Modified: Living as a Cyborg

Description

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. 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