful tears.

Field-​diary  2017 I am sitting in 47D flying to the USA. I  am watching Gifted (Lunder, Cohen, Webb and Flynn, 2017) a movie about a little girl, Mary, who lives with her uncle Frank after her mother died when she was six months old. One day Frank takes her and Roberta, her best friend (a 43 year old woman who lives next door) to the waiting room of the maternity ward. This hospital scene has a long beginning: Mary, Roberta, the people in the waiting room and you as the spectator are waiting, waiting and waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, you see the shadow of someone in scrubs approaching the door, the people slowly wake up, Frank wakes Mary up, the people start to move and the man in scrubs opens the door. The doctor comes out and turns to a group of people sitting there and gives them the news: it’s a boy! The people jump with joy. Mary is not clear of what is going on, nonetheless she smiles. Frank tells her “that’s exactly how it was when you were born”. “This happy?” she asks. She wants to stay on for another announcement and another and another; she wants to witness and feel the joy of each of these families when they find out about their newborn baby. With each one she jumps up and hugs the family who is receiving the news. Watching this scene, sitting in 47D with people sleeping around me, I think about a graduate student, a woman whom I hardly knew, who was waiting for her pregnancy test results. That was her first IVF cycle. I feared it would be negative. I began to cry.

Field-​diary  2019 Looking at the YouTube channels of people undergoing IVF, I have noticed that their stories about the experiences with these procedures stand in stark contrast to how the experience of undergoing IVF is depicted in the fertility clinic’s websites, Facebook pages andYouTube channels. For example, in the user-​videos you follow women’s ovarian stimulation process, you see how they prepare and administer the injections, how they visit the doctor to have an ultrasound where they find out how many follicles they have produced. Through their live recordings or on camera narrations you see how they prepare for the egg retrieval and how they wait to see if these eggs and the sperm managed to produce viable embryos.You

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watch as they find out if their embryos developed and hopefully how they have their embryos transferred back into her womb. You live with them the expectation, the questions, the uncertainty, the hope and then the results. You see how they feel pain when they administer the injections, how their faces change expression going from hope to anxiety to sadness, you hear their voice breaking down when they verbalize the loss and you follow the passage of time –​days, months and years of trying. Inevitably, I end up crying with each of their stories, out of sadness when they receive a negative pregnancy test and out of joy when they receive a positive one. None of this complexity is ever presented in the clinics’ narratives; their narratives hide the pain of the many attempts. This bothers me. What these excerpts hope to show is how shared difference makes a difference. As it turned out, although I do not want children, I can relate with their desire for children; I am able to connect with them through our differences by a shared feeling of hope, uncertainty, fear, expectations and sacrifice. Connecting through difference is the core of cyborg empathy.

Cyborg Empathy It has been said that cyborgs question the boundaries and universality of many fundamental western dichotomies; dichotomies such as nature-​culture, human-​ animal, machine-​human, man-​ woman, individual-​ collective, among others. Cyborgs push us to find ways of undoing these epistemological boundaries, diffusing the content of these concepts and allowing them to react in many generative and surprising ways. This has rendered these boundaries (and thus the categories) many times confusing, problematic and even senseless.What if we take difference and similarity as one more dichotomy cyborgs ask us to question, to unravel and to denaturalize? Cyborgs can do that. They illuminate the situated and relational nature of difference (i.e. difference is performed in a specific time-​ place-​mater relation). They direct our attention towards the moments of interaction between those framed as different. They recognize difference as fluid, transient and transformative. In my ethnographic experience it was through comparison that the women and I  became different-​similar:  they wished for somethings which I did not, yet we both understood the meaning and power of that desire. The differences became less evident in the moments of interaction, when I could feel with, because and for them. Relating to them allowed me to connect with their desire by acknowledging it, we were able to establish meaningful empathic relationships through our differences. Thus, cyborg empathy is powered by shared difference. Cyborg empathy shows that shared difference can be a force that brings together, that unites people, beings, opinions, experiences and things in general, instead of being that which sets them apart. Hence, cyborg empathy is centered

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on shared difference as an attracting force. It shows that difference does not have to be made hierarchical or irrelevant (c.f. de la Cadena et al., 2015), it can be respected and made to be productive, generative and connective. Cyborgs have allowed me to make a political act of feeling empathy, of feeling with and feeling for the other, not only when we have shared experiences but when our biographies have been different and our individual aspirations, possibilities and privileges are contrasting. In other words, shared difference can generate “otherness in connection” (Haraway & Wolfe, 2016). Cyborg empathy makes it possible to “do difference together” (Verran & Christie, 2011). Difference should not be ignored, it should not be made indifferent, it should be shared. We fear difference, but it can be made familiar: difference can remain and yet be familiar. Cyborgs can do this because they tell stories and stories help weave connecting points which allow for empathy to tie. Cyborgs share difference. I do not have to want a child that is genetically related to me, gestated in my body and birthed by me to be able to feel hope for someone’s embryo to implant and grow, to desire for their pregnancy test to be positive. It is not indispensable for you to have lived exactly what I lived (one too many IVF cycles for example) to be able to connect and together feel the desperation, frustration, impotence, anger and deep sorrow when the test is negative because we both have desired and we both have done all that is in our reach to attain and not get. Cyborg empathy re-​draws the boundaries between you and me, it places our differences upfront and with this recognized difference, with this shared difference, we become significant to each other (Haraway & Wolfe, 2016:134). Cyborg empathy does not limit our possibility of sharing profound feelings to having lived the exact same experience. “Communication across irreductible differences is what matters. Situated partial connections is what matters” (Haraway & Wolfe, 2016:140); “otherness in connection” is what matters (Haraway & Wolfe, 2016:134, 137). Sharing difference is what makes empathy possible. Significant otherness is possible if we walk towards the other with respect, with attention, with awareness. Cyborg empathy is in shared difference. History means change, it implies transformation. Therefore, the problems-​ solutions, fights-​gains-​losses lived during a period are also contextual, contingent and in constant change. The social movements performed yesterday in order to achieve a more just, peaceful and responsible today are not the same as the movements we presently need to attain an even more just, peaceful and responsible tomorrow. Many of the social movements organized in the past century focused on the similar experience of particular groups and thus on the exclusion of those who had not lived that experience. They united on the basis of gender, ethnicity, biology, or physical condition (to mention some) and excluded those who did not have these same characteristics, arguing that those who did not have these characteristics could not fully understand what they meant and how it felt living with them. Many of these movements were successful at raising awareness of

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the oppression, exclusion, discrimination, violence, exploitation and marginalization these people where living; unfortunately raising awareness has not meant that these problems have ceased to exist. Considering the growing nationalist, racist and discriminatory discourses and practices and given the selfish and irresponsible production and consumption behaviors promoted by many, I wonder: what sort of social movement do we need to enact today to foster a better future? My bet is on an inclusive politics that cultivates cyborg empathy. A politics that highlights the importance of shared difference as the source of hybridity, that grants the possibility of exploring difference, that offers spaces for asking about it, for looking at it, for explaining it; a politics that invites others to listen and speak, to observe and do, to practice and experiment in, with and through difference. A politics that enables an embodied performance of relative difference. Cyborg empathy is based on the notion that all creatures are connected, that what happens in the deep ocean or in outer space is a matter of my concern, that what happens to the elderly and the newborn is a matter of my concern, that what I do in my today will shape your tomorrow, that we are not geographically nor temporarily bound but actually resonate in a longer present, past and future; it is an empathy that will not exclude you or ignore your opinion just because you are not from my group or because you have not lived the “same” experience as I have.

Cyborg Empathy for a Cyborg Society Cyborg empathy seeks to respect oneself and the other as simultaneously different and similar. It is a patient empathy that stays with the trouble of difference, that is not afraid of feeling uncertainty, that allows confusion and takes time to listen. It is focused; it does not over-​state or simplify similarity and does not under-​state or complicate difference to the point of immobility. It is a situated empathy that considers identity and subjectivity, difference and similarity, as hybrid, dynamic, relational and intersected by many different factors. It is political; it judges problematic the exclusion of the other based on their personal biography, gender, ethnicity, biology, economic, cultural or geographic situation. It is a powerful empathy that is respectful, responsible, curious, healing, supportive, caring and creative. It is generative; it fosters relationships based on ties other than ancestry, genealogy, biology, or ideology. It is transgressive; it cares about, speaks of, works with and respects difference. It is an attentive empathy felt with those who live outside our echo-​chamber and our like-​minded circle, an empathy that sees difference without indifference.

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References de la Cadena, M., Lien, M. E., Blaser, M., Jensen, C. B., Lea, T., Morita, A., Swanson, M., Ween, B., West, P., & Wiener, M. (2015). Anthropology and STS: Generative interfaces, multiple locations. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(1), 437–​475. Gray, C. H. (2002). Cyborg Citizen. Politics in the Posthuman Age. New  York and London: Routledge. Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 159–​165. Haraway, D., & Wolfe, C. (2016). Manifestly Haraway. Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225–​248. Lunder, K., Cohen, A. (Producers), Webb, Marc. (Director), Flynn, Tom (Writer). (2017). Gifted. USA: Fox Searchlight Pictures. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of Care:  Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Reuman, A. E., & Anzaldúa, G. (2000). Coming into Play:  An Interview with Gloria Anzaldúa. MELUS, 25(2), 3–​45. Verran, H. R., & Christie, M. (2011). Doing Difference Together:  Towards a Dialogue with Aboriginal Knowledge Authorities Through an Australian Comparative Empirical Philosophical Inquiry. Culture and Dialogue, 1(2), 21–​36.

About the Author Sandra P.  González-​Santos:  After studying psychology at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, I went to the University of Bath to study for an MSc. in Science Culture Communication. It was there that I became enchanted with cyborg studies and science and technology studies (STS). Since then my field of research has been looking at the making of the cyborg world from a STS perspective taking assisted reproduction as my guiding light. In 2010 I finished my PhD in Sociology at the University of Sussex and returned to Mexico where I now live. Currently I am a part-​time researcher at the Universidad Anáhuac (Bioethics Department), a lecturer at the Universidad Iberoamericana (Critical Gender Studies program and Media Studies program) and a coordinator of transdisciplinary experimental research projects at the National Art Center.

27 BEING A CYBORG IN A CONNECTED WORLD INCREASINGLY MEDIATED BY ALGORITHMS From the Perspective of Two Brazilian Journalists Silvia DalBen and Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno

When thinking about cyborgs, the first image that pops into our minds is those 1980s science fiction movies about futures with humanoid robots or super humans with special powers conquered by bodies integrated with mechanical gears or technological implants. Our childhood was permeated by stories such as RoboCop, The Terminator and Star Wars. We were born in the 1980s in Minas Gerais, the second most populous state of Brazil, around the same time that Donna Haraway published “A manifesto for cyborgs”, a surprising discussion about “hybrids of machines and organisms”. Born at the end of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964–​1985), we saw an ongoing process of democratization and a financial crisis caused by massive inflation during our childhood. Many technological objects common in the USA, Europe and Japan were luxury items in Brazil, which changed in 1992 when the market opened for imported products, and in 1994 with the creation of the Real, a new currency that controlled inflation. We saw those technological changes happening really fast in our country. By the second half of the 1990s, Brazil finally entered into the globalization era and some families were able to buy computers, mobile phones, and have an internet dial access, even though it meant paying a lot for these goods and services. Thus, talking about being a cyborg in Brazil is also talking about a society marked by a huge social inequality, where on one hand the middle class pays a lot to have access to cutting edge products, and on the other hand part of the population does not have those technologies or an internet with good speed quality, for example. Analyzing this behavior pattern from a cultural and political perspective, we see this middle-​class rush for being technologically updated as a desire to overcome an economic gap of living in an underdeveloped country. It is as if by

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acquiring these gadgets, Brazilians would have a lifestyle closer to a developed country’s standards, even though some of these products are not officially sold in our country and also are not translated into Portuguese. Having a car or the latest smartphone release is considered good for social status in Brazil, and those technologies are seen as symbols of luxury by our society. For example, in a rapid search one can see that Brazilians will pay double for a car compared to Argentines, or for an iPhone compared to North Americans. Some people think it is worth it, because of the higher social status you can win. Brazil also deals with a vast inequality in terms of broadband internet access. According to 2019 research, Brazil’s average connection speed is less than 25 MB/​s, one fourth of the average in the USA as a matter of comparison. And differences within the country are also striking: while in Sao Paulo the average speed is 30 MB/​s, in Roraima speed is lower than 8MB/​s. It is not unusual to see people that could pay more for a better connection but cannot due to the lack of the technical capacity to offer a higher speed where they live. These are just some examples that help us map the issues around the way technology is consumed by Brazilians and shape our everyday life. Despite being aware of the cultural and political changes that technological development has brought to Brazil, only recently did we first read Donna Haraway’s manifesto, and this essay inspired us to think about what it means to be living in a cyborg society in an underdeveloped country such as ours. Our analysis is focused on how Artificial Intelligence is applied in journalism, and also on how social media networks changed the consumption and the distribution of news, two subjects with many technological issues. As two cyborg women living in an emergent country in South America, Haraway’s essay helped us deeply analyze how algorithms are becoming increasingly omnipresent and, while invisible for many people, they act politically and make deeper changes in our culture and in our society.

Robots Arise in Brazilian Journalism One of the fears that inhabit our society nowadays is the emergence of Artificial Intelligence and the increasing automation of professions and workplaces. Some researchers predict that millions of jobs will be taken over by robots over the next few years, which increases the sense of uncertainty on how we can adapt and survive in this new reality. In journalism, this fear emerged some years ago when many newsrooms announced they were developing systems using Artificial Intelligence to automate tasks in news production. As journalists, our first thought was that this new technology would deepen a crisis that started with the emergence of new media, a problem that traditional news companies are still working on, trying to find the right business plan and financial balance in this new digital environment.

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We were driven to research this subject in an attempt to understand how we would adapt as reporters and survive through this new reality.To keep our jobs, we wondered how this technology works and so we encountered software programs based on Natural Language Generation (NLG) being used to publish automated stories about finance, sports, elections, crimes and earthquakes. Those systems were adopted by outlets such as Forbes, The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, The Washington Post, The Southern Metropolis Daily, Deutsche Welle, MittMedia, among others. Often they worked in partnership with startups like Narrative Science, Automated Insights, Syllabs and AX Semantics. On one side, those automated stories were in the headlines, but on the other they were still invisible to readers. Investigating those automated stories from 2013 to 2018, we found they were simple texts following a predetermined structure. They could also be described as several repetitive narratives driven by data. Instead of robot reporters sitting side by side with human journalists, this innovation was closer to software processing a great amount of data and producing simple stories using great computers. This is nothing really new if we think that computers and software have been part of newsrooms for decades. In Brazil, the introduction of robots in journalism practices took another path compared to the most popular international experiences. Instead of using NLG software to publish automated stories, three case studies reveal an inclination toward using Artificial Intelligence as a tool to assist watchdog journalists concerned with transparency and accountability. Probably those efforts were influenced by the political crisis and the recent corruption scandals triggered by Operation Car Wash. An interesting characteristic of those three case studies described below is that all of them have in common the use of social media networks –​ Twitter and Facebook –​as a communication channel for raw data and processed information. The first robot we look at is called “Rosie” in a tribute to the robot maid on the 1960s futuristic animated show The Jetsons. It was developed by a group of journalists and programmers in a crowdsourcing project called “Operação Serenata de Amor” (serenata.ai). The aim of this operation is to monitor the expenses incurred by Brazilian federal deputies to detect suspicious payments funded with public money. For example, on Twitter, when @RosieDaSerenata detects a suspicious payment, it publishes a tweet sharing the information and asking for help to verify if it is actually illegal (Cabral 2017). The project started in 2017 and in a year 134 federal deputies canceled meal refunds where issues were detected, which corresponded to R$ 50.569,00 (around US$ 12,000). This amount can be seen as minor compared to other corruption operations, but this project supports a bottoms-​up approach. And it has a larger impact, considering that big scandals are done by people who started with small, sometimes not even illegal but unethical, actions (Musskopf 2018). The second robot is “Rui Barbot”, created by the website Jota (www.jota.info) and focused on legal news and transparency.The aim of this robot is to monitor the cases judged by the Brazilian Supreme Court and it publishes an alert on twitter

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@ruibarbot for each case that is not updated for one year or more. A  partner of Jota, Felipe Recondo, highlights that unlike the press that covers processes in judgment, the robot Rui draws attention to the inertia of the Supreme Court, where “stopped processes are infinitely more numerous than completed cases”, and the ministers use this as a power of social control (Recondo 2018). The third robot is called “Fátima”  –​a Portuguese abbreviation of “Fact Machine” –​developed by the website “Aos Fatos” (aosfatos.org) in partnership with Facebook’s Journalism Project. Released in the middle of the Brazilian presidential elections, the aim of “Fátima”‘ is to fight against misinformation in social media, acting on two different platforms. In Facebook Messenger, when a user is not sure about the veracity of a story, she or he can send the link to “Fátima”‘ at AosFatos’ page, and the robot will help them check it using an algorithm based on the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) guidelines. On Twitter, @ fatimabot monitors the feed every 15 minutes, trying to detect any tweet sharing a mistrusted link. If it identifies any suspected post, it sends a message saying that “this link you shared is fake. Help us spread the right information here:”‘ and then a link with the correct information is attached. (Hafften 2018). Unlike the international experiences that focused on the use of NLG software to produce automated news, what we perceive in this ongoing research about robots in Brazilian journalism is a peculiar use of Artificial Intelligence as an investigation tool that could support the work done by journalists. Therefore, Automated Journalism, in our point of view, is the result of a complex sociotechnical and hybrid network that does not eliminate reporters. It is created by a web of human and non-​human actors, including journalists, entrepreneurs, programmers, data analysts, computers, software, algorithms, texts, databases, among others. We claim that a new ecosystem has been built, where journalists are increasingly working with other professionals, such as engineers, programmers and data analysts. Instead of looking at robots as a threat that could replace many jobs in the future, we prefer to consider Artificial Intelligence as a technology available to help humans process large amounts of data. In an attempt to deconstruct this pessimistic and technocentric vision, we look at those technical objects as a reflection of humans embedded in our daily lives as technical objects mediating our actions. In this scenario, transparency, ethics and accountability are important elements that should guide the discussions about the use of Artificial Intelligence in newsrooms, considering not just the social impacts of the introduction of robots in the human workforce, but also highlighting how algorithms can be used to amplify and improve press coverage in an age of Big Data.

Facebook and the Brazilian Election: Would it be ‘left-​checking’? Looking at news media from another perspective, we saw in Brazil in the past ten years the increasing power of social media networks as platforms being used to spread content and stories.The changes in the way readers consume news became

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a really powerful method of manipulating audiences, as we noticed in Trump’s 2016 election in the USA. Post-​truth and Fake News have become common words since then, in a discussion about how algorithms can interfere politically and how actions taken by platforms such as Facebook could be a threat to democracy. In the Brazilian presidential elections in 2018, Facebook launched initiatives to “protect the platform from abuses” (Harbath 2018) by stopping anyone trying to use its “tools to undermine democracy” (Zuckerberg 2017). However, what we observed was a controversy emerging from those actions, specifically after the announcement of a partnership between Facebook and a fact-​checking third party.This initiative was created to “guarantee the integrity of elections” (Harbath 2018), preventing possible outside interventions in the Brazilian democratic process. However, it was considered as censorship by “far-​r ight” political groups and activists (Hermida 2018), and also as a biased intervention in favor of a leftist political view. Facebook’s actions in Brazil were part of an ongoing effort of the platform after the controversy involving manipulation and dissemination of untruthful content that influenced the USA presidential elections in 2016. According to the company, “Facebook is addressing false news using both technology and human review to remove fake accounts, promote news literacy and disrupt the financial incentives of spammers” (Facebook 2018a). In Brazil, with a visible polarized election, the risk of content manipulation with political purposes has been widely discussed (Avedaño and Betim 2018). The platform followed this concern and replied by claiming that “Brazilian elections were a priority” and that it would launch initiatives developed “specifically for Brazil in preparation for the October elections” (Harbath 2018). In 2018 we identified three major milestones in this Facebook controversy. First, the announcement of a fact-​checking third party program with Brazilian agencies (Facebook 2018b). In this agreement, partners such as “Lupa” and “Aos Fatos” had “access to the news reported as being false by Facebook community to rate their accuracy” (ibid). Since then posts that were not based on ‘facts’ would have their distribution reduced and their ability to be monetized removed. Also, users would be notified when trying to share that content. Pages that insisted on sharing them would have their reach demoted and could lose the possibility of using ads to build an audience. In May 2018, political groups mainly linked to Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) started a campaign against this initiative declaring that those agencies and their employees were “leftists” and asked users to “react” to this censorship (Abraji 2018). They also shared journalists’ personal accounts and information on their families, exposing their political positions, classifying them as “left militants” (ibid) and questioning their ability to separate personal opinion from the journalistic process of content selection. The second milestone was Facebook’s removal of 196 pages and 87 accounts, later identified as related to coordinators of MBL (MBLivre 2018). According to

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Facebook, those pages and accounts violated its authenticity policies and were “part of a coordinated network concealed by the use of fake accounts” (Gleicher 2018). In order to generate division and spread misinformation they hid the nature and origin of their content from users. A third moment of the controversy was the apparently automatic removal of links with images of the far-​r ight candidate Jair Bolsonaro (MBLivre 2018). Posts with news’ links about his interview at TV Cultura were excluded and blocked, and users received an automatic message saying that each post “looks like spam and does not follow our Community Standards” (MBLivre 2018). This situation reinforced the argument that the platform could have “an algorithm censoring the support for certain candidates, deleting posts and blocking accounts automatically” (Bolsonaro 2018). In the United States, since the launch of the program in 2016, several news media outlets have questioned the effectiveness of Facebook’s initiative and the actual decrease (if any) of pages’ reach when sharing this type of content (Levin 2017). However in Brazil the repercussions were different. The initiatives were targeted by far-​r ight political activist groups as an “attack on freedom of expression” (Hermida 2018) and as censorship instigated by the left. Inspired by Introna (2016) and Kitchin (2017), we see in this controversy a diversity of actions, reactions and repercussions triggered by algorithms. We perceive actors questioning both journalistic and platform criteria, using journalist’s subjectivity and Facebook’s political interests as impediments of objective actions. Moreover, in our point of view, when Facebook decided to delete content that did not necessarily refer to spam, it made clear that a lot of those actions were automatically done by algorithms, raising questions about the ‘neutrality’ of these choices. As journalists interested in understanding how our profession is shaped by digital media, we believe that Facebook’s controversy in the Brazilian Presidential election indicates a network full of uncertainties and translations held by heterogeneous actors and mediated by algorithms. We recognize a rhetorical effort of Facebook that strategically approaches journalistic institutions and appropriates some journalistic practices trying to act against misinformation. However, when we see this initiative being heavily criticized by Brazil’s far-​r ight political activists, we would like to emphasize that technologies and algorithms are part of a heterogeneous network with many other social, political and cultural aspects.

Final Considerations Despite all the inequalities that we see in Brazil, especially in the way technology is (or was) introduced and consumed by Brazilians, we see in those journalistic examples many similarities with the discussions held in developed countries. We could think that those two subjects –​robot reporters and Facebook’s controversial policies –​arise symmetrically in different parts of the world, approximating the

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agenda setting of different countries. However, when we look deeper into those two case studies, we note particularities that demonstrate how algorithms are shaped by political, social and cultural issues. These two examples help us think about the increasing mediation of algorithms in our lives, and how this modifies our relationships. As journalists and researchers, we argue that actions in a cyborg environment are the result of a network of human and non-​human actors, in a society full of hybrids that build a plural and complex world that cannot be simplified and framed into dichotomies. Although they are often considered only mathematical formulas or codified procedures that provide a desired result from a given data input, we must keep in mind that algorithms are part of heterogeneous sociotechnical networks and have embedded in their actions choices and values of those who programmed them and also the culture of the company to which they belong. We cannot forget that behind any autonomous technology there are many humans working in its development, deployment, application and maintenance. Those humans are the ones who have the power to decide whether this technology will be used for good or bad, which raises several other ethical questions about technology development and its bias. Thus, we must be aware that algorithms not only act politically but also influence other actors within their network with values and actions. We argue that in order to study these entities, one must take into account the political, economic, and social issues behind the “most relevant” or “most important” choices of results. Algorithms are always embedded in sociotechnical networks composed of several actors that act as agents and influence each other as they interact. In this way, we believe that the best way to study them would be to map the actors that are part of this network and, following the traces left by them, try to understand the various relations of forces and power. Recently, the world is going through many transformations due to our global digital web and more interconnected environment which reverberates in the way people work and live. We saw in the past ten years an oil-​based economy being overcome by technology companies in a context where big data is now the most valuable asset in the world. In this essay, we tried to exemplify, in a Brazilian perspective, that those changes do not occur equally and in the same pace in different parts of the world. Therefore, as cyborg citizens, we must assume and point out these asymmetries to understand deeply how technology modifies us, our societies and our lives.

References Abraji, Diretoria da. (2018, May 16). Grupos promovem ataques virtuais a agências de checagem de fatos. Abraji. Retrieved from:  http://​abraji.org.br/​noticias/​grupospromovem-​ataques-​virtuais-​a-​agencias-​de-​checagem-​de-​fatos.

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Aos Fatos. (2018, October, 1). Conheça a robô checadora do Aos Fatos no Facebook. Aos Fatos. Retrieved from: https://​aosfatos.org/​noticias/​conheca-​robo-​checadora-​do-​aos-​ fatos-​no-​facebook/​. Avedaño, T., and Betim, F. (2018, February 11). ‘Fake News’:  a guerra informativa que já contamina as eleições no Brasil. El País. Retrieved from: https://​brasil.elpais.com/​ brasil/​2018/​02/​09/​politica/​1518209427_​170599.html. Bolsonaro, E. (2018, May 15). Censurar as Fake News: a guilhotina esquerdista do século XXI. Jornal Hora Extra. Retrieved from https://​jornalhoraextra.com.br/​coluna/​ censurar-​as-​fake-​news-​a-​guilhotina-​esquerdista-​do-​seculo-​xxi/​. Braga, L. (2019, March 25). Banda larga no Brasil tem velocidade média de 24,62 Mb/​s, diz Anatel. Tecnoblog. Retrieved from:  https://​tecnoblog.net/​283425/​banda-largano-​brasil-​tem-​velocidade-​media-​de-​2462-​mb-​s-​diz-​anatel/​ Cabral, F. (2017,April 5). Serenata de amor: Para não ser um amor de verão. Medium. Retrieved from: https://​medium.com/​data-​science-​brigade/​serenata-​de-​amor-​para-​não-serum-amor-​de-​verão-​7422c9e10fa5 Carlson, M. (2014). The Robotic Reporter. Digital Journalism. DOI:  10.1080/​ 21670811.2014.976412 D’Andréa, C., and Dalben, S. (2017). Redes Sociotécnicas e Controvérsias na redação de notícias por robôs. Contemporânea –​Revista de Comunicação e Cultura, 15(1), 118–​140. Facebook. (2018a). How is Facebook addressing false news through third-​ party fact-​checkers? Help Center. Retrieved from:  https://​www.facebook.com/​help/​ 1952307158131536?helpref=faq_​content. Facebook. (2018b, May 10). Facebook lança produto de verificação de notícias no Brasil em parceria com Aos Fatos e Agência Lupa. Newsroom. Retrieved from:  https://​ br.newsroom.fb.com/​news/​2018/​05/​f acebook-​lanca-​produto-​de-​verificacao-​de-​ noticias-​no-​brasil-​em-​parceria-​com-​aos-​fatos-​e-​agencia-​lupa/​. Gleicher, N. (2018, July 25). Garantindo um ambiente autêntico e seguro. Newsroom. Retrieved from:  https://​br.newsroom.fb.com/​news/​2018/​07/​garantindo-​um-​ ambiente-autentico-e-​seguro/​. Graeffe, A. (2016). Guide to Automated Journalism. Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Janeiro. Retrieved from:  http://​towcenter.org/​research/​guide-​to-​automated-​ journalism/​. Hafften, M. (2018, October 7). Robô Fátima dissemina informações verificadas no Brasil. IJNet. Retrieved from: https://​ijnet.org/​pt-​br/​story/​robô-​f átima-disseminainformações-​verificadas-​no-​brasil. Haraway, D. (1990). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. Feminism/​postmodernism, 190–​233. Harbath, K. (2018, July 24). Protegendo as eleições no Brasil. Newsroom. Retrieved from: https://​br.newsroom.fb.com/​news/​2018/​07/​protegendo-​as-​eleicoes-​no-​brasil. Hermida, X. (2018, May 19). Grupos direitistas difundem ‘fake news’ para criticar combate do Facebook às ‘fake news’. El País. Retrieved from: https://​brasil.elpais.com/​brasil/​ 2018/​05/​18/​actualidad/​1526600912_​648575.html. Introna, L. D. (2016). Algorithms, governance, and governmentality:  On governing academic writing. Science,Technology, & Human Values, 41(1), 17–​49. Kitchin, R. (2017). Thinking critically about and researching algorithms. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 14–​29. Latour, B. (1994). On technical mediation. Common Knowledge, 3(2),  29–​64.

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Levin, S. (2017, May 16). Facebook promised to tackle fake news. But the evidence shows it’s not working. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://​www.theguardian.com/​technology/​2017/​may/​16/​facebook-​fake-​news-​tools-​not-​working?CMP=share_​btn_​tw. Mblivre. (2018, July 31). Post. Twitter. Retrieved from:  https://​twitter.com/​MBLivre/​ status/​1024373474750595072. Movimento brasil livre (2018, July 25). Photo. Facebook. Retrieved from:  https://​www. facebook.com/​mblivre/​photos/​a.204296283027856.1073741829.204223673035117/​ 1036076429849833. Musskopf, I. (2018, February 27). O impacto do controle social na Câmara dos Deputados. Medium. Retrieved from:  https://​medium.com/​serenata/​o-​impacto-docontrole-​social-​na-​câmara-​dos-​deputados-​c2b2a34db09e. Recondo, F. (2018, April 24). Jota lança robô Rui para monitorar tempo que STF leva para julgar processos. Jota. Retrieved from:  https://​www.jota.info/​dados/​rui/​ prazer-​rui-​barbot-​24042018. Venturini, T. (2010). Diving in magma: how to explore controversies with actor-​network theory. Public Understanding of Science, 19(3), 258–​273. Winner, L. (1978). Autonomous Technology:  Technics-​ out-​ of-​ control as a Theme in Political Thought. Mit Press. Zuckerberg, M. (2017, September 21). Post. Facebook. Retrieved from:  https://​www. facebook.com/​zuck/​posts/​10104052907253171.

About the Authors Silvia DalBen is a PhD candidate at the Moody College of Communication of the University of Texas at Austin. She researches controversies and uncertainties in automated journalism. She has a Master’s degree in Communication from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where she also got her bachelor’s in Journalism through an Exchange Program at the University of Nottingham, UK. Email: [email protected]. Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno has a PhD and a Master’s in Communication from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Academic researcher and professor, she is also a journalist, with a BA in Journalism from the same university.As a researcher, she is interested in discussing platforms, algorithms and technologies and their interfaces with communication and journalism, focusing on the social and ethical influences of their agencies. In her PhD dissertation she discussed the platformization of journalism by Facebook between 2014–​2019. Work:  amandachevtchoukjurno.academia.edu. Email:  amandajurno@gmail. com.

28 SOCIAL CHALLENGES The Serious Game of Digitalization Ángel Gordo

With the arrival of digitalization, now accompanied by gamification and the existence of virtual reputations, video games have become a sign of progress for some and the precursor of inequalities for others. Aside from these differences, what is unquestionable is the centrality of digitalization in education (e-​learning, digital literacy, etc.), work (free work, digital competence) and the economy (start-​ups, the sharing economy, block-​chains), not to mention the actual media (TDT, new media, transmedia). This is the main scenario in which we propose to discuss a little recognized practice: viral challenges. Far from being something meaningless among typical immature adolescents, “viral challenges” can be understood as serious games, as initiation rituals within the environments and logics of augmented reality. In concrete, we propose to examine them as possible theatricalizations and lessons for a virally enhanced body, which in turn permits us to connect them to certain posthuman theses regarding the importance of the body per se (versus the brand or virtual reputation).

Found Imaginaries For much of the media at the end of the 1990s, video games were synonymous with deviancy, or even crime and pathology. These prejudices were fed by sensationalism in the media. This was the case in Spain of the well-​known “Katana killer”, a 16 year old who killed his parents and sister in April 2000, using a Japanese sword or “katana” in the act. According to newspapers at the time, the teen killer was an assiduous player of role-​playing and violent video games. Other explanations given to understand this crime that shook Spanish society were martial arts, esoteric tendencies connected to Satanism, the occult

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sciences, and chat rooms, where this young man apparently fantasized about committing this violent act. Ultimately, the crime further fueled negative ideas about video games. At that time, video game players –​future gamers –​, especially those who played role-​playing games, were often considered to have anti-​social characteristics, and to exhibit autistic and even psychopathic behaviors; such judgments were often made by a sector of the public and seconded by professionals in psychiatry and education. At the same time, we also began to hear about the hikikomoris, young Japanese who confined themselves to their bedrooms always connected to their digital devices, with barely any social contact outside of their screens. Some of these young people, according to the media, devised collective suicides with no apparent motives. Whether we enshrine their supposed capacity to develop intuitively with technological advances, or sanction the dehumanization associated with the digital, youth becomes a risk in itself but also a path or opportunity toward understanding the changes that digitalization brings with it. The eruption of viral challenges in such a scenario is particularly illuminating.

Viral Challenges: Types and Variations Viral challenges are brief actions videoed and placed on generalist social networks, principally YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and more recently Tik Tok, which through “tell me if you like it” and “see if you dare” seek recognition and popularity for their participants. In the beginning these were mainly amusing, even resulting in a certain closeness and complicity among their participants. This was the case for the #mannequinchallenge, one of the most popular challenges in recent years, which consisted in recording a video with a lot of participants in frozen positions, like mannequins. However, these types of challenges inspired variations that did not lack for certain risk, such as the #BirdBoxChallenge, which consisted in moving about on the street with one’s eyes covered. Following these initial “amusing” types of challenges, in just a few years we have seen their rapid diversification, with actions ranging from solidarity based challenges (#icebucketchallenge) to those that challenged traditional views of gender through the exchange of clothes (#clothesswapchallenge), or those that consisted in breaking expensive cosmetics as an act of protest, to breaking the makeup kit of a girlfriend or sister.... (#makeupbreakup) or putting on makeup to look like a Bratz doll (#BratzChallenge). For its part the #A4waistchallenge consisted in managing to hide one’s waist behind the width of a piece of paper; the #collarbonechallenge was to see who could place more coins (up to 80) on their collarbone, the aim being to showcase the protruding bone.The #bellybuttonchallenge is another of the viral challenges that promoted the extreme thinness of women. It consisted in touching your belly button with your hand but by passing your hand behind your back and around your waist.

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Aside from these challenges that promote anorexia among adolescent girls, the majority originating in China, one of the first challenges revealing an unhealthy manner of regarding physical appearance was the #KylieJennerChallenge. Young people, primarily women, published photos imitating the plump lips of the youngest Kardashian. The challenge consisted in trying to increase the size of one’s lips by using suction through a glass or other receptacle. Breaking the blood vessels that lead to the swelling of the lips can produce considerable injury. Other challenges have had to do with ingesting noxious substances. This is the case of the #cinnamonchallenge, also known as “dragon’s breath”. Irritations of the throat and the lung problems that it could cause did not stop young people from doing the challenge, which consisted in eating a spoonful of powdered cinnamon without drinking anything, often resulting in the challengers violently spitting out the cinnamon or expelling it through their noses. Another of the more famous challenges was the #tidepodchallenge, which consisted in swallowing capsules of laundry detergent. Another, the #FlamingCactusChallenge, consisted in lighting a cactus on fire and then eating it in the shortest time possible. The #ShellOnChallenge has been very popular in recent months and consists in eating bananas without peeling them, in eating eggs without cooking them and eating plastic or cardboard packaging. Some challenges have variations; this is the case of the #condomchallenge. The first variant consists in dropping a condom filled with water on someone’s head. If it does not break, the person’s head remains trapped within the water-​filled condom. It is similar to placing a plastic bag over one’s head and asphyxiating oneself. The other variant consists in introducing a condom into the nose and extracting it out of the mouth. Another example of the dynamism and versatility of viral challenges can be found in the #dontjudgemechallenge. In the beginning the intent was to fight against making fun of young people who, for example, wear glasses or have acne or unwanted facial hair, although it did not take long to turn into the reverse: a manner of making fun of people for their physical appearance. The challenge begins showing “ugly” individuals, with their imperfections, and then they are shown beautiful, with no imperfections. In opposition, new parody versions appeared. Some consisted in initially appearing “ugly” but not changing throughout the video. In other cases the person appeared even uglier based on social stereotypes. Another version of the #dontjudgemechallenge is the #BeautyInAllChallenge. This consists in showing images that celebrate the parts of challengers’ bodies that others can criticize. In addition to looking for virality, a certain degree of danger is increasingly involved in the challenges. One of the most viral challenges in 2019 was to dance to a song by the singer Drake in the #InMyFeelingsChallenge. We have watched celebrities and anonymous people dance to this song with the peculiarity of doing it while getting out of a car in motion. Other examples of challenges associated with movement are the #roundaboutofdeath, which consists in getting on a playground “round about” and being spun around on it using the force of

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the rear wheel of a motorbike, or the #trainsurfing challenge, the objective which is to be filmed traveling on the roof of a train, holding onto its side or underneath. The growing risk of many of these challenges has led to the deaths of young people, for example, in attempting to leap into a pool from a balcony (#balconing) or in insisting on taking selfies in impossible places (#extremeselfie). Other challenges have incited participants to self-​injure or even commit suicide. The #eraserchallenge consists in reciting the alphabet while rubbing an arm or a leg with an eraser until causing an injury; the “winner” is the one with the largest injury. The #BlueWhaleChallenge goes further. It consists in completing a series of 50 tasks; after each one is completed the challenger must make a cut on his/​ her arm, ultimately drawing a whale on the arm. The last step is suicide (this challenge has its critical antidote or “meta-​challenge” in the #BallenaRosada). The #BlueWhaleChallenge is one of these viral games that has caused great concern and social alarm, along with another called the #MomoChallenge. In the latter, participants include a telephone number from Japan in their agendas, after which they begin to receive calls from Momo on WhatsApp, a strange figure who incites them to perform dangerous tasks under the threat of being cursed if they refuse. The debate continues today over whether this is a hoax/​fake news, or a viral phenomenon based on reality.

What Moves Us to Do These Things? Some experts think that social challenges have such wide acceptance among adolescents because puberty is a stage in which they seek sensations of “feeling good”. Others suggest that adolescents carry out these challenges looking for emotion and attention. Receiving “likes” and commenting on social networks amplifies the sensation of “feeling good”. In addition to seeking constant stimulation and recognition, other experts point out that the immature brains of adolescents are not capable of realistically perceiving risk or the possibility of placing one’s life in danger. Viral challenges are not limited to the world of the more or less immature, selfish, hedonistic and reckless adolescent brain. Their mobilizing abilities grant prestige and distinction to those who carry them out, to the point that they have become part of some electoral campaigns. Who does not remember Hillary Clinton’s participation in the #mannequinchallenge in the middle of the campaign against Trump? In this sense, some social challenges, such as the #icebucketchallenge, have helped companies promote their brands.This challenge consisted in pouring a bucket of ice water over someone’s head to imitate the sensation of the considerable lowering of body temperature provoked by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative illness of the central nervous system. Made viral by the ALS Association in the summer of 2014 to raise consciousness and money for ALS research, it was endorsed and carried out by all types of famous people and large firms. Samsung and Apple, for example, joined this challenge to support the cause

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while testing the resistance of their smartphones to water and the low temperature. Donald Trump also took advantage of his participation to gain in popularity while promoting his own mineral water company. Despite the bad press and the social alarm they raise, viral challenges have become a part of new advertising and promotion strategies. How do we explain this trend? Can we predict a similar trajectory for this phenomenon to that followed by video games:  initial demonization to subsequent recognition as a strategy and resource in a range of different spheres and practices? In the midst of these “social imaginaries” only the dehumanizing side of this phenomenon has been shown, ignoring another more positive reading we can make of these viral challenges. We are of the opinion that as serious games or initiation rituals, social challenges have to be seen as forms of social distinction different from those analyzed in the case of video games (gamification and ego boost) and virtual reality (and the old cyberspace).

Serious Games Despite the public alarm that video games raised in recent decades, they have now become a legitimate cultural object. In fact, they have inspired strategies and concepts that have significant influence in education, politics and the economy, not to mention marketing, such as gamification and, in particular, the notion of serious games. Serious games can be pre-​digital or digital and include not only the typical fun of role-​playing games, but also more recently, “game-​based learning”. The latter helps to put knowledge acquired in simulated environments into practice, in this way reinforcing what has been learned. Serious games are regularly used by management and in team training in business environments. Some examples of games used in organizational contexts are Promises Promises, Leadout, Income Outcome, TransAction and Council of the Marble Star. There are also a wide range of digital educational games used in the classroom, for example, for learning languages (Vocabicar), and in health care, to help individuals with dementia (Sea Hero Quest). In addition to their possible added value, because the act of playing is pleasurable, serious games, as with the majority of games, facilitate new accomplishments without generating much frustration when we fail. Games in general –​whether pre-​digital or digital, serious or learning based –​ and social challenges have another common trait. Both simulate and minimize the perception of risk. How? The script of the challenge, as with the rules of the game, assumes a certain level of simulation, which gains in strength and meaning in the social setting in which it takes place. In addition, the presence of friends, the gang, our reference group (or the potential network audience) challenges and encourages us to play, predisposing us to participate and also attenuating the perception of the risk that may be involved.

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Who has not become emboldened when carrying out a prank or mischief in the company of their friends, or has not heard of young people who jump off of high points into the river, or that play dangerous games crossing traffic, or play “chicken” when driving, risking a head-​on collision? It is possible that the attenuation of risk in the context of game playing is the result of a process of group expectation or suggestion that demands, and facilitates, an act of individual “sacrifice” or tribute that reminds us of our deeply social nature, which we are ultimately on occasion indebted to. Are viral challenges the new digital rituals? What are their main functions in the current context of digital socialization?

Between Digital Games and Distinctions We have seen viral challenges can be more or less pleasurable practices, in which the perception of the risk involved may be minimized. All of them follow the basic script that characterizes the uniqueness of each challenge and all participants aspire to at least two types of recognition. There is the immediate recognition of the here and now where it happens; however, the most desired effect is recognition by a potential and unknown audience through likes, comments and dissemination. Now we all have skills in this custom of evaluating and scoring everything, from the education we receive to all types of services, and even social exchanges, so well parodied in the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”. Viral challenges have helped to spread and propagate the new currency of digital reputation in a light-​ hearted, game-​like manner. In this way we have learned the new logics of social distinction that gamification and the logics of virtual reputation, as the forerunner of digitalization processes, bring with them. Another possible function of viral challenges, in addition to reminding us of our social condition and obligations, lies in helping to familiarize us in a carefree manner with “augmented reality”, as a new space that emerges in the shift between the actual and the virtual, that goes from one to the other, superimposing itself. Augmented reality (AR), a term coined by Tom Caudell in 1992, permits the inclusion in real time of virtual elements in the actual physical environment. The game Pokemon Go was, by far, the first major staging of augmented reality. AR GPS Compass Map 3D, Find Your Car with AR and the popular Star Walk are some of the most well-​known mobile applications that combine the real with the virtual. Being in contact, early socialization in this notion of augmented reality, appears as a necessary condition for adapting not only to the new logics of distinction, but also to new conceptions and visions of the body in the digital era, and to its greater or lesser compatibility with new digital orders and governments. To understand these associations it is crucial to think of viral challenges as rituals of passage or initiation in environments and processes of digital socialization. Finally,

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along these tentative lines, we want to suggest some ideas that we would like to continue exploring.

Rituals and Dis/​Continual Convergences As we have noted, some viral challenges can be considered serious games for their similarities with the initiation rituals typical of street gangs, in certain universities and student residencies (where “hazing” rituals often take place), in sports teams and in the military. Their spectacularization helps to tame any pain, make it more bearable, as if it were an anesthesia charged with social recognition in this process of, so to speak, stretching or testing the body in a context of submitting to the group, which, in turn, helps us to know how far we are willing to go on behalf of the group. This social ingredient, which acts as an anesthesia that helps the individual to challenge bodily limits, was not ignored by transhuman or posthuman movements. The exploration of bodily limits, the extent to which we are able to tame them, this crafting of the body, was in pursuit of a new improved evolutionary state according to the main theses of transhumanism, or, in terms of the inspiration of the posthuman movement, in favor of practicing other perceptions and knowledges from which we can look differently at the weight of and, therefore, resist current body-​oriented regulations. One of the first actions of Stelarc, the “prophet” of posthumanism, body-​artist of the cybernetic era, was body suspensions. Practiced beginning at the end of the 1980s, these suspensions used skin piercings and through pulleys lifted Stelarc’s body on different stages, where he carried out different activities while remaining suspended. This type of suspension can be understood as a form of training of the individual body so that it is prepared to defend the social body. Participants suffer pain, but they acquire new skills or they train and improve those they already have. From this perspective, we can understand that viral challenges, in addition to reminding us of the social nature of our bodies and behaviors, permit us to bear pain and repulsion (for example, ingesting noxious substances, spilling boiling water on our body or penetrating certain of its cavities). These rituals avidly done in search of virality, capable of holding unsuspected, even fatal risks, and without any apparent meaning beyond their completion, do something more as well. And they do it doubly so. Viral challenges act as initiation rituals in new digital environments and spaces. In other words, if we are now socialized in the logics of distinction, specific of gamification and the now in vogue virtual reputation, now is the time to take a further step. Now is the time to familiarize the body to these new spaces and make these transactions more liquid and mobile. Thus, from this perspective, viral challenges can be understood as posthumanist body-​performances on a large scale; they form and socialize the individual body in new environments halfway between the real and

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the augmented. To do this requires prior initiation and adaptation to these spaces through play, which makes the confusion associated with new ways of perceiving and perceiving ourselves in these augmented realities more bearable. In this sense, viral challenges, with youth again as transmission belts, as socializing vehicles for new orders and forms of governing and regulation, permit us to familiarize ourselves with new environments of augmented realities and social recognition, in addition to beginning to explore new limits of the body, its possible adaptations and transfigurations to these spaces and the figurative rules that accompany them.

Acknowledgments To my students in the Anthropological and Sociological Basis of Behavior course (Psychology degree program) and the Sociological Analysis of Texts and Discourses course (Sociology degree program), particularly Miguel Durán, with whom I  worked and shared concerns and observations about social challenges during the 2018–​2019 academic year. My thanks to Sara Jorquera for reading this text and providing sense, as always, and to Paz Sastre, to whom I am indebted for her many and apt suggestions. And to the editors of this volume, friends and vital intellectual references –​thanks.

About the Author Ángel Gordo López: I am the editor of  Teknokultura  and  member of Cibersomosaguas Research Group  and of the  Discourse Unit. Father of Zadu, 9  years old, and Atis, 2  years old. I am interested in the relations between social change and technology with a specific interest in youth and digital media, in particular in the new forms of socialization under the aegis of digitalization. The more I dive into technology stuff the more interests I develop for alternative ways of food production and consumption, and sustainability issues in general. In this sense I am suspicious of some cyborg images and epistemologies, mostly when they come from the wealthy ultraliberal parts of the planet. I believe that these images and epistemologies need to be grounded in everyday settings and practices beyond any sort of emerging transhuman narcissism or self-​referential post-​evolutionary logics. Aside from my worries and “in/​tolerances”, my kids (and children and youth in general) are helping me to understand digitalization’s mundane “lived” side, while updating and challenging what I take for granted. That’s the reason my contribution to this collection analyzes viral challenges, something apparently mundane, not very chic or techie. However, unlike other kinds of games, such as alternatives reality games, social challenges are part of an ongoing, often veiled, redefinition of social relations and socialization. We are already witnessing the time when the notion of game, in developmental and social senses, has been replaced and resignified by the very ideologically loaded notion of “viral/​social challenge”. Let’s play and see.

29 DISC/​ERNING THE CRISIS A Mundane Cyborg Throws Hope to the Wind Steven Mentor

1. I’m standing at the top of the hill near my house. My city is dark, though it isn’t night yet. The Marina district is on fire. I can see the smoke from here, a few miles away. The machines, all of them, all around me, are silent, motionless; at least I don’t remember anything moving. The quiet is deafening. 2. I’m a cyborg, and I write about cyborgs. I think a lot about body modification, about complex daisy chains of organic living things and cybernetic machines, about what cyborgs eat and how using tools shape the tool users. At this red-​hot moment (in the past, but why doesn’t it stay past?) I  am holding a tool, standing alone looking out at the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (in the aftershock of aftershocks and no news and a city lying stunned before me it wasn’t called anything yet) at the top of the Castro district in San pray-​to-​him-​or-​someone Francisco. 3. My tool is not a cell phone. My tool is not a badass chainsaw (for trees, not humans) or a motorbike (for getting around the downed stuff in the roads) or a million other tools for facing the disaster below. My tool is a 175-​g ram Discraft Ultrastar, a powerful, highly tuned piece of plastic. 4. I am holding this tool with my own hand (born date 1954), not a prosthetic hand. “Prosthetic hands provide functionality, mobility, and confidence to amputees. With these devices, amputees can overcome trauma and lead rich, full lives.” Or so says “Scheck and Siress Prothetics, Orthotics” on their home page. Not a prosthetic hand, but a tool that acts as a prosthetic. I am not standing in front of a post-​apocalyptic scene with a grubby pink cased myoelectric hand that I control with nerves linked to electrical impulses, like in that William Gibson novel. Nor does my arm end in something other than a hand: a hook, a machine gun. We know how that story goes: Darth Vader

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and his son Luke, memories of monstrous violence, bodies partly non-​or in-​ or de-​human. I’m not not quite human. And yet… 5. Australian feminist science theorist Margaret Morse once asked “What Do Cyborgs Eat?” She answered at length, then encapsulated her answer in one word:  information. Cyborgs eat apples and oranges, cyborgs eat data, eat information, use smart phones and binoculars (we had no tools at hand to see how big the fire was, or whether the Bay Bridge had collapsed, or what fresh hells were opening as we watched, more or less blindly, the unconscious city) to digest and use (and excrete, of course). When the network goes down, cyborgs, parts of them, starve; when the chain of technologies and their supporting networks of humans and machines is interrupted, cyborgs become suddenly quite vulnerable. Ask one during a disaster. 6 . We eat data, and some of Morse’s analogies work: do we eat nourishing data? Is fast data bad for you? Can you overeat data, and does this affect your ability to digest? Junk food data, slow food data, eight course meal data and tl/​dr data (too long, didn’t read). How does our data diet modify us, as data pours into our senses and minds via our ubiquitous communication devices, our peripherals, our modifications? Looking back, I realize how insanely modified I’ve become, and how my 1989 self was living in a quaint old world of data, as far in some ways from today as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake felt then, with its big box camera black and white photos of collapsed buildings and men in ancient looking hats. Of course at the same time in Switzerland Tim Berners-​Lee was, as they breathlessly write, inventing the World Wide Web. Royalty free! Except for the digital royalty it would engender, of course. Nintendo came out with the original data junk food machine, Gameboy. Oh and GPS began, too. The first of the 24 satellites went up that year, giving us (since 1993) the same good surveillance ability that the original sponsors, first strike missiles in submarines, enjoy to this day. 7. But this was then. Someone nearby had a battery-​powered television (hey, portable device circa 1989!). Then I got a phone call, as the earthquake’s first shock receded, from my brother in Massachusetts, who was watching the World Series game in play in San Francisco when the earthquake struck. 3,000 miles (5,000 km) away, he saw the earthquake happen on screen, in real time. He called me and somehow got through, and said “Are you OK? There’s an earthquake…the Bay Bridge has collapsed.”Then the phone went dead. The battery TV, barely out of sight of the Bay Bridge, did not know whether the Bridge had or had not fallen, for a long time. If human senses can be fooled, cyborg senses can be fooled as well. We consumed the available information and saw the entire bridge in our minds under water; later we ate more and different information, saw “the sandwich of death” highway overpass in nearby Oakland with cars flattened, but we also saw the heroic modernist structure of the Golden Gate, SF’s “other” bridge, standing fast. We did not see what we could not see with our own eyes, and we could not

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see what was inexpressible on television and radio: the extraordinary courage and resilience of ordinary people facing an extraordinary catastrophe. The doctor who sawed a dead body in half to save a child crushed by an overpass; my friend David who covered an elderly woman as liquor store bottles crashed around them and then got her out safely; Joseph Omran, owner of Le Beau grocery in Nob Hill, who gave away sausages and salads and cheese sandwiches in front of his store. He later claimed it was one of the finest times of his life. All over the city and down to Santa Cruz, neighbors recreated neighborhoods, community, because they had to, but also because they could do. Omran’s grocery became a place “where people could trade repair tips or just comfort each other. Longtime residents still talk about how, in the midst of disaster, there was this one bright spot on Leavenworth Street where you could forget the tragedy for a few moments” (Fagan). Addition by subtraction: the earthquake took away power and light and telephony, and so many people collectively, in twos and tens and hundreds, took back power, gathered around available light, and talked in person. They used chainsaws as tools, but they also used natural born cyborg prostheses, as Andy Clark puts it:  languages, cultural cues, the various ancient and modern nonbiological scaffolding that has enabled our brains to develop into minds (Clark, 2004). 8. At that moment, I held a nonbiological tool that was both the least useful thing I  could possibly wield in the face of a seismic magnitude scale 6.9 earthquake, and a superb avatar for resilient modification and tool use. 9. Malcom Gladwell asserts that ten thousand hours or so of practice are required to become extraordinary, an outlier, at any given skill. By 1989, I had accrued that many hours throwing plastic discs: heavy Ultimate frisbee discs, smaller and lighter beach discs, potentially deadly golf driver discs, friendly rubber glow-​in-​the-​dark discs. Discs designed to be stable in flight, and discs meant to be unstable in useful ways. I am not a phenomenon among expert disc players, but I’m easily a phenomenon outlier at throwing and catching discs compared to most mortals.

FIGURE 29.1  Disc

gold driver, aptly named

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10. Let’s take a moment to look at how the tool modifies the human. Take a golf disc, essentially a highly modified dynamic wing. There is a steep learning curve to throwing a golf driver, because unlike a stable Ultimate disc, a golf disc is a heavy, small, almost cruel thing, a wing in circular form with sharp edges. I could knock someone out with a throw…an ancient version of me would hunt with it or war with it, and boomerangs are a not dissimilar technology. It is not inherently stable; it is inherently overstable or understable, depending entirely on my intention. If I throw it level, it will abruptly veer (leftward for righthanders) off course. Why? Because it is aerodynamically MUCH easier to throw long in an S curve than straight or “on a rope.”These discs are designed to maximize a long, long S. To go straight, I throw against its inherent, engineered tendency to veer (on an angle, to the right). As it powers out of a right curve it loses speed, slows, and begins a gradual veer to the left. Voila: a cyborg object that I can routinely throw over 300 feet (100 meters). 11. I could describe this in scientific terms: when I throw a disc, the Bernoulli Principle describes its lift behavior, the physics of gyroscopic inertia define stability. Reference studies in the context of throwing discs (e.g. Motoyama 2002, Hummel 2003, Morrison 2005) calculate a Reynolds number for a given system to assess drag, combined with gravity, velocity, pressure, and height, to calculate lift dynamics. All of these factors interact with spin and torque as the disc leaves my hand; in general, the greater the initial angular momentum that my throw imparts to the disc, the more stable its flight will be (Morrison). Or as we put it in disc discourse, the more Z’s (rotation) the more stable.

FIGURE 29.2  Gyroscopic

inertial plus aerodynamic life equals flight

Lift Force: L = (C Lo + C L ∝ ∝) ρAv 2 / 2

(

)

Drag Force: D = C Do + C D ∝ ∝2 ρAv 2 / 2

(

Roll Moment: R = C Rr r + C R p p

) 12 ρv Ad 2

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(

Pitch Moment: M = C M 0 + C M ∝ ∝ + C M q q

) 12 ρv Ad 2

1 Spin Down Moment: N = (C N r r ) ρv 2 Ad 2 12. But instead, let’s think of the disc as a tool/​user system: a cyborg interaction. As a human operator of the tool, I’m extremely interested in a few things: the interface of the tool, for example, and how it embodies my sense of my human body, the tool, and the task at hand (in this case, throwing this tool, accurately, as far as possible). When I hold the disc, I use one specific power grip to throw backhand, and a modified, “two finger” power grip to throw forehand. I take three or four measured steps, coil my body as my hips turn and shoulders align with the direction of flight, then accelerate my arm motion across my chest so that I maximize both the spin and the power of the release. 13. The total difference between success and failure across the entire dynamic throw is on the order of millimeters and tens of milliseconds, far faster and more refined than my capacity to consciously sense what is happening. The disc remains itself, but my body and mind are being radically modified in response to the physical shape and material characteristics that define each disc. Even after ten thousand hours (by now, more like twenty thousand hours), it takes a mental surrender, a perfection of unconscious holism, to throw a disc long and far and accurately. For example, the release angle of my wrist must consistently be within a range of a couple of millimeters. Micro-​shifts in position can result in massive error (picture a gorgeous $25 (€20) circle of brand-​new plastic dropping into the middle of a lake, instead of a distant fairway). In turn, wrist angle is a function of arm speed, of brain and muscle memory calculating exactly when to release, of the hand position (four fingers on the disc, or three? Fanned out, or tight on the rim?). Shoulders, hips, the power surge in the legs as my back leg crosses and slides behind my front one at an angle that maximizes the torque of my throw. Everything has to work, in the right order, perfectly, consistently. My body feels the throw well before I begin; my mind is not in my head, but in my left hand, the angle of my body, my shoulders, the felt sense of my knee at my calf, then my ankle just before the body starts to move. My mind is distributed. 14. This mundane cyborg moment –​human, disc/​tool, interface –​is anything but mundane. It is a miracle of dynamic, complex, interactive micro-​adjustments and calculations, repeated over and over so that the body knows, not just the head. There’s more: my mind/​body experience is only the beginning of the random, messy, complex interaction with nature: a tree over there, the wind at this speed coming from that angle, the subtle inconsistencies between one disc and another (sometimes including how old and beaten up it is, often a feature and not a bug).

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15. When I am holding a disc in my hand, I am not simply holding a tool. I hold an integrated world. A world in which knowledge is not only complex, but not entirely describable. A world more about hand wisdom than vision.When I am in full body torque, I am literally not looking. My head is angled down, not forward; I am seeing with my body, not my eyes. When I hold a disc, I hold an icon of body knowledge that autonomically determines my body’s posture, the way I walk, the powerful sensation of my fingers, the anticipation of thumb flexion, ulnocarpal joint, pronation, supination. I’m physically modified in response to the tool, and ready to face challenges (narrow fairways, out of bounds, an invisible pin placement, chill weather, rain, the hundred noises that can break concentration, the brain’s own distracting chatter and inability to focus/​shut up in the moment) with resilience and confidence. “I’ve done this before…so many times before. I know this.” 16. Disc golf drivers are specialized throwing tools that are not designed (in fact, potentially dangerous) for systems of multiple individuals cooperatively throwing and catching a disc.When I’m holding another, larger, softer kind of disc (a lid, because it is larger and because slang), I’m dynamically interacting with another person (sometimes multiple people), someone who will watch me throw, triggering a different, complex, reactive response. If it is someone with more than ten thousand hours response time (my throwing partner Will, my brother Peter), their body is in motion the instant the disc leaves my hand. From 300 feet/​90 meters away, they are integrating throw range, distance, banking angle, flight path, and actively moving their bodies to the perfect place and position to receive an object, hurtling through space, that I have transmitted in their direction. Their hands are in running pose, but ready at the right moment to move, synchronized with the running body, making themselves softer to reduce the impact of the plastic edge on impact so that the fingers can close to grip and hold. It is a miracle of cooperation. It is graceful, beautiful, cyborg communication at a distance, usually silent. I’ve thought more than once that a successful throw and catch reifies my thick description of love. Through this shared tool I  see you, feel your material body and its intention; what you fling towards me in the material world becomes an acceptance, even if imperfectly executed. Sometimes I save your errant throw; sometimes you save mine. And as we mutually improve, we go from simply throwing and catching to increasingly complex dances with tools. I throw it behind you on purpose, or at an almost impossible angle. I test your love, your capacity to succeed despite my deliberately throwing obstacles at you, your resilience.

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FIGURE 29.3  Human

plus tool searching for connection

17. Darkness has come. Flames lick the horizon. My housemates  –​seven of us –​were randomly milling about. We had an inkling of the craziness of our city: fire, broken glass, the hurt and scared people, the dead and barely alive. I felt all the feels: helplessness because I couldn’t help others; dread because I wasn’t sure my wife and friends were OK, not to mention my fellow citizens. But most of all, there was a bizarre emptiness, as though the shaking had shaken something out of me. I was probably in shock. 18. So I grabbed my disc, because when I have it in my hand, competence, ability, embodied knowledge flow into me. I am not simply human; I’m a human connected to an interface that I know, down to a body memory level, better than I know most things. I can throw a roller around corners, or make it curl around a passerby like it is a little round dog. 19. I convinced some of my housemates that the right thing to do in the face of disaster  –​once we had established that none of our nearby neighbors were harmed, and that their houses had not been shaken off their bedrock foundations (unlike other areas of the city, like the Marina, parts of which liquefied) was to walk down to the local park and throw. No one else was on the street. It was eerie. Uncanny.The very air seemed menacing.We started to play. We threw long arcing throws that carved the air like swallows; we threw hard two finger throws that snapped off the hand and flew low and flat and fast. We threw scoobers and UPDs, push passes and hammers. We threw until it got too dark to throw (no light anywhere, save the occasional flashlight). When we returned home, we had returned to ourselves. We had brought

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forth the bodies that we needed for the 48 hours ahead. And we reformed that primal human unit –​the tribe, the collectivity –​just as others would do all over the Bay Area. 20. Brett Victor says that we have a big problem with one crucial set of dominant and human-​modifying tools –​the computer/​phone with a touchscreen. He defines tool as something that addresses  human needs  by amplifying  human capabilities (Victor).Thus, a hammer is a tool, the handle of the hammer is the interface that connects it to human capability, and the head and face of the hammer connects the tool to its function (joining things with nails). A tool converts what we want to do into what we can do. An excellent tool elegantly flows between desire and completion, the problem and the person. If you are holding your smart phone instead of a disc and your city is on fire, you have some advantages if your phone can connect with its complex supporting infrastructure during a disaster; otherwise you are holding a fragile brick. The problem is that while touchscreens require hands and fingers (like the disc does), they simultaneously augment and amputate. A car augments our speed and range far beyond our legs’ abilities, while removing our legs in the process; we sit, our legs barely moving, as we speed across the landscape. Touchscreens take the two crucial features of our hands –​they feel things and they manipulate things –​and amputate them. Instead, our hands slide across glassy surfaces as images, words, videos, pages unfold under glass. As Victor argues, “There’s a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-​up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called ‘work’ for millions of years.” 2 1. Instead, we now have images under glass, that numb and stupefy and monotonize our hands.We’ve left some crucial cyborg elements, such as haptics, out of most of the interfaces we currently use. We’ve lost the tactile to enhance the visual. As Victor points out, this isn’t visionary. This is not the kind of mundane cyborg knowledge that I’m after. I’m looking for the cyborg knowledge that may save us after all from the coming climate storm and its inevitable collateral damage –​climate refugees, state and nonstate violence and collapse, degradation of much of the complex technological infrastructure that defines modern civilization, a public not only unprepared for cascading disaster but systematically misled to believe that nothing can be done, except what is (or is not) done by corporate and governmental collectivities. This set of menacing horsemen make the 1989 earthquake look like disaster light, like an unlit walk in the park. 2 2. In The Hand, Frank Wilson writes about the powerful role that the hand played (and plays) in our evolution as humans, then links it to the kinds of knowing that Victor describes. Let’s imagine that I am standing, looking out at not an earthquake-​shaken city, but at open savannah. About 5–​6 million years ago, the climate changed. Forests began to disappear. After 20 million

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years of life in the trees, hominids began to stand upright, adapting to thrive in grassland ecosystems. Unlike, say, the kangaroo or gorilla, the reduced need for arms for walking or swinging did not follow an evolutionary response of vestigial arm function (kangaroo) or losing neurological capacity for aerial gymnastics (gorillas). Instead, as small animals in the middle of a ferocious food chain, facing slow-​moving climate chaos, early humans evolved towards enhanced arm and hand function. Wilson (following anthropologist Mary Marzke) interprets Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) to argue that the key difference between Lucy and related chimpanzee species was her hand: not yet a modern hand, but not a chimp hand. Lucy’s opposable thumb was longer in relation to her fingers, and the index and middle fingers could rotate at the knuckle, producing a new grip that potentially enabled her to throw like a baseball pitcher (the “3 jam chuck”). Small changes in the evolution of wrists and hand structure not only enabled throwing, but also interactively reorganized cognitive brain function.This is the brain I use to throw a plastic, circular flat rock; it isn’t hand or arm, but coordinated body-​leg-​hip-​hand-​ arm-​brain, with an increasingly precise sense of body timing. From 6 million to 200,000 years ago, as our hands became handier, hominoid brains tripled in size, hemispheric specialization developed, and tools became more elaborate, capable, and specialized. 23. Hominoids collectively developed more complex and scalable societies based on organization of relationships, alliance, ideas, and work. We became homo sapiens, humans capable of discerning, capable of wisdom. Physically, we developed increasingly sophisticated ulnar opposition, hugely improving the hand’s ability to manipulate things (manus is the Latin root of hand). The grip I use to throw my disc, whatever the purpose or context, feels not only right, but insanely good. It is a sublime feeling, impossible to express. It feels fundamental, old, at the core of what it means to be human. Wilson puts it this way: Since it does not seem likely that the brain’s remarkable capacity to control refined movements of the hand would have predated the hand’s biomechanical capacity to carry out those movements, we are left with a startling but inescapable conclusion: the biomechanics of the modern hand that set the creation of neurologic machinery in motion for supporting a host of behaviors centered on increasingly skilled use of the hand. If the hand did not literally build the brain, it almost certainly provided the structural template around which an ancient brain developed new neurological systems for hand control, enabling a cascading expansion of experience, cognition, and imagination.

24. This is what I was holding in my hand that night, as I watched part of my city burn.This complex relationship between hand, brain and tool has not simply modified us in the past. As we stand on whatever hill we imagine might be above climate flood and fire, thinking (as one recent climate fiction novel title puts it) We Are Unprepared, I want to believe that the critical tool that

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ensures our ability to survive as a civilization, to find and extend collective resilience, to modify and adapt and repair the technological and social and political and economic structures that are crumbling as we watch, won’t be on the smart phones (potentially fragile bricks) in our hands. It will be, literally and figuratively, in our hands.

FIGURE 29.4 

References Clark, Andy. Natural Born Cyborgs. Oxford University Press, 2004. Fagan, Kevin. “Loma Prieta 20 Years Later.” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2009. Saturday, SFGate https://​www.sfgate.com/​bayarea/​article/​Loma-​Prieta-​survivors-​ transforming-​moments-​3213198.php. Hummel, Sarah Ann. “Frisbee Flight Simulation and Throw Biomechanics.” Morley Field DGC, 2003. https://​morleyfielddgc.files.wordpress.com/​2009/​04/​hummelthesis.pdf Morrison, V. R. “The Physics of Frisbees.” Electronic Journal of Classical Mechanics and Relativity. Mount Allison University, 2005 Motoyama, Eugene. “The Physics of Flying Discs.” Semantic Scholar. 2002. https://​www. semanticscholar.org/​paper/​The-​Physics-​of-​Flying-​Discs-​Motoyama/​0117b0b51e22f9 df8a4f174faa7ef82e8e6dd2d1 Victor, Brett. “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design.” Brett Victor Worry Dream, November 8, 2011. http://​worrydream.com/​ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInt eractionDesign/​.

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Wilson, Frank. The Hand. Pantheon, 1998.

About the Author Steven Mentor grew up in Western Massachusetts in a town where a law on the books forbad going to church without a gun. His Catholicism lapsed early on when his first communion wafer did not produce the “god is inside of me” feeling he later got with a variety of ingestible substances. He read early and often and everything, including all cereal boxes, the Bible (for his Kindergarten teacher, to her amusement), and a bag of books from neighbor girls that taught him the joys of sentimental literature (Little Men! The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore!) and popular science (Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X). Early on he suspected that gender was policed, that rock and roll was all right, and that dancing was all by itself a form of rebellion. He learned that throwing a baseball was the cure for too much reading, and that reading created a social permission for escaping the family and its discontents. He graduated from U Penn the year Philadelphia shook from fears of a Bicentennial poor people’s march and dropped out of Stanford English graduate school because he was learning too much from his new tribe of Stanford anti-​apartheid nonviolent feminist anarchist activists. He teaches English to the working class of Silicon Valley, and they teach him everything else. His academic interests include mundane and literary cyborgs, festivals and utopian exchange, climate fictions, the affective catastrophe of climate pedagogy, and suddenly, teaching at a distance during a pandemic. He thinks it is too bad that things fall apart just as the Gnosis is about to really kick in; he strongly feels that nonhuman life should be represented, and strongly, in any human gathering that presumes to “govern” the human impacts on said life. He feels extraordinarily lucky to have had this particular life, and grateful for his cocktail of DNA and Irish Catholic big family culture, shaken by intellect and passion, and served up with a twist.

30 THE BEST POSSIBLE NOW Donna Haraway in Conversation With Faculty and Students1 Facilitated by Nada Miljkovic

Students not named for privacy reasons. Condensed and edited. Nada:  Good evening everyone. Thank you for coming tonight…. This is such an honor and privilege for me. I can’t tell you how tickled I am. Let me tell you a little about Donna. Donna is an amazing scholar. She taught here at UCSC for many years. She was the chair in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies. In 1984 she wrote a little ditty called “The Cyborg Manifesto.” In July she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. She is world-​renowned and she has some very interesting quirks. For example, she loves science fiction and so it will be interesting to see if we can get her to talk a little bit about her love of science fiction. We’re going to be talking about an article first published in 2012 called “Awash in Urine.” Donna was able to write an article like this because of her stature. The article illuminates Frankenstein; they share many questions, such as, What it is to be human? What it is to have trans-​species, trans cyborg type relationships? I’d like to start with —​What’s a cyborg? Donna:  Has everybody in this room read Frankenstein? Is that part of your core course this term? Excellent. So we have that in common. I think that cyborg and Frankenstein’s creature do have a kind of kin relationship, not a kind of direct genealogical descent, but a kind of complex queer cousin relationship that turns on several things. “My” cyborg and Frankenstein’s “Monster” are both able to be disobedient to their origins.They both understand the failure of their fathers. Their fathers, in their own hubris, are unable to responsibly recognize their progeny in such a way that their progeny undo and redo the world in both promising and monstrous ways.

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Cyborgs have a very distinctive origin point in mid-​ twentieth century history. Cyborgs are key to the beginning of seriously powerful digital operations infiltrating almost every domain of life. The importance of military funding, also of large corporate communications funding, the Bell Telephone Laboratories and so on, are absolutely fundamental to the emergence of cyborgs as real entities and actors in the world. They’re both ideas and metaphors but they’re also as solid as a single-​use plastic and similarly toxic, and indeed rather linked. I was particularly interested in cyborgs in the early 1980s. The term, coined in the 1960s, is in relationship to the man-​in-​space projects of NASA and the efforts to develop techno-​enhanced organisms called “Man” that could handle the challenges of homeostasis in extreme environments. How to maintain blood sugar, salt balance, temperature, the body under extraterrestrial conditions? Most earth bodies, organic bodies are able to maintain stable parameters within rather interesting limits. The limits can be fairly flexible but put organisms in extreme environments in which they did not evolve, and they rapidly break down. Cyborgs demanded a systems approach to system breakdown in the man-​in-​space program.The invention of cyborgs begins with laboratory rodents that were implanted with telemetric brain implants or with little dialysis bags that would alter salt or sugar balance. The first existing mammalian cyborgs were laboratory rats that were surrogates for Man in the man-​in-​space program. The word “cyborg” does not mean robot. It doesn’t mean machine. It means a particular confluence of systems thinking applied to biology as well as to technology. Cyborgs belong to a particular historical moment from the mid-​twentieth century. Cyborgs, in a really serious way, did not pre-​exist the World War II and post-​World War II intersections of organisms and systems theories in stressed environments. They transform life for everybody but not in the same ways. As a feminist in the early 1980s, I  was at a meeting in Cavtat, then in Yugoslavia, now Croatia, in this gorgeous resort on the beautiful Mediterranean coast. It was a meeting of radical left thinkers from European, Asian, African and South and North American countries. I was selected as the delegate of the Socialist Review from Berkeley. I  was going to talk about reproductive unfreedom and problems with reproductive technology in relation to the oppression of women. That’s not a topic that’s gone away. It was a topic very near to my heart. As I and other people got there, we became acutely aware of the women running the Xerox machines, serving us water, serving us food, taking care of the men in suits. There were lots of men in suits, especially from North Korea and Eastern European, Soviet Bloc countries. It was my first serious encounter with so many Communist men in suits. A fair number of the radical leftists of the 1960s, 70s, 80s were also there, not in suits and not all men.The women delegates and staff banded together in making visible the

284  Donna Haraway, with Nada Miljkovic

labor of the people who made the conference possible. We started a kind of labor action at the conference as an instantiation of Marxist-​feminist politics. It was out of that experience that I wrote “The Cyborg Manifesto.” It was an argument that the biological organism, digital systems technological entities, and historically situated human beings had intersected in an Earth changing way, generating the cyborg. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, the cyborg need not be faithful to its origins. I’ve been interested from then on in a litter of non-​heteronormative, non-​ genealogically reproductive cyborgs that don’t do the civilizational work of creating, yet once again, the sacred image of the same, i.e., monotheistic (secular or not) and mono maniacal single-​eyed apparatuses of oppression. I use all sorts of instruments to do that. Some of them come from philosophy, some of them come from literature, some of them come from fables (part of literature), some of them come from biology and politics, and performance art, cartoons, advertising, and so on. I use every imaginable tool to try to propose what my friend Anna Tsing calls, the “Arts of Flourishing on a Damaged Planet.” To try to propose ways of making worlds with each other that might just have a chance for flourishing on a damaged planet, might have some chance of restorative, restitutive and rehabilitative flourishing without becoming anti-​technological. Without becoming anti-​anything, but becoming with each other otherwise. And so the paper you read, “Awash in urine” is a recent chapter in what became a life project. Nada: That segues well into the next big manifesto that I  know of, “The Companion Species Manifesto.” Would you mind explaining it a little bit? Donna: This is a little book provoked by a couple of aging mammals who had rather flaccid sphincter problems. They were trying to figure out which molecules might allow them to inhabit the same night-​time spaces. You undoubtedly got all of the jokes. They’re not particularly sophisticated. Cayenne, dog of my heart, was my sports partner for well over a decade. We ran and did pretty well in a fairly competitive, fast sport. In the story, Cayenne and I  are both aging. Cayenne is an Australian Shepherd, a purpose-​bred, purebred dog. In short, not Innocent. She was the offspring of dogs that had been used to herd the sheep and the cattle of the Anglo-​Saxon Conquest, the post-​Civil War conquest of the Rocky Mountains and Coastal West. She came from dogs who herded the sheep imported from Australia to feed the disappointed gold miners from the Gold Rush on. In other words, she was a dog of the ranching West, which is a white colonial story. In a significant way, both Cayenne and I are white. We do not have to be faithful to those origins. We can respond to other solidarities. We are white not because of our color on some kind of spectrum, but because of our positioning in civilizational projects and projects of settlement that required the removal of pre-​ existing orders and pre-​ existing human and more-​ than-​human peoples and the substitution of, eventually, the agro-​industrial

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complex that is California. Cayenne is a dog who inherits this history in her flesh. She’s from the kind of dogs who did the herding in the early ranching in California. I think that those working Australian Shepherds have been kind of ruined by the show dog culture. They’ve got a thicker chest, thicker necks, blockier heads, and they aren’t as agile, they aren’t as fast, they aren’t as lithe and athletic, as the old-​style Australian Shepherds, who could turn on a dime and were as fast as Border Collies, but considerably more sane. Cayenne was not a show dog, and she definitely turned on a dime at blinding speed.

FIGURE 30.1  Cayenne

and Donna, Companion Species

Point being, Cayenne was the dog of my heart, and I sat down and wrote “The Companion Species Manifesto” in 2003, which looked at the evolutionary history of dogs. It looked at the history of dogs in sport and show. It looked at the history of dogs in colonial projects. It looked at pet culture, and international adoption dog culture, and training cultures. It looked at love, in some of its darkest as well as brighter hues. I didn’t take up the Mastiffs in

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terms of the Spanish use of Mastiffs in the genocides of the Caribbean. I did take up some of the colonial aspects of the ranching dogs. But I was interested in the rescue dog scene both local and international. I  was interested in practices of love, the industrial pet food trade, and the immense consumerist apparatus imposed on modern pet dogs. I was interested in training discourses, which I found, to my surprise then but not now, track the educational discourses for children, and vice versa. Look at child development discourse and dog training discourses. They track very closely, including the tone of voice used to correct “oh what a good dog,” “oh what a good kid,” even as to intonation.The dog training literatures and the early childhood education literatures map onto each other, which would be funny except it kind of isn’t. What kinds of fantasies and practices of nurturing and of control mix inextricably in such discourses? And in “The Companion Species Manifesto,” like in all of my work, there is a principle operating. I  try not to be cheap in the sense that I  will not engage in a critique of something I don’t love. In other words, it’s easy to critique something you hate. It’s easy to do nothing but critique, and to enjoy all the outrage such critique evokes. I  am more interested in engaging in implicated, loving, resisting, redoing, and re-​inhabiting. How do you engage in a kind of deep critical thinking from what you love toward something that maybe deserves a future? How do you think from love, which doesn’t preclude anger or rage or many other things? For me “The Companion Species Manifesto” grew out of my love affair with this particular dog, which you see in the different stages of our lives together in “Awash in Urine.” Nada: There’s a line in your article that says “the generative act of becoming with” that describes your relationship with Cayenne. What is it and how did it happen? Donna:  I have no idea how it happened. We always fall in love with inappropriate love objects. Freud was particularly clear about that. You’re never in love with the right thing or the right person, human or more-​than-​human. Fundamentally, desire is not a question of choice or intentionality. It’s being in the grip of, being blindsided by, finding yourself in each other’s presence in a way that demands a response. Some things make this more likely to happen than other things. For example, the way puppy breath aromas make it almost impossible not to fall in love immediately with any puppy in your hands. Human babies smell almost the same but not quite. These youngsters are using the same pheromonal strategies of capturing the adults through smell. It’s a bio-​evolutionary heritage of great strength. There are all kinds of ways in which we are predisposed to fall in love with partners in both appropriate and inappropriate ways. I know that my husband and I had “rescued” one of our dogs, Alexander Berkman, the great anarchist, partly out of the inherited desires and discourses of the settlement house movement for immigrants in the early

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twentieth century US. The language of rescue is alluring and strange, even creepy.  Perhaps we could “lift him up to the light of peace”! It is a language of very non-​innocent love. So, Rusten and I “rescued” a dog who was fighting with another dog and was going to have to be killed if he didn’t stop it. So we took him in and re-​socialized him even though he was already a two-​year-​old adult. We started from the beginning, teaching him peaceful and playful reactions to all kinds of social situations. Damping down his fear levels. Building up his confidence level. Making him more and more confident in the world. One of the things that we did with him, and that I did with him in particular, was to train and play the sport of agility together.We played agility together mainly as a way of building his confidence in the world. I fell in love with the sport. I started asking around in the “sport dog scene” who was breeding high-​drive sports dogs and who might be willing to sell a puppy to me. I wanted to play the sport at as high a level as I was capable. Nada: The question is, how did Cayenne perform this “generative act of becoming” with you? We talked about it in class as to what you meant with this clause. And, it’s not empathy. It’s more of a coming together.Those are the words you’re using, of becoming with, of perhaps understanding one another. Donna:  Certainly, I think in some ways we did. It is conventional to talk about a human person or a dog, a living being, becoming, unrolling into its achieved state, its mature form. A  kind of becoming or development. There would be an organism and environment. And the organism would interact with its environment in such a way, as to allow the unrolling of its genetic and bio-​behavioral program. It would become itself. This shows a predisposition in our thought patterns towards individualism, towards thinking of the individual plus the environment.The history of biology is as full of this as politics, or business, or family arrangements, or religion in our colonialist, modernizing heritage. I, and many others, have made every effort to interrupt this pattern and say instead there’s only becoming WITH. The smallest unit of analysis is not the entity itself, an organism, for example, a fertilized cell or whatever, but a relationship. The smallest unit of analysis is relating. And in the relatings, like things precipitating out of a solution, certain things become solid, certain things become stable and go on for serious lengths of time. So that relatings have consequences. But everything is always “becoming with,” never becoming as an additive process of separate units. Furthermore, there is no absolute starting point.Various kinds of pasts are inherited in these relatings. So that, becoming with is a multi-​dimensional multi-​temporal matter. The metaphor that I’ve used to talk about this is tentacular, the tentacularity of becoming with. If you are talking about my becoming with Cayenne into this entity, that is still changing at this point, the entity that inhabits this paper, these two and that are neither two nor one… Think what happens when a puppy and a middle-​aged woman meet each other. And then follows a life together for many years. Cayenne died when

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she was seventeen (17) years old. I think of her now as an ancestor. She has a presence; she affects things. I don’t have a need to pronounce what kind of presence this is. She’s not a ghost or a spirit or a whatever. She’s a kind of ancestor, who lives as long as I do, as long as we do, and then somehow because we go on she both precedes us and follows us to the end. The way we came to know each other through those eventful years were through touch, smell, kinetic motion together, emotional connection, happiness, anger, worry, achievement, rest. There were times when we were running on the agility field together when I felt like we were attached by a bungee cord.

FIGURE 30.2 The Young

Cayenne

There was a strong elastic something between us that was producing joy for each of us, a kind of high aliveness. There were other times when we shut each other down, or when I shut her down with my demands for performance, with my authoritarian self. I became tuned to the ways that she deflected my attention, deflected pressure, and handled stress. And, she made space for herself outside of my demands in a way that called me to be really careful of the pressure of my own personality.  We learned to become-​with each other in respect but not fusion. I also became aware of the ways that interactions with each other required a kind of truth-​telling that is not required, on the whole, for human language users. Human language users depend on the way that language can never say what it means. And if it says what it means, you’re lying in a violent way, forcing category closure. Language is dependent on figures, tropes, and obliqueness.There are many names for these tropes, irony, for example.There are ways that those that study language have tried to name all of the ways that communicating with human language depends on truth-​telling aslant. It’s a kind of truth-​telling that allows a lot of room for satire, for ridicule, for irony, for all kinds of things without doing too much damage. In fact, if you’re

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teaching a class and you want to keep people from becoming “true believers,” including yourself, it is crucial to engage language aslant, non-​literally. To be literal is to lie. So imagine that you’re lecturing about something that you really think is the case and you’re very serious about it. You’re lining up the evidence and you’re telling the stories. At the same time, you’re undermining it a little bit as you go, on purpose, to prevent a kind of true believer reaction. Not to undermine serious claims about the world, quite the opposite. To allow them by leaving open investigation, by all investigation ending in an opening, an ongoing curiosity. In other words, you cultivate the ability to be wrong if you’re a halfway decent teacher. It depends on certain uses of language. Do that with a dog in training and your dog will shut down in a nanosecond. A relationship with a dog is a stricter meaning making. You’re engaged in communication. It’s a kind of language but different from the kind we use with each other, in all sorts of ways but similar in other ways too. But I needed to face the necessity to tell the truth with Cayenne, not to joke when instead I needed to be clear. Not to dodge a conclusion. But still to remain open for her inventions. If you read this paper carefully, you’ll watch that by the time I reach a period of a sentence, I’ve dodged a lot of fixed conclusions. There’s a lot of dodging that goes on, to keep things from freezing too soon. You can’t do that in dog training. And she can’t do that with me. There’s another kind of truth-​telling in becoming good at doing something with a being of another species. This is, I think, also true for children. There’s a way in which it’s a gentler meaning-​making. I think ordinary human language has a higher level of violence in its ways of getting at the truth aslant than is possible in good dog training, if that makes any sense. Nada:  That’s great.You’ve long argued that being in a relationship with the companion critter makes you a bigger person. Could that continue from what you were saying? Donna: There are famous philosophical passages in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, for example, who are thought of as the great philosophers of becoming. And, in many ways, they are. But, there’s a passage in their section called “becoming animal” in which they explicitly disparage fat old ladies and their dogs on Parisian streets. There’s a ridicule of women, especially older women, and of animals, especially pets. They are beyond the pale. They are not at the center of reasonable attention. They are not important. They are the trash of emotional life. The respectable philosopher, who is really thinking about becoming, is more interested in the heroic story of the wolf, not the dog and the old lady. I’m being only slightly reductive. It is my philosophical commitment that ordinary relationships are important. It’s in ordinary life that we will have half a chance to flourish on a damaged planet. It’s out of learning how to repair and restore the ordinary to serious loving attention that we might have a chance to leave aside business as usual for something that deserves a future. Being in a relationship of love with a child,

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with a lover, with a dog, with a tree, with a molecule, being in a relationship of caring, loving, responsive curiosity is the ordinary stuff of building a good life. And if you take it seriously, “who are we?” is the question. Literally, here we are.Who knows how we ended up in the same room together? If we take that seriously, it leads to “who are we?” How do we track the threads that make this encounter possible, that perhaps set up the possibility of consequences? Tell us something about what are the multiple histories: evolutionary, chemical, political, cultural. What are the multiple threads that come together in this “becoming with?” If you take a woman and her dog seriously, for example, in “Awash in Urine,” they are both taking various forms of disreputable estrogens to deal with their aging. You unwind the threads of those molecules you end up in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. You end up on the horse farms in Manitoba. You end up with the women’s health movement around DES.You end up in the history of gynecology. You end up with German research in the 1930s in German zoos. You don’t go everywhere. You track real threads. You aren’t making stuff up. You’re tracking material, meaningful threads. These threads collectively tangle a world that situates this woman and this dog. That situates these beings who are “becoming with” each other in worlds that ramify.That reach out to other worlds. I feel like it’s important to know more at the end of the day than you knew in the morning. Once you know, you can’t unknow. Once I know about the apparatus for collecting urine from pregnant horses in order to make Premarin, I can’t “not” know. I can deny. I can evade it. I can say I don’t have time for that. I’m just not going to be responsible. That becomes a moral and a political choice.You can say I really can’t pay attention to that right now. I’m trying to get an education and paying attention to the complete immigration fiasco in the state of California. I don’t have time for everything is a perfectly reasonable answer. What’s not okay is not to know. Once you know, what’s unacceptable is not leaving open the possibility of threads of alliances. Everybody doesn’t have to do the same thing. We can connect with each other. We can make attachment sites. We can leave open the possibility of connecting. That’s really what I mean by taking ordinary life seriously. It’s through the very fleshly ordinary “real of ordinary life” and its ramifications both in the past and laterally in space and into possible futures. Learning to connect with each other. To undo deadly worlds. Redo worlds both to inherit and to invent worlds that make more sense. That’s what I think scholarship is about, basically. Nada: Would you say that this story was grounded in the mundane? Donna: Yes, I  have a lot of axes to grind in this paper. You will have noticed. Among them, I’m particularly interested in making kin non-​biogenetically. It’s not like I don’t think it’s okay to have babies, as long as “we,” a very complex collective differentiated by great inequality of power and well being,

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have fewer of them. I’m most interested in figuring out how to make non-​ biogenetic kin exuberantly and creatively and strongly... I  feel, never in a time in human history, pretty well all over the world, has the importance of learning to make an enduring non-​biological family with each other been more urgent.Think of the problems of homelessness and forced migration in this world.The problem of the displacement of families, populations, individuals. Whole worlds violently displaced from any possibility of home. This is a multi-​species issue. Think of the homelessness caused by climate change; for the insects; for the flowers; for the marine creatures, for the human beings. Think of the radical displacements from home. Then start thinking about what it takes to make multispecies kin in the face of the ferocity and promiscuity of homelessness. Think of the desperate immigrations, all over the earth right now. People being met with fierce xenophobia and fierce racism and fierce fear by those whose own homes are not very stable either. Who are themselves often operating out of fear and excluding the fearful “other.” Think of what’s going on, in such a widespread way. Every chance I get to talk about making kin, I take. Nada: We need to make kin trans-​species. What is your process for writing, and in particular “Awash in Urine?” Donna: This one really did come from going to the vet with Cayenne and her vet, Dr. Kerrin Hobban, prescribing DES. Her (Cayenne) blood pressure was higher than it should have been. She had some early heart disease. She was twelve years old. It was not a time to let her blood pressure go up. She had already had some urinary leakage issues which are very common in elder females. Anybody who has cats is probably especially aware of it. Although the feline males tend to be even more problematic in this regard than the females, but not because of hormones… Not an unusual problem. Veterinarians and human doctors deal with it all the time. To be prescribed DES, I really did have post-​traumatic DES syndrome. That molecule diethylstilbestrol was one of the flashpoints of the feminist women’s health movements that shaped me as a person in the world. It was prescribed to pregnant women to prevent miscarriage for decades after the evidence was in that it didn’t do any good. The evidence was growing that it caused all kinds of cancers and reproductive difficulties, on into the second generation, and then the third generation. DES was an extraordinarily potent molecule that became widespread. I give the figure of several million people, especially women in the United States, who had been prescribed DES before this scandal was over. The scandal around the DES was one of the flashpoints of the feminist women’s health movement. So when all of a sudden my dog is prescribed DES, I was also laughing, is this really happening? I don’t know about you, but the way I handle anxiety is by way of obsessive research. I used to head for the library. Now, I confess, I head for the screen, which is a kind of library. It’s very powerful. It’s also not as powerful,

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in other ways, as McHenry and the Science Library, actually going in the stacks. There’s something about a physical library which remains really, really important. In any case, I handle anxiety by trying to know more. It’s a straight-​up obsession. I go for obsessive knowledge in the face of anxiety. So here I was anxious about DES and I went for obsessive knowledge about the history of the molecule.Tracking it again, otherwise.Tracking it in relation to Premarin and hormone replacement therapy, and all the rest of it. (DES) has been highly controversial from the get-​go. It remains controversial in human medicine. For me, this paper had a pretty simple origin. It was the vet’s office. Nada:  Grounded in this mundane story of a dog having urine spots, you go from feedlots, slaughterhouses, agriculture, human ecological well-​being, advocacy, obligations, and almost around the world. Donna:  I try to track threads and make nets. I sometimes fail, as a writer and a thinker. I think of myself as a forensic investigator. So I end up in those Germans zoos, by tracking the history of endocrinology, the history of hormone biochemistry and the actual physical apparatus of the early research. I track the early endocrinologist biochemists into the slaughterhouses as they are literally collecting buckets of pituitary glands or ovaries from slaughtered pigs, in order to take them back to the lab to extract and purify a few micrograms of a hormone that will be used in investigation.The physical history of the laboratory is very interesting. If you walk into a lab now, most labs look alike. They are all full of screens. You can find other equipment if you look. It used to be easier to feel the physical difference of laboratories. The practice of laboratory investigation is a topic and interests me a lot. Among the fields that I trained in as a scholar, besides biology, are history of science, and science and technology studies. So I  tracked those threads with both Premarin and DES. Nada:  One of the big sentences that you have in the essay is at the very end of your account of DES, where you write, “The core of the story is not DES as such…but the next molecular generations that are integral to the ecosystem-​destroying, human and animal labor transforming, multi-​species soul-​ mutilating, epidemic friendly, corn mono-​ crop-​ promoting, cross-​ species heartbreaking, feedlot cattle industries.” I was telling my classes this is an encapsulation of a hurt world. Donna: It is all about the agro-​capitalist feedlot cattle industry. Drive down Highway 99 and watch the cattle in feedlots, and the epidemic friendly relationship to microbiology. We’re in the University of California system; that means we are closely related to UC Davis. A very big part of the agricultural businesses at UC Davis is research for food efficiency conversion research, animal breeding, as well as feed formulation and husbandry methodologies. Did you know that the cattle in the feedlot are maintained on just this side of physiological collapse because they’re not really evolved to digest corn? They exist just on the edge of physiological collapse that is consistent with

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maximum weight gain up to the ideal age of slaughter. So it’s a way of taking an animal (a cow in this case) and integrating its full evolutionary apparatus into a profit extraction system, maximizing its productivity so as to extract value. To extract maximum value just before the breakdown. The cruelty is not accidental, but extremely rational. And I’m very interested in that particular history of rationality. All that is about maximizing productivity for value extraction. Call it capitalism. A pretty good shorthand word. Nada:  Could we talk a little bit more about misogyny, and what it means to be a man? How much of this has to do with conquest and self-​justification that got you to write that sentence in a way to describe a truth that is happening? Donna: What gets me to write that sentence is that kind of misogyny that is about despising the body, and that includes men’s bodies too. Despising the body becomes a means to the abstract. Money, military conquest, the living dying world, is the raw material for transformation into the means of extracting value (money and power are the most obvious but not the only forms). The disparagement of the animal and plant body and the disparagement of the female body are built into these kinds of destructive practices. Freud would have called it “Thanatos” (a death urge), the repressive disregard of ordinary living and dying. I am not a pro-​life writer. I’m interested in mortality. It is one of the reasons I  write about aging. By the way, I’m three-​quarters of a century old. [Applause] If anyone says “living,” I say “and dying.” Living and dying “well” with each other is what I’m interested in. And I think that misogyny is rooted in all the lust for Transcendence, and the lust for escape from especially the female body. The lust of the escape from the generativity of bodies. And men get swept up into that too (obviously) among other ways, the military machine being the best example of the ways men are swept up into machines of death.Through coercion but also through certain kinds of promises. It’s not accidental that armed men are sources of excess violence and need to be trained to a kind of control. Good militaries are very well trained and have their violence under tight control. They also teach a deathly sort of love. That kind of unleashing of male violence is a key root of misogyny. Nada:  How would you connect this to Big Pharma and the damage that they have done? Donna:  Even as I  take my Crestor, and my Zetia and make sure my friend is getting her diabetes medication/​ vaccinations...Anyone who is against vaccinations is not my friend...I’ll talk about Big Pharma, I’ll talk about the opioid outrage, I’ll talk about the surplus profits, I’ll talk about the way drug development makes it really hard to develop the drugs humans and other organisms actually need, I’ll talk about the drugs that have profit margins that allow gouging, and allow any modification in the device for insulin delivery to increase its price by up to 800 times. Wasn’t that the figure in the recent scandals? I’m completely willing, even eager to talk about the scandals. They

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aren’t scandals, by the way. Actually, they are systemic performance features. They’re “Features” not scandals. But I refuse to become anti-​pharmaceutical in the process of telling these stories. I’m also very interested in all the skills that go into making a molecule that works. I’m very interested in the collegiality that makes it possible for people to share knowledge in working laboratories. I  am as interested in making visible the apparatuses of knowledge that I want to affirm, most certainly including pharmaceuticals. So exactly, it is easy to do nothing but critique and much harder to hold the contradictions together. Sometimes it’s great fun. Lots of people in powerful positions are doing their damnedest to ally across the spectrum including across class and privilege to find creative solutions to urgent problems. I  think that we are embedded in serious structural systems that make it very difficult and even punish people in all locations in the structure who really try to build other structures from the inside out. But the cure, the remedy, straight out of Plato’s pharmakon, is also the poison. I think that’s true not just when you get into a toxic environment. I think that this is true in general, that the milk you drink is also the poison you drink, and I think part of the job of good scholarship is not to become a skeptic, a cynic or a relativist and accept that everything is full of its own contradictions, that everything is always already at least double, and probably more than double…not to let that make one of a kind of aesthete:  “isn’t that all beautiful, lovely, isn’t that all terrible.” Not to let it disengage us. There’s a way in which the complexity of things can become beautiful in its own right, or terrible in its own right, and then we disengage from caring and from trying to do something generative and transformative without being innocent. One of the edges that I try to walk in this work is remaining committed to collective action, and a collective action that isn’t self-​certain, that doesn’t become the one true religion of whatever Doctrine is in hand.Things cannot be allowed to result in cynicism or relativism of the form that,“well it’s all just relative and complex, so you don’t need to take any positions.” Nonsense. It is relational, not relativist in that cynical sense. I feel like I live in a relational world where making some relations stronger and others weaker is my job, and I’m entirely interested in making some relations weaker. Nada:  I’m going to ask one more question and then I’m going to hand it out to you all. The last one is about responsibility and accountability. Would you mind just talking a little bit more about how we can be activated and responsible and accountable and live in this very difficult modern world where it is massive, and everything is double what you are saying? Donna:  I don’t think doubling and complexity are the same as massive. I think actually massive squashes complexity. This takes me back to my affirming the ordinary. My last book was Staying With The Trouble. We don’t need to go to something that is supposedly “large” to cultivate responsibility. We cultivate

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the capacity to respond with each other here, here and now. And that here grows and shrinks. We cultivate the capacity with each other to make worlds that we want to be in, and that we believe in. We do not need to be somewhere else to make a difference; we need to be here. We can’t have this illusion of someplace else. This place here is thick and complex and beautiful and complicated and horrible, and it is here, and we are responsible for it. Thinking that one should be somewhere else is completely disabling. Nada:  Okay I’m going to hand it over to you.You have a question? Student K: It’s very related to what you were just saying, because you were talking about being really focused in here and now. And with that stand, because for certain people here and now is disabling itself. Which is why they seek to get somewhere else, so I was wondering what your take on that would be? Donna: Well, the here and now can be extraordinarily violent and invalidating and deadly. One of the ways I try to think about that is you don’t get somewhere else in the mode of escapism, you build someplace else to be with those who are your real allies, and who will help make you safer. Safe enough. Not safe in some kind of fantastic sense, but you build enough safety with people you trust, and with animals you trust and with plants you trust. You and others with you “become with” each other more safely. And that might involve thickening of the here and now. It is not some kind of instantaneous now. The now is not some kind of little mathematical point that disappears as you move through the past and future. The now is thick. It endures. And working this now, otherwise, so that the here and now become something safer and thicker and more sustaining than the here and now that is quite literally killing you. Student L:  You seem to say it’s important for us to try to be aware of issues around us and we should at least know about stuff, but with our new technology and all that, and how the world itself is becoming increasingly complex. Just look at now, normally to get a job you go to college, you go through high school but back a few hundred years ago you got the knowledge…as we get increasingly advanced technologies in our world becomes increasingly complex, wouldn’t the amount of stuff one person would have to be able to know to be truly aware of the world around them become overwhelming? Donna:  No. Although I know that you and I and others feel that way sometimes. And it is a genuine dilemma. First, I think we misremember the past, and that the complexity of people’s lives throughout the evolutionary history of our species is probably not actually that different. And the process of learning the skills for getting and processing food, for building and sustaining social groups, for traveling through space and knowing something about the world with which you’re moving and traveling, these skills for encountering and living with strangers so on. I don’t think it’s ever been the case in the history of our species or for that matter any other species that there was a past

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in which things were simple. That said, our kind of complexity is specific to here and now. Not more complexity, but specific complexity. Our kind of class structure and structure of the distribution of knowledge is specific, and it is that we need to respond to. What it takes actually to build a biological laboratory right now that is able to investigate, let’s say, the heat tolerances of microbes that might be of use in thinking about dealing with questions of climate change. OK. Think about what it actually takes to accumulate the people, the machinery, the organisms, the bodies of knowledge and the first thing that crashes in on you is it is just never just one person, and one person never knows the whole. And that one of the things that we gladly surrender in thinking about becoming with, as opposed to thinking about becoming, is that we never aim for being the one whole and complete knower. We learn how to work fruitfully in distributed systems. And that is actually not new. Calling them distributed systems is new. But that way of being in the world is not new, especially in the history of our species. We just have to know other things. There are certainly whole groups of people in Santa Cruz who don’t have access, either because their families can’t afford rent and they are there homeless, or because their families don’t have papers and they’re afraid of deportation, or because their families can’t afford the tuition for Gateway [an expensive private school] or whatever, or because the public schools can’t afford the kind of counseling services they need to really help kids…. So on and so on.We can think about all the reasons that it’s really hard to get a good education in Santa Cruz. In spite of which a lot of kids in Santa Cruz get really dynamite educations, in all kinds of ways. Think of UCSC. I know for a fact in my entire history on this campus since the 1980s, almost no faculty member that I  know worked to rule. Almost no faculty person of whatever rank that I  actually know do just their job description. Almost all of them are doing way more than their job description. Almost all of the faculty I know are working flat-​out to try to be decent teachers. A few are not like that, but that has not been my general experience. That has pretty much been my experience of students too. It is common for people to bad mouth students. They used to be better or they used to be more serious or they used to be X. That has not been my experience teaching over more than 30 years in large undergraduate classes, seminars, or one-​on-​one. I found students to be as passionate, as curious as ever, and doing everything they possibly could to be more alive. It was inspiring to be a teacher and I  don’t think it’s just this campus. So I  am really interested in foregrounding what I see people really doing, which often is very inspiring. Dion Farquhar: You spoke earlier about the connection between the search for transcendence, the denial of the body, and the move to abstraction and

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misogyny. Do you think that’s exacerbated or changed by the digital and by the cybernetic, giving us more problems? Donna:  I do think there are forms of sexual predation that work through new social media, and that affects an awful lot of people. And that there are places for violence of many kinds, including sexual violence against children, against queer and trans people, that are mediated in the digital world. And that’s worse because, in part, because it is new. And so yes I can point to areas where I think things are worse. And then I  look at this very complicated thing called the Me Too movement. With all of its warts, it has made a crucial difference for sexual safety in a whole lot of places. Thank the powers that be for the Me Too movement. I think there’s a kind of energy that challenges domination and says “no, no more!” and “yes, we can have this kind of world!” We are not going away; we can make a difference. That gets away from your question about digital cultures, but I think the same principle applies. Student M: You seem to have a problem with the Me Too movement. Can you elaborate? Donna. Well, I  am its ally for sure. But I  think like any powerful movement, questions of evidence, being able to respond to charges, being able to have a transparent process, these are all really important. And I think that that is very difficult to sustain in periods of mass action. I think that most of the people I know who are committed to the Me Too movement do care, a lot. They care about requiring consequences and accountability, as well as about possibilities for healing and even restitution, for making things safer for individuals and communities going forward and not just responding to violence that has already occurred. And I also think, in principle, activists care about going slow enough that unintended violence doesn’t occur. I think the Me Too movement has been as responsible as any mass action movement for sometimes moving too fast without enough process for people to respond to charges. We all pass on information so quickly through so many kinds of media. That ties back to cybernetic and digital culture as well. In a mass action movement, it is hard to say,“Wait, let’s go more carefully!”That worries me. It doesn’t worry me as much as the past and ongoing violence against women, children, and gender fluid people. It doesn’t worry me as much as the deep racism and misogyny that structures sexual abuse. It doesn’t worry me as much as women, children, and gender fluid people not being believed when they speak their experiences and refuse to stay silent. But it does worry me. I think it is important for nurturing democratic, anti-​authoritarian, just societies. Student M:  I see what you are saying. Donna: I wrote a short statement of how I  think about Me Too recently in response to a newspaper book reviewer’s question in an interview, and I want to include that here because what is involved is so important.

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I am in strong solidarity with the Me Too movement. This movement is renewing feminism in so many ways. In the recent past, to be called a feminist became a kind of an insult. But we held on, and we insisted on continuing to call ourselves feminists and refusing to let it become an insult. Me Too has been a turning point that has many dimensions to it, powerfully fueled by young women, and especially women of color. Core commitments of the movement are to support those who have experienced sexual assault or abuse and to work to build presents and futures free of sexual violence and exploitation. Believing women when they/​we speak out, supporting the presence and witness of women and people in whatever category who have endured abuse, and making both resistance and speaking out as safe as possible are all crucial. It takes real courage for women and other sexually abused people to speak out by name in the face of so much indifference, disbelief, and further damage when they/​we have spoken out in the past, as well as the present. Even so, women and others identify themselves, name their abusers, narrate their experiences, and persist in the hard processes of legal and other kinds of action even when doing so takes a toll. I have been frankly humbled by Me Too, and we are all strengthened. All of us owe those who risk speaking out and what follows full attention and action. Consequences for victimizers and abusers have to be part of what happens. They need to be held to account within carefully constructed processes, including formal investigation that protects rights of all the parties. In all of this, the difficult issues of process are really important. To say that is far from simple is a vast understatement! It is controversial, contradictory, and hard. That is especially true in hierarchical systems where structural power systematically and inadequately protects those who are abused. I  am also interested in what restitution and reparative justice could be in the context of the Me Too movement. Again, far from simple! So far, I see very few abusers acknowledge what they have done, much less seriously engage questions of their own obligations to both community and individual restitution.What I see most is denial, or at best an apology without much follow up and with expectations of being readily accepted back into community and privilege very quickly. Not good enough. I think the core of the Me Too movement is building cultures in which sexuality can be generative, non-​violent, anti-​racist, and full of adventure.That takes collective commitment to each other in complicated worlds. Calling out past, as well as ongoing, abuse is a necessary part of that commitment, partly because trauma is not past for those who endure it and going forward requires recognition, care, and action. But calling out abuse is not the whole of Me Too. The activist African American woman who coined the term Me Too in 2006, Tarana Burke, said in a TED talk in 2018, “Me Too is a movement, not a moment.”

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Despite my own history as a young feminist in movements against sexual violence, I did not see Me Too coming. I and more people in my generation and institutional position should have better supported the needed social upheaval and renewed movement. The roots are in movements much earlier than my youth of 40 years ago. Me Too reaches into deep histories of resistance to sexual violence, perhaps best seen in the US in the history of Black women’s leadership in resistance to slavery, lynching, and sexual violation and degradation. That resistance has not stopped, and it is impossible to think about Me Too without emphasizing action across race, region, and people or community. Black Lives Matter is significant here. I am also thinking of Indigenous action for murdered and disappeared Indigenous women and girls across North America, and indeed across the world. We need to remember the murdered and disappeared Indigenous women, both now and throughout the last 500  years of ongoing Western colonialism. Indigenous women lead this movement and alliance and solidarity are important. Also, privileged women, white women, and others in many social categories are hardly immune from sexual abuse and degradation either. In short, “Me Too” has to be understood and engaged within layered histories of abuse and resistance that pay attention to race, sexuality, class, age, region, and more. I came of age as a feminist active in the Take Back the Night marches of the 1970s and the so-​called second wave of feminism.The Me Too movement is a fierce and needed continuation of long and unfinished struggle. For example, in the present moment I am thinking of the inspiring movement of Chilean and other Latin American women in the streets in November 2019 against sexual violation of all kinds, with marches and demonstrations spreading in cities and towns across the world, fired by the wonderful song and strong choreography in the streets and plazas. “El violador eres tú!” Gary Patton:  Donna, a couple of things you said struck me very strongly. The idea that the smallest unit of analysis is a relationship and in fact, we become only as we engage in that, and we do that in ordinary life. Am I correct in thinking that this is a really optimistic and hopeful view of the world? Donna: Well it does leave open the possibility that everything isn’t going to hell in a handbasket. [Laughter] It’s not particularly optimistic, however. I think I’m sort of resistant to both optimism and pessimism. It’s more about on-​ going. I’m committed to “ongoingness.” I’m committed to going on with each other as well as we can. I think that loss is real and accelerating, and there will be no status quo ante. There will be no going back to a prior state. The new equilibrium points will be different, and they will be worse in all kinds of describable ways. I’m talking biologically right now. So I think that extinction is real and accelerating, and anyone who thinks that there’s a techno fix is in a state of abstract denialism, of the kind I tried to describe. And living and dying together, with each other, in multispecies justice and care, gives us

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the best chance for slowing down the damage and opening up the spaces for rehabilitation and restitution. Opening up the spaces for rehabilitation and restitution, in biological and other domains, can’t be done without acknowledging the damage. I  am not an optimist, but I  am committed to staying with the trouble. Gary Patton:  I guess that’s what I was saying is optimistic! Donna:  It is really easy to despair. Gary Patton:  And I did not see you as despairing, so thank you. Donna: You’re right I’m not… Student N: What would you say would be the best take away for everyone in this room? Since we’re all youngsters. We’re all youngsters and it would be fair to say that we have the power to change the world. What would you say is the best advice so we can avoid Extinction and we can make this world a better place for those who come after us? Or what is questionable for young people, as well as at other points in their lives; what is the takeaway for everybody in this room? Donna: This kind of brings out my preacher self. Student N:  Preach! Preach! Donna:  I have thought about this a lot, for young people and for others. It goes back to here and now. The takeaway is that each person is situated differently, with different hopes and fears, dangers and securities,…I think that the takeaway is the commitment to live well with each other in a thick and layered now that reaches into pasts and futures.To live now in the way that one wants to live later, in so far as it is possible. To be the kind of person now, which means making now better. Now is not instantaneous; now is a dense web of relatings, of becoming with. As a way of making things better…to figure out how to sustain each other now, with a kind of real happiness and not just critical grumpiness. By which I mean a kind of affirmation of living and dying well with each other. The take-​home message is taking “now” seriously. That might mean reading a book seriously. It might mean responding to a friend’s crisis. It might mean showing up for a climate march. It might mean being aware of the dilemma one’s father is in and being able to listen. It might mean forgiving oneself. It might mean lots of things. There is no other place to go. I am not particularly interested in avoiding “human extinction.” I do care a lot about all the present-​tense accelerated extinctions of critters and ways of life, human and more than human. That is all happening now. In a sense, I don’t care about future extinction. I care about building the best possible now. I’m interested in the best possible now. I think that gives us the best possible chance for futures that deserve to come into being. I am really committed to a thick, robust and sustaining present. I think that is a practice of multispecies justice and care for all of us.

The Best Possible Now  301

Note 1 Crown College Core Plenary 1, October 3, 2019 University of California at Santa Cruz Available at: https://vimeo.com/user94331174/review/364353241/36a070e918

About the Authors Donna Haraway (b. 1944 in Denver, Colorado) is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and in the Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Nada Miljkovic is a multi-​disciplinarian at the intersection of entrepreneurship, art, and pedagogy, who creates stories, media, performances, installations, and business plans. She is the founder and president of Artist on Art, teaches at UC Santa Cruz, co-​organizes TEDxSantaCruz, project manages at Cabrillo College, and hosts a weekly live radio interview show and podcast.

ARTIST’S COMMENT

Julia C R Gray in conversation with Chris Hables Gray (CHG) CHG: You and the cyborg. Friends? Acquaintances? Julia:  I don’t think of my body as a Cyborg, until I consider Polio vaccines and my external brains, the computer devices I depend on. Our Grandmother’s life was prolonged by a cardiac medical device. My husband and two of our sons have plates and screws in their faces or legs. Technology was used to put their bones back together and has enhanced their bodies. I think of them as Cyborgs. I am a visual artist absorbed by paradoxical human and environmental experiences. I layer hues, texture, and media in my art practice. I consider Cyborgs to be layered beings (human and other species) thus a subject I feel compelled to explore. CHG: What was your process for choosing images… You were given lots of raw ones… Why  these? Julia:  Elif Ayitir’s images were because of her aesthetics, I love the beautiful design and playful color of her digital Avatar Figure 4: alpha.tribe. I used the image because it is feminine and embraces the value of child play and imagination resulting in a beautiful merger of cyborg, play, and design. I chose to use Kevin Warwick because he looks like a regular, real person. The added layers of technology enhancement do not take away his obvious humanity. I glazed (painted) the image of Moon Ribas, cyborg artist, on my ceramic torso because she looks very contemporary. She portrays a strong impression of agency. I  see the beautiful monotone blue portrait as both simple and compelling.

Artist’s Comment  303

CHG: You should give a little (or more) comment about each image you chose. You didn’t choose the Goddess Cyborg just because the editor made it, did you? Julia: I chose your Goddess Cyborg because of my personal connection to Goddess Symbolism in my own spiritual beliefs. The composition appeals to me because of its narrative layers linking a herstorical object with contemporary imagery and futuristic concepts. The collaged composition worked beautifully with my aesthetics. I often depict sea creatures and seaweed on my artwork because of my love of the Pacific Ocean, as well as fear for the health of our oceans. I enjoy meditative sunrise walks at the beach near San Diego, California, while alarmed by the damage by plastic pollution and climate change. I chose animal cyborgs to continue my narrative of the ocean. The dolphin, Winter, (featured in the documentary Dolphin Tale) is able to swim and live a normal life after it received a prosthetic tail. The loggerhead sea turtle depicted had its jaws half sheared off by a boat propeller. He was saved and returned to the wild thanks to a 3D printed beak made of medical-​g rade titanium. It is profound to me that the intervention of technology has saved the lives of sea animals. I chose two paintings from women Renaissance artists, first because it is important to me that herstorical women artists be acknowledged and shared in our time. Artemisia Gentileschi’s, Danae, c. 1612, captivated me with its beauty and narrative of Zeus penetrating Danae’s hidden, protected bedroom by disguising himself as a shower of gold. I saw Zeus’ impregnation of Danae, in the form of golden coins, as an interesting version on a cyborg pregnancy. Lavinia Fontana’s painting, Minerva Dressing, c. 1613 is a beautiful full figured form that was perfect to appropriate for my narrative of a female cyborg with an augmented spine. CHG:  Why “Exploding” Torsos? Julia:  My work is personal, layered with my experiences, love of nature, concern for our survival. I adopted the Torso form as a vehicle to hide my images in. I split the Torso into parts, painting memories and narratives on the inner surfaces. It is a personal struggle whether to reveal or hide the images I render on my sculptures. The texture and holes on the Torso’s outer surface give the viewer superficial visual access within the body structure, while my narration is hidden on the inner surfaces of the six columns that make up the torso. I can install the columns further apart to reveal the inner images or install inches apart, making it an effort for the viewer to see the imagery. CHG: The torsos have an incredible corporeal power, for me at least. Please say something about the process of making them, about any failures… Julia: The first five Torsos were large, hand-​built with coils. Each sculpture took 3 to 6 months just to build before firing. After having a kiln disaster as well as a studio crash of a 36” bone-​dry sculpture I rethought my process. I built

304  Julia C R Gray

a ceramic model of an 18” Torso with 6 columns, I then cast each column in plaster. Now I use the plaster molds to slip-​cast ceramic torsos. I am currently working on the 8th Torso. I alter each ceramic torso by carving into it and adding multiple layers of slip texture plus coiled details. Each Torso is bisque fired, then glazed approximately 4 times. I paint layers of glazes, underglazes and oxides, starting with mid-​fire glazes, then low fire underglazes to very low fire metallic glazes. CHG:  Has this process changed how you think of yourself and technology? Julia: No. CHG:  Really? Not a little? Julia: I have been working on two Torsos with the cyborg narrative. In my research and communications I  have come to understand that cyborgs are more ubiquitous than I had realized. Even I, who have not had my body physically altered by technology, am dependent on it for my day to day existence. CHG:  How about the future? Of cyborgs, of creatures, of the climate? Julia:  I love that a turtle and dolphin (and other creatures) can live a full life in the wild because they are now cyborgs. I am grateful that several of my family members, now cyborgs, can also live unrestricted lives because of medical intervention. I  am also very concerned about our future because of the negative consequences of technology. There will be both unforeseen consequences and intentional destruction. Climate change and plastic pollution (penetrating our environment on macro to microscopic levels) are the result of industry’s neglect and abuse of technology. While I acknowledge that societal structures control the direction of humanity, as an artist I  have the tendency to look at the personal, the micro experiences, and individual’s choice as essential. Because humans are both benevolent and destructive, I see a future that will be both positively and negatively affected by cyborgs. See her work at: https://​www.juliacrgray.com

About the Author Julia C R Gray is a California artist who sculpts ceramic torsos with rich layers of form, texture, and painted narrative imagery. Her artwork portrays multilayered messages, starting with the vulnerability of the oceans and our bodies, balanced with the dialectic message of the power of the oceans and the strength of women’s bodies. Gray’s artwork also comments on contemporary life, personal experience, and consciousness of nature. Her work is informed by Master Women Artists such as modern sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903–​ 1975), and Renaissance artists Artemisia Gentileschi (1596–​1654), and Lavinia Fontana (1552–​1614). Gray worked as a representational painter from 1980 to 2010, creating murals and oil paintings, until she returned to university to study sculpture. She completed a BFA with Honors, in 2014, from San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). Gray studied abroad in

Artist’s Comment  305

Argentina, through SFAI. She has been awarded scholarships and art grants from SFAI and Davis Projects for Peace for art and environmental work in Bali, Indonesia. Gray’s artwork is published in the Biotechnology book: The Posthuman Condition: Ethics, Aesthetics & Politics of Biotechnological Challenges. Selected art exhibitions include The California Clay Competition, Davis, CA; Oceanside Museum of Art, CA; Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, CA; The American Museum of Ceramics, Pomona, CA; CSU Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles, CA; The Atheneum Arts and Music Library, La Jolla, CA; and the Women’s Museum of California, San Diego, CA. Gray partnered with San Diego River Park Foundation to create a Public Art mural depicting the river and its native animal species. Julia C R Gray works from her home studio in Cardiff by the Sea, California. Her daily art practice includes photographing sunrise beach walks and bringing revelations from her ritual into the ceramic studio.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover Image riginal Sculpture “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray, with O permission of the artist 

Introduction “You Are a Cyborg; Deal With It!” The Overdetermination of Cyborgization 0.1 Original Sculpture “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray, with permission of the artist 

1

Part 1: Being a Cyborg Is My Job Original Sculpture “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray, with permission of the artist 

23

1. Modifeyed: Why Priveillance Is More Important to Our Cyborg Future Than Privacy 1 .1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

“Smile” photo by author  “SWIMwaves” photo by author  “Metavision” photo by author  “Steven Mann” photo owned by author  “Moveillance” photo by author 

25 27 28 29 32

Illustrations  307

2. The Avatars of alpha.tribe 2 .1 “Alpha Auer” Second Life (SL), 2017. Created by the author  2.2 alpha.tribe apparel created by Xiamara Ugajin, SL, 2016. Created by the author  2.3 “Alpho Fullstop” playing with her piggies, SL, 2017. Created by the author  2.4 alpha.tribe apparel created by Alpho Fullstop, SL, 2015. Created by the author  2.5 Alpha Auer and Grapho Fullstop play a dress up game of identical twins, SL, 2016. Created by the author  2.6 alpha.tribe apparel created by Alpha Auer, SL, 2017. Created by the author  2.7 alpha.tribe group photograph with Alpha (front), Xiamara (right), Alpho (top) and Grapho (left), SL, 2009. Created by the author 

37 37 39 40 40 41 43

3. Tanks, the Shield of Achilles, and Social Cyborgs 3.1 “M1 Abrams Battle Tank” photo by Department of Defense, public domain 

46

4. Experiments With Cyborg Technology 4 .1 Kevin the Cyborg, photo by Mark Gasson, owned by author  4.2 Braingate implant, photo by Mark Gasson, owned by author  4.3 Cyborgian communication network, photo by Mark Gasson, owned by author 

50 54 55

Part 2: Being a Cyborg for My Health Original Sculpture “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray, with permission of the artist 

75

8. Infusiones/Infusions: Estampas Itinerantes en Mi Tratamento de Cáncer/Itinerant Portraits in My Cancer Treatment​ 8 .1 8.2 8.3 8.4

“Dos Animales Visibles/​Two Visible Animals” photo by author  “Toni Curioso /​Curious Toni” photo by author  “Auto Retrato/​Self-​Portrait” photo by author  “Sí/​Yes”, photo by Ana Rita Rodríguez, photoshopped by Luis Joel Donato 

80 83 85 88

308 Illustrations

8.5 “Mind”, photo by Ana Rita Rodríguez, photoshopped by Luis Joel Donato 

91

9. To See With Eyes Unshielded: Perceiving Life as a Partible Cyborg 9 .1 Loughry retinal scan 2019  92 9.2 A typical Snellen chart. Originally developed by Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen in 1862, to estimate visual acuity  93 9.3 Loughry macular thickness scan 2019  98

11. Becoming an Accidental Cyborg Feminist Socialist 11.1 An X-​ray of the author’s skull 

109

13. “Cyborg” “Mom” 13.1 Photo of the author’s twins 

124

Part 3: Imagining Myself Cyborg Original Sculpture “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray, with permission of the artist 

137

14. Cyborgian Episteme as Queer Art-​science 1 4.1 Drawing of a Workbench for A-​S/​S-​A by the author  14.2 “The World Reimagined” original drawing by the author 

141 147

15. Computer Kid 1 5.1 Photo of the author with her father at four years old  15.2 Photo of the author consulting with her father as a young girl 

149 151

16. Seven Ghosts: Critical Confessions of a Psyborg Mind 16.1 Ghost 1: The ‘Imitatio Dei’ by Angeliki Malakasioti, created with the use of mixed media (photography, 3D modeling, image editing)  157 16.2 Ghost 2: The Ectoplasm by Angeliki Malakasioti, created with the use of mixed media (photography, 3D modeling, image editing)  158 16.3 Ghost 3: The Division by Angeliki Malakasioti, created with the use of mixed media (photography, 3D modeling, image editing)  159

Illustrations  309

16.4 Ghost 4: The Echo by Angeliki Malakasioti, created with the use of mixed media (photography, 3D modeling, image editing)  16.5 Ghost 5: The Breath by Angeliki Malakasioti, created with the use of mixed media (photography, 3D modeling, image editing)  16.6 Ghost 6: Phantasmagoria by Angeliki Malakasioti, created with the use of mixed media (photography, 3D modeling, image editing)  16.7 Ghost 7: The Abnormality by Angeliki Malakasioti, created with the use of mixed media (photography, 3D modeling, image editing) 

160 161 162 163

17. A Mundane Cyborg: The Smartphone, the Body, and the City 17.1 A still from a public advertisement on TV in 2015. Television capture, Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation, fair use  17.2 A Wi-Fi hotspot sign and a Wi-Fi street map on a phone booth in the city of Daegu, Korea. Photo by the author, December 22, 2015 

166 169

19. On Cultural Cyborgs 19.1 Photo of an artisan stamping the woven cloth with Badie tree ink by the authors  19.2 Arase Ye Duru symbol photographed by the authors  19.3 Photo by the authors of a youth simulating adinkra  19.4 Photo by the authors of Kwatakye  19.5 Photo by the authors of Paul Boakye carving stamps  19.6 Photo by the authors of children stamping  19.7 Chart by the authors of their generative play model  19.8 Chart by the authors of the social innovation process  19.9 Chart by the authors of the flow process 

184 184 184 185 186 186 187 187 188

Part 4: Performing My Cyborgness Original Sculpture “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray, with permission of the artist 

191

20. Waiting for Earthquakes 2 0.1 “Seismic Percussion”. Photo of the artist by Mark Kaplan  20.2 “Modified to Sense”. Photo of the artist by Hector Adalid 

193 194

310 Illustrations

21. My Cyborg Performance as a Techno-​Cerebral Subject 2 1.1 Photo of an EEG cap with electrodes and inputbox by the author  200 21.2 IPO cycle of a command processing chain during screening by the author  202 21.3 Photo of self-​experiment BM system I by the author  203

22. A Song for the Universe in the Dialect of Terran Cyborg Companions Photo of the author 

212

23. Modulating 23.1 “Looking Away”. Original self-​portrait by the author 

221

24. Zombies, Cyborgs and Chimeras: Alternate Anatomical Architectures 24.1 “ReWired ReMixed”. Radical Ecologies, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth 2017. Photographer: Steven Aaron Hughes  24.2 “Exo Arm ReWired ReMixed”. Cankarjev Dom, Ljubljana 2003. Photographer: Igor Skafar  24.3 “FractalFlesh”. Telepolis, Luxembourg 1995. Diagram by Stelarc  24.4 “Ear On Arm Suspension”. Scott, Livesey Galleries, Melbourne 2012. Photographer: Polixeni Papapetrou 

226 229 231 238

Part 5: Thinking Myself a Cyborg Original Sculpture “Cyborgs Are Us” by Julia C R Gray, with permission of the artist 

241

25. I, Cyborgologist Original graphic story by Bob Thawley and Chris Hables Gray 

243

29. Disc/​erning the Crisis: A Mundane Cyborg Throws Hope to the Wind 29.1 Disc gold driver. Drawing by the author  29.2 Gyroscopic inertial plus aerodynamic life equals flight. Drawing by the author 

273 274

Illustrations  311

29.3 Human plus tool, searching for connection. Photo owned by the author  29.4 Photo owned by the author 

277 280

30. The Best Possible Now 30.1 “Cayenne and Donna, Companion Species”. Photo owned by the author  30.2 “The Young Cayenne”. Photo owned by the author 

285 288

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to information in figures. absent presence 174 abstraction 143 activation 205 adinkra symbols 184, 185 adolescence 218–​20, 266 affordance 170 Afro-​Caribbean culture  185 aging 31, 58, 60–​1, 65 Al Qaeda 14 algorithms 183, 259–​60 alligator skin 84 Alpha Auer 37, 41, 44 alpha.tribe 34–​42, 302 Alpho Fullstop 38, 39 alt avatars 35–​6, 44 analog technology 152, 154 anatomy see human bodies androids 69 animals 117; cyborgs 303; dogs 284–​92; multi species consciousness 213–​16, 252, 290–​1, 299–​300; relationship with humans 84–​5 anorexia 264–​5 Aos Fatos (website) 257, 258 appointments 165–​7, 168, 169 AR (augmented reality) 263, 268, 270 architecture, of human body 225–​6, 232–​6, 238 arms 234, 235 Articulated Head 235

artificial intelligence: artificial general intelligence (AGI) 64; automation of journalism 255–​7; deep learning AI 63; as investigation tool 257 A-​S/​S-​A (art-​science/​science-​art) system 139–​41, 142, 146–​8 assisted reproductive technologies 125, 130, 248, 249–​50; reproductive cyborg 126–​8, 132–​3 assistive technology (AT) 94, 97–​9 Auden, W.H.  47–​8 augmented reality 263, 268, 270 automation 152–​4; of journalism 255–​7 avatars 223; alpha.tribe 34–​42, 44, 302; conceptual 212–​13; and physical world 237 awareness 227, 228; see also consciousness Awash in Urine (Haraway) 286, 290, 291 Badie tree 185 baldness 87 BCI (Brain Computer Interfaces) 197, 202, 210n1; caps 199–​201, 203–​5, 208–​9 becoming with 287, 289–​90 behavior, human 13, 145–​6, 173–​4 Big Pharma 293–​4 binary falsifiability 143 bioart 237 biomes 114 bio-​printers  230

Index  313

#BirdBoxChallenge 264 Black Lives Matter 299 Blender 235 blindness 93–​4; see also vision aids #BlueWhaleChallenge 266 BMI (Brain Machine Interfaces) 198, 210n1; simultaneous representation 203–​5 Boakye, Paul 185 bodies see human bodies Bolsonaro, Jair 259 brain 116, 117, 121; chemistry 119; cognitive abilities 170–​1; computational neuroscience 64; and imagination 207; metabrain 63; stimulation of 210n2; see also BCI (Brain Computer Interfaces) BrainGate implant 52–​7 Brazil 254–​5; election 257–​9; Supreme Court 256–​7; technology 259–​60 broadcasting technologies 150, 152–​3 cancer 82–​3; see also chemotherapy canes 95–​6 capitalism 3–​4, 125, 127, 213, 292–​3; surveillance capitalism 13–​14 carbon-​chauvinism  180 Carter, Lee 111 Cayenne (dog) 284–​8, 291–​2 chemotherapy 82–​3, 84–​5, 86–​7 childhood experiences 25–​7, 92–​3, 149–​52, 218, 254 Chile 214 chimeras 5, 218, 230, 232, 236 chlorophyll 120 #cinnamonchallenge 265 circularity, principle of 204, 206, 207–​8 cities 165, 172–​5, 232 Clark, Andy 273 classical physics 118–​19, 120 climate change 15, 185, 278–​9, 291, 304 Clynes, Manfred 2, 5, 17n3, 18n10, 61 cochlear implants 108–​9, 110 Coco Rico 212–​13 cognitive abilities 170–​1 Cohn, William  238 collaboration 142 colonialism 284, 285–​6 communications 290; avatar appearance 35, 41; at a distance 276; human/​ dog 288–​9; telegraphic 53, 54; visual images 168, 169, 171; vocal 168; see also mobile phones; smartphones; telecommunications

communities: signing deaf 110; social cyborgs 46–​9 The Companion Species Manifesto (Haraway) 284–​8 computers 151, 227; computational neuroscience 64; death of 149–​50; startup 161 concrescence, Whitehead's 143, 148 #condomchallenge 265 connectivity see interfaces consciousness 115–​16, 119, 120–​1, 158; see also awareness control 204, 207–​8 corruption 256 COVID-​19 pandemic  2 creativity 141, 146, 218 crews 46–​7 cultural cyborgs 183 cyber security 101–​2, 106 cybernetic closet 220–​1, 222 cybernetics 12, 15, 68–​9; devices 71, 73; eyes 98–​9 cyborg citizens 260 Cyborg Collective 104 The Cyborg Handbook (CYHB) 3, 5, 13, 17n5, 90 Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway) 2, 17n4, 123, 139, 245, 282, 284 Cyborg Torsos 10, 302–​4 cyborgization 5, 11–​13, 17n5, 68–​73; experience of 202–​8 cyborgology 8, 10, 11, 13, 103–​4 cyborgs 228, 271–​80; biography of 223, 243–​6; cultural cyborgs 183; definitions of 2, 3, 17n3, 17n5, 29, 61, 123–​4, 254, 284, 302; empathy 248, 250–​2; epistemology 13–​14, 18n10, 146–​7; history of 282–​3; as metaphor 89–​91, 124–​5; modulated cyborgs 223; mundane cyborgs 166, 170–​2, 175, 176, 244, 278; networked cyborgs 3, 14, 186; reproductive 125–​30, 132–​3; with smartphones 170–​2; social cyborgs 46–​9; society 247–​50; taxonomy 17n5, 90 Daegu, Korea 167, 173 Danae (Gentileschi) 303 dance 194, 222–​3 deafness 108, 110 death 180; of Cayenne (dog) 287–​8; of computers 149–​50; in relation to life 228–​9, 230, 239; Thanatos 293; in viral challenges 266

314 Index

decision making 119, 172 deep learning AI 63 defibrillator implant 102 deflection 163 Democratic Party 109–​11 DES (diethylstilbestrol) 291–​2 design activities 41–​2 determinism 142 deviation 163 diagnosis 82, 93 digital dementia 170–​1 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) (1998) 105 digitalization 152–​3, 161, 263 dilemmas 178–​9, 181–​2 disabilities 31, 95; blindness 93, 94; deafness 108, 110 disasters: earthquakes 194–​5, 271, 272–​3, 277; fire 175–​6 disruption 140 distributed systems 296 diversity 111, 228; ecological diversity 114–​15 dogs 289–​92; Cayenne 284–​8, 291–​2 dolphins 303 #dontjudgemechallenge 265 dressage loop 208 drones 13 Ear on Arm 235 earth 12, 15–​16; climate change 15, 185, 278–​9, 291, 304; damaged 284, 289, 300; seismic activity 195 earthquakes 194–​5; Loma Prieta earthquake (1989) 271, 272–​3, 277 ecosystems 12, 68, 111, 147, 279, 292; diversity 114–​15 education 183, 185, 186, 188, 296; educational games 267 EEG caps see BCI (Brain Computer Interfaces) egg donation see gamete donation elections: Brazil 257–​9;Virginia  110–​12 embryo development 116–​18 emergence 140–​1 emotional experiences 56; cyborgization 70–​2; security 102, 103 emotional intelligence 180 empathy 248, 249–​52 endo structures 232–​3 energy efficiency 62 epistemic frameworks 144–​6 #eraserchallenge 266

errors 144–​6, 147 ethics 105, 228, 260 evolution 11, 14–​15, 58, 179, 246; architecture of the body 225, 228; digital 163; of dogs 285; hands 279; linearity of 60–​1; with machines 64–​5; of transhumans 62–​3 exoskeletons 227, 232, 233, 234, 235–​6 Extended Arm 234 extinction 2, 11, 215, 299, 300 extropianism 7 Facebook 257–​60 failure 144–​6, 147 Fátima (robot) 257 feet, implants 195 feminism 131–​2, 283–​4; feminist socialism 110; see also women fiction 143 food production 292–​3 fractal flesh 231–​2, 234 Frankenstein 4, 243, 282 Frazier, Bud 238 frisbee discs 273–​6 functionality 62; human bodies 58–​9 Gaia 15 Gameboys 272 gamete donation 126, 128–​30, 132, 134n9, 230 gamification 263, 267 gaming worlds 34 gender 220, 221; cyborgs 70–​1, 89–​90; see also women generative justice 186, 188 generative play 187, 188 genetics 62; children 129, 133; non-​biogenetic kin  291 Ghana 185–​6 ghosts 91, 118, 156–​64, 236 Gibson, James 170 glasses 95 Goddess Cyborg 303 Goffman, Erving 174 Google Brain 13, 63 GPS 272 Grapho Fullstop 38–​9 Guzman, Elizabeth 111 hacking 71, 91, 106; body 216 hair 86–​7 hands 278–​9; orthosis 203, 207; third hand 231, 233

Index  315

haptic technology 65, 231, 233, 278 Haraway, Donna 2, 15–​16, 16n1, 110, 123, 139, 140, 197–​8, 251, 255 heads 234–​5 health industry 65 hearing 108, 110 heart: diseases 101, 102; implants 101–​3, 104–​5; turbine heart 238 here and now 295, 300 heteronyms 43–​4 hikikomoris 264 human behavior 13, 145–​6, 173–​4 human bodies 175–​6; architecture 225–​6, 232–​6, 238; biota 114–​17; extending capabilities 53–​4, 110; re-​imagining 91, 227, 229; remote 232; surrogate 237; suspended 226, 227, 238, 269; transformation 58–​9, 61–​4; as vehicle 58–​60; virtual body 233 human-​animal relationships 84–​5; dogs 284–​92 humanity 179, 229, 236, 238 human-​machine relationships 13–​15; adaptation 198–​201; interdependence 14–​16; interfaces 230–​1; see also integration hybrid cyborg network 186 hyper-​coordination 167, 171 Hyper-​Human  232 #icebucketchallenge 264, 266 identity 14, 63, 65, 116, 134n9; assistive technology 96–​7; cyborgian 125; politics 14; shift in 95, 97–​9; transformation 14–​15; transhumans 61; virtual identities 35, 36–​45; see also avatars imagination 207 implants 69–​70, 104, 106; BrainGate implant 52–​7; defibrillator 102; pacemakers 101–​3, 104–​5; RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) 51–​2; seismic sensors 195; subdermal casings 216 individualism 126, 133n4, 171, 287 information: content manipulation 258; and cyborgs 272; handling 63 initiation rituals 267, 268, 269 #InMyFeelingsChallenge 265 insurance, health 127 integration 4, 5, 12, 17n3, 64; assistive technology 94–​5, 108; BMI (Brain Machine Interfaces) 197–​8, 202, 204–​8,

209; tools 276; see also human-​machine relationships intelligence 179–​80; see also artificial intelligence intentionality 204–​5 interdisciplinary systems 146–​7 interfaces 227, 230–​1; human frisbee interface 275–​8 International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) 257 internet 160, 232, 234; Brazil 254–​5; as external nervous system 227; Korea 165, 168, 172, 173–​4, 175–​6; remote control via 32, 53, 231 intimacy 55, 56 IPO technology 201–​2 Jesus 68–​70, 73 Jota (website) 256–​7 journalism 255–​7 KakaoTalk 168, 171 Kant, Immanuel 48–​9, 236 Katana killer 263–​4 Kline, Nathan 17n3, 61 knowledge 143, 145; constructs 139; disruption of hierarchies 140–​1; production 144; queered 147–​8 Korea 165–​8; culture of 170–​2; Daegu 167, 173; Seoul 175–​6 KT (Korea Telecom) 173, 175–​6 Kusanagi, Motoko 91 #KylieJennerChallenge 265 language 288–​9 life 59, 157, 293; extension of 58, 61; in relation to death 228–​9, 239 limbs 231–​2; arms 233, 234, 235 liminal zones 230, 238, 239; vision/​ blindness 93, 94 Ling, Richard 167, 171 Loma Prieta earthquake (1989) 271, 272–​3, 277 Looking Away (self-​portrait)  220–​1 Lovelock, James 15 Lupa 258 Malaysia 141 Manifesto for Cyborgs (Haraway) 2, 17n4, 245; see also Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway) manifestos 179–​82 #mannequinchallenge 264, 266

316 Index

The Martian (film) 15 mass action movements 297–​8 maternity 125–​6, 127–​8, 129–​30 McLuhan, Marshall 229, 237 Me Too movement 297–​8, 299 meaning 288 medical technology 14, 104–​6; medports 90–​1; printed organs 230; see also implants medical treatment 54, 63, 98–​9, 302; chemotherapy 82–​3, 84–​5, 86–​7 memory 116; muscle 275, 277; smartphones 93–​4, 170; transhuman bodies 62–​3, 65 metabrain 63 metamorphosis 164 metaverses 34–​5, 41 Metavision 28 micro-​coordination 167–​8, 169 military technology 229, 245, 293; cyborg systems 13, 14, 18n11, 46–​9, 283 mindfulness 121 Minerva Dressing (Fontana) 303 misogyny 293, 297 MMS (Multimedia Message Service) 168 mobile phones 165, 170; appointments 166–​7; see also smartphones modification 1–​2, 6–​11, 62; mark of identity 97–​9 modulated cyborgs 223 #MomoChallenge 266 Morse, Margaret 272 Mosely, Frederick 223 Movatar 234 Moveillance 32 Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) 258 moving sculptures 193–​4 multi species consciousness 214–​15, 252, 299–​300; communications 290–​1 multi species storytelling 213–​16 mundane cyborgs 166, 170–​2, 175, 176, 244, 278 Muscle Machine 234 nanobots 233, 239 nanomedicine 64, 239 nanorobots 62 narrative building 143; automated 256–​7 Natural Language Generation (NLG) 256 neo-​liberalism 125, 133n4 nervous system: bi-​directional functionality 53–​4; external 227; neurofeedback 198–​9, 206–​7; neuronal expressivity 201

networked cyborgs 3, 14, 186 networked reproduction 127 neuroscientific trials 197, 198–​9 Newtonian physics 118–​19, 120 Norman, Donald 170 normativity 128 OncoMouse 84–​5 Operation Car Wash  256 organic forms: exchange 230–​2; integration with technology 197–​8, 202, 204–​8; printing organs 230 oscillographs 27, 28 overdetermination 11 pacemakers 101–​3, 104–​5 paired districts 109–​11 Panopticon 31 paracosms 42, 45n1 Parasite 234 Parkinson's disease 8 Partial Head 235 performance 162, 195, 220, 222, 223; cyborgization 72; identity within 213; posthuman 269–​70; in public settings 213; suspended bodies 226, 232 personalization 96–​7 personas 35, 36, 44, 212 personhood see identity Pessoa, Fernando 43–​4, 45n2 phantom flesh 231–​2 pharmaceutical industry 293–​4 phone booths 167, 174–​5 photography 83, 219 Ping Body 234 play 42–​3, 44; generative play 187, 188 Pockum 185, 188 Pokemon Go 268 politics: activism 108, 109–​12, 213–​14, 244; corruption 256; cyborgs 124–​5; elections 110–​12, 257–​9 posthumans 5, 61, 269 potentialities 140–​1 pregnancy 102, 129 Premarin 290, 292 pretence 43–​4 privacy 30–​3 Promo Posthuman 63–​4 Propel 235 proprioreception 12 prosthetics 11, 17n3, 65, 90, 227; body 59, 63–​4, 228, 236, 237; head 234–​5; selfhood 227–​8; tools 271

Index  317

prototypes 141–​2 psyborg 156–​64 psychology: emotional experiences 56, 70–​2, 102, 103; of implants 52; transhumans 64 puberty 218–​20, 266 Quantigraphic Self-​Sensing  28–​9 quantum physics 119–​20, 120–​1 race 129, 134n10, 213, 299 raves 217–​18, 222 realities 27, 139, 142, 143, 228; and artworks 157, 195, 196; augmented 263, 268, 270; mixed 230; see also virtual worlds reason 118 Recondo, Felipe 257 reconfiguration, of human body 229 reflection 160 relatings 287 relaxation phase 206–​7 remote control 32, 53, 231 representation 162 reproductive technologies, assisted 125–​8, 130, 132–​3, 248, 249–​50 reputation, digital 268 rescue 286–​7 responsibility 294 Rewired/​Remixed  235 RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) 51–​2 rigour 142–​3, 145, 146, 147 risk, perception of 267–​8 rituals, viral challenges 269–​70 robotic orthosis 202, 203–​4 robots 69, 236, 283; arms 235; hands 53; journalism 255–​7 Roem, Danica 111 role playing games (RPG) 141–​2, 146, 264 Rosie (robot) 256 #roundaboutofdeath 265 Rui Barbot (robot) 256–​7 Sandra Cameron Dance Center 223 schools see education science-​art see A-​S/​S-​A (art-​science/​ science-​art)  system screening 201–​2 screenreaders 96–​7 screens: skins as 237; touchscreens 278 search engines 227, 234 Second Life (SL) 37

security, cyber 101–​2, 106 Seismic Sense 194–​5; see also earthquakes self: awareness 115–​16, 117, 222–​3; beyond the skin 227; presentation 162, 218–​21, 224 Sellars, Nina 235 senses: extending 96, 195; sensory perceptions 53, 56 sensors 28–​9, 53, 56, 140 Seoul, Korea 175–​6 separation 159 Sequential Wave Imprinting Machine (SWIM) 27–​8 serious games 267–​8 sexual predation 297 sexuality 220, 221 shared differences 250–​1 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 4, 71 #ShellOnChallenge 265 sight 93–​4; see also vision aids simultaneous representation 201, 203–​5 Sister District 109–​11 skin 225–​6, 237 smartphones 94, 165, 168–​70, 172–​6, 278; cyborgs 170–​2; see also mobile phones Smith, Anna Deavere 223 snack culture 174 SNS (Social Networking Service) 168, 170, 171 social alts 36–​45 social cyborgs 46–​9 social innovation process 187, 188 social media 168, 171, 220; networks 255; power of 257–​9; privacy 30; robots 256–​7; sexual predation 297; see also viral challenges social status 255 socialization, digital 268, 270 society 279, 295–​6, 298; social movements 251–​2; technological change 254 software code, external nervous system 227 Software Freedom Conservancy 103, 105 sousveillance 30–​1, 32 South Africa 186 South Korea see Korea Southeast Asia 141, 142 space exploration 283 sperm donation see gamete donation Stargardt disease 92–​3, 95 Staying With The Trouble (Haraway) 294–​5 Stelarc 269 StickMan 236 Stomach Sculpture 235

318 Index

storytelling: fiction 143; multi species storytelling 213–​16; narrative building 143, 256–​7 stroke patients 197, 198–​9, 210n3 substrates 180; substrate-​diversity 62–​3, 64 subways 173–​4 superorganisms 115 surgery 55–​6 surveillance 30–​1, 32, 272; equipment 105; surveillance capitalism 13–​14 survival 15–​16, 82, 90–​1, 179, 280 suspended bodies 226, 227, 232, 269 sustainability 12, 183 symbionts 5 symbiosis 12, 199, 204, 205, 208 synergistic system 59–​60 tanks 46–​9 techno-​cerebral cycle of action 204–​8 technology, and biology 178–​9, 229 telecommunications 165–​8, 173 telepathy 54 television 27; see also broadcasting technologies third hand 231, 233 time-​space: coordination 167, 172–​3; moving around 172, 174; sense of 175 tools 11–​13, 94, 98–​9, 154; frisbee discs 273–​6; and humans 5, 273–​6, 278–​80; as prosthetics 271; shared 276 touchscreens 278 training 267 #trainsurfing challenge 266 trans people 77, 127, 128, 134n5 transformation process 62–​4, 141, 164, 174–​5, 181, 251; chemotherapy 82–​3; transformative sciences 13, 58–​9; urban 172–​3 transhumanism 6–​7, 269; constraints 64–​5; Hamlet's dilemma 178–​9, 181; manifesto 179–​80, 181–​2; transhuman bodies 61–​5 transitions 77–​9 translation chain 201, 204, 205 transmutation 90–​1 transplants 228, 230, 235, 238 travel 172 triangulation 142 Turkle, Sherry 150 turtles 303 Twitter 256–​7

ultrasonic sensors 53, 56 unconsciousness 118, 121 universal cyborg 142 upload 61, 63 urban environment 165, 172–​5, 232 Urry, John 174, 175 user-​created content  34–​5 vaccines 4–​5, 243, 302 veillances 30–​1 Victor, Brett 278 video feedback 28 video games 263–​4, 267 viral challenges 263, 264–​7, 268–​9; rituals 269–​70 Virginia, elections 110–​12 virtual worlds 223; communal 34; identities 36–​45 viruses 2 vision aids 30, 31; cybernetic eyes 98–​9; glasses 94–​5; screenreaders 96–​7; see also blindness visual communication 168, 169, 171; avatar appearance 35, 41 volition 118 vulnerability 69–​70, 73, 95, 176 Waiting for Earthquakes 195 war see military technology Washington, George 4 wearable computers 25–​7, 28–​30 WhatsApp 266 wheelchairs, remote control 53 Whitehead's concrescence 143, 148 Wi-​Fi zones 173, 175 Wilson, Frank 278–​9 Wittig, Monique 77–​8 women 77, 123–​4, 264–​5; baldness 87; cyborgs 70–​1; status of 131–​2; see also feminism; gender workers 4 xenoviruses 2 Xiamara Ugajin (Xia) 38 zombies 159, 228 Zuboff, Shoshana 13