Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Amber Case
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me here. The city is absolutely
beautiful. Im going to tell you about cyborg anthropology and the evaporation
of interface. I only have a little bit of time, so Im going to go into it pretty
quickly and give some examples.
So, first off, whoever has a cellphone hold it up right now. Alright, those who
held it up first are more cyborg-like than the others in the audience. In fact,
were all cyborgs. But not the type of cyborgs that you think. Were not
Robocop or anything like that. A person called David Hess talked about the idea
that were all low-tech cyborgs, that every time you look at a screen and you
interface with something external to yourself that holds information that your
eyes can interact with, youre kind of a low-tech cyborg. Even though its not
melded into your skull or interacting directly with your brain, it is interacting
with you through an interface of your eyes or your hands, and therefore youre
a cyborg.
So, the term cyborg came from a 1960 paper on space travel. It was called an
organism to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of
adapting to new ambient environments. Physically, this was talking about an
astronaut in space. Because what kind of a hostile environment is space? Its
very difficult. You cant breathe out there. So the idea of making a space suit
was allowing somebody to evolve outside themselves, to adapt to this very dif-
ficult environment.
The first tools extended the capability of our fists. So, the idea of having a a
hammer or a knife allowed us to have an external tooth or an external fist that
we could evolve outside of ourselves, as a physical extension of self, to be
much better than we could be as actual humans. But now we have these men-
tal augmentations, allowing us to store memories on our brains and our
essences in these devices.
Soon, perhaps, it will be impossible to tell where human ends and machines
begins.
Maureen McHugh has said soon that perhaps it may be impossible to tell where
humans end and machines begin. When you look at your online profile, is that
really you? Its a representation of you that can be acted on when youre not
there. But where do you end and the machine begins? The thing is that humans
and technology have coevolved with each other over time, being very very
cocreative. We have survived because of technology, and technology has sur-
vived because of us.
So, a traditional anthropologist goes out to another country and looks at the
natives and says, Hmm, how interesting their cultures are. How curious their
techniques. Look at these tools and these customs. And its all very much that
the anthropologist is an other person and they go back to whatever country
they came from and talk to people about these interesting people. But the
cyborg anthropologist looks at the the world around them and says, How curi-
ous these people are. They have these little devices in their pockets that cry,
and you have to pick them up, and you have to soothe them back to sleep. And
at night you have to plug them in and take care of them. And then every two
years they break down on you, so you have to get new devices.
So, these Macy meetings started in 1941, and they were about a bunch of sci-
entists and anthropologists coming together, realizing that technology is going
to be an extremely big deal in the future. And they tried to convince a bunch of
people of this. But it was very early on. Mainframe computers were barely get-
ting a start.
Cyborg Anthropology, Gary Lee Downey, Joseph Dumit, and Sarah Williams
If you take your eight years of pictures that you stored up in a laptop and actu-
ally print it out, this is what it would actually look like. This was a campaign for
Maxtor hard drives where they printed out eight years of somebodys photos.
Because its easier to put something in to a space than it is to take it out. So
were carrying around these kind of Mary Poppins bags, where we can take any-
thing out that we want.
So, when you start putting memories into a computer outside of yourself, you
start to have these hyperlinks memories. And what happens when you have
hyperlink memories is its not just thinking in your brain, Oh, where did I put
that memory? and you try to think of a word to trigger the memory. You have
to actually think of a word to trigger a memory. So for instance on your email
account if you want to find an email, you have to actually type that word
instead of just think about it in your brain.
This brings me to the idea of prosthetics and their discontents. We have all
these external prosthetic devices. And actually Freud this book called
Civilization and its Discontents, and he warned of this future in which we would
have ill-fitting prosthetics that were pretty good, but they werent all-the-time
good. And so we kind of as humans live in this mild dystopia. Its not a com-
plete dystopia world because if it was wed get very angry and revolt. But its
just mild enough that we have some complaints. So, whenever you have a
device and it freezes up on you. You know, your external bring freezing up on
you. Its a big problem.
One of the other problems is that your external brains last much shorter than
your actual brain does. So, it would last only for two years and then you have
to throw it out. And it makes big piles of junk. I mean, humans are very curious
creatures. They have all these external objects then they shed them just like
leaves of trees. But when a tree sheds its leaves, it makes room for new trees.
When we shed our technology, it makes room for more technology.
And the planet also has a bunch of junk around it. Theres about eight thousand
satellites up there that you can see on Google Earth. And only six hundred of
them are currently working. But these allow us to connect to each other and
talk to each other. So even our own planet has become a cyborg.
The other thing is that humans tend to make these kind of snail-like creatures
that they drive in, and theyre completely disconnected from each other when
theyre driving down the road. Theyre kind of like spaceships. You cant actu-
ally walk on a highway because youd get run over by a car. Its only for kind of
advanced cyborgs that want to extend themselves and go very fast. But the
problem is that when were stuck in cars were kind of on pause. Were
machines, and were not able to talk to each other even though were having
the same annoying experience of being in traffic.
So when the cell phone came out, it started connecting people in these isolated
environments. It started giving people something to do when they were on
pause, when they were hanging out in airports, when they were hanging in
these non-spaces where there were no friends and no family, where they kind
of felt like machines. In a way, it allowed them to be more human.
So, theres this idea of ambient intimacy that its not that youre connected to
everything all the time, but you always have the ability to connect to someone.
And if you were to look at all the people in your phone right now, it would prob-
ably look like this. All the people that you have access to right now in the tiny
machine that you hold in your hand via email, via Twitter, via Facebook, via any
of the other social networks that you have via your phone. Its like a tiny village
in your pocket that youre carrying around all the time. And even if youre in an
isolated place you can suddenly reach out and have contact with somebody.
So lets go into becoming a cyborg. Now kids have a kind of second self before
theyre even born, that they learn to deal with. But this self becomes more
important than your DNA. So people are going to grow up in this world where
this can act for you when youre not even there. People can click on you, your
secondary self, your online presence, without you being there. So you have this
ability to construct whatever you want it to be.
Just as you have to wash your hair in the morning and look presentable, you
have to do the same thing with your digital self. Theres a lot of people who for-
get to update their online status, and they feel guilty about it. And they say
say, Oh no, my status is old. And they keep worrying about their online pres-
ence and what it looks like. And this is going to become increasingly important,
your your presentation of self in digital life.
So, as you become more of cyborg, the the delineations between work and play
become more difficult to define. Reality is not always fun. You have to wait in
line, and you have to wait in traffic. Youre put on hold a lot. Youre doing these
very annoying things that humans shouldnt be doing, and sitting there in envi-
ronments in which humans shouldnt really be in. But suddenly theres this
layer on top of reality, where you can check in and you get a few points. And
you can rate reality. And you can make it so that you can have a good experi-
ence next time.
And the other thing is that you get accelerated rewards. Say you get four years
in college and you get out. And your reward is graduation. Say you know you
want a promotion and it takes you six months to a year to get a promotion. If
you play Farmville and you click on something, you get an immediate reward.
You get either some sort of point bonus, or something that makes you feel like
theres an interaction. And for a lot of people, the rewards in real life are slower
than the ones online. So theyre more attracted to these interfaces. And the
other thing is, if youre living in a small apartment and you dont have much
room to do something, you can be powerful in these environments and actually
do something. Its kind of a freeing thing to do.
So basically, these are kind of database games. Foursquare is not an app, its a
data entry game where youre entering place data and youre marking terri-
tory, just like a dog going to a street corner and marking their territory. And
then the other dogs can see where they are and whoevers the top dog. So, if
you check in on Foursquare enough, you become the top dog as well. Its a
very basic, animalistic game. But the whole time, this free service is collecting
data about places. Its become one of the most powerful place databases
because its put this little layer on top of reality and made it fun to do data
entry. And now people are just doing data entry all day for Foursquare for free.
Its the same thing with Facebook. Facebook is basically a spreadsheet game.
Spreadsheets have never been so interesting. You log on and it tells you what
happened in column A2 and cell 4B. And then you change cell 3, and then it
gives you points. And then somebody says, Oh, I really liked that, and sud-
denly you have this psychological feeling that youre actually worth something.
And you know, its not that you would have fifteen minutes of fame in your life-
time, but fifteen minutes of fame every day. You have to keep getting that in
order to feel human and connected.
So social grooming becomes this very important aspect of it, that when you
post something you expect a response. And you expect to be interacted with.
And if you dont it feels physiologically bad. And because our brains are very
good at not being on to these external spaces, we can actually feel these psy-
chological and physiological effects when were dealing with these virtual
spaces. This is virtual reality. Its two dimensions. But its just as good as hav-
ing a three-dimensional virtual reality with its effects on your brain. So work is
just badly-designed game play. And I think that in the future, work and play will
begin to merge more and more and more.
So lets talk about the future very quick. What will happen in future? Well, Mark
Weiser at PARC Research came up with this term called calm technology. And
the idea behind calm technology is it gets out of the way when you dont need
it. And when you need it, it comes back into play. And the other thing is that
actions, just your everyday life moving around, will trigger events. And basi-
cally these invisible interfaces will allow you to just do something and some-
thing else will be triggered instead of having to physically press a button or
mouse over to something and click on it. Just you living will cause these events
to happen.
Heres an example of calm technology. When you go to the tap and you get a
glass of water, it will show you what temperature the water is so you dont
have to put your hand under it and get burnt or feel that its cold. And it only
turns a color when youre actually using the faucet. So its actually a very use-
ful piece of technology. So this is an example of some calm technology.
So information should be pushed to you. You shouldnt have to go out and get
it. The idea behind this is that when you get to an airport and you need an
address of the place youre staying, it should come up and be pushed you just
on your device. You shouldnt have to be a digital paleontologist and go and dig
for it under the fifty other emails that you got. It should know where you are,
what youre doing, and then push that information to you. The idea is that the
robots on the other side are doing what machines do best, leaving you to be a
human and do what you do best.
Also, geonotes, the idea of a location-based reminder. That you can leave your
grocery list at the store and forget about it, and when you get to the grocery
store again get that list sent to you. Something as simple as that in everyday
life, just getting helped out by technology so you can store it and forget it. Your
brain doesnt have very good It doesnt float contextual memory. It doesnt
say, Okay, I remember that I need batteries now, because when you get to
the store, you need milk and you forgot the batteries. And you get home, your
flashlight never works, you never get the batteries that you need. So leaving
something in a location allows you to leave a message to your future self.
The idea is that your mobile phone is not really a phone, its set of sensors. And
these sensors are a miniature wearable computer that you have with you all
yet all the time. And theres a server up there that can compute things for you
and send back information to you. It has GPS and knows the time of day, it
knows how fast youre going. And this should be able to compute things for
you, and become effectively a remote control for reality.
So for instance, I have this setup in my house. When I get home, it automati-
cally checks me into my house because it knows that Im home, and then it
triggers the lights to turn on. And then when I leave, it triggers the lights to
turn off. And I never had to press a button the entire time. Just me being there
has triggered an invisible button. So I didnt have to press anything, I didnt
have to turn on the lights or remember to turn off the lights. And thats one
action I dont have to remember anymore. And thats something that that frees
up my mind to think about other things for a few seconds a day.
So the best technology is invisible. It just gets out of the way, lets you live your
life. And so the idea behind interfaces is the first interface was these big but-
tons. And if you wanted the buttons to do something different, youd have to
physically rewire the entire device. But, when the interface became liquid on a
screen, you could use software to reprogram those buttons. So it goes from
solid to liquid to air. So the next interface revolution is thisairjust doing
things and having things happen. Which is the idea behind ubiquitous comput-
ing, which is finally capable of being done because we have the Internet and
we have this whole database out there that allows us to compute in the air and
sent it to devices all over the place.
Pronto, tal vez, ser imposible decir dnde comienza fines humanos y
mquinas.
Maureen McHugh ha dicho antes que tal vez puede que sea imposible decir
dnde terminan los seres humanos y mquinas comienzan. Cuando nos fijamos
en su perfil en lnea, es que realmente usted? Es una representacin de ti que
se puede actuar cuando no ests all. Pero, dnde termina y comienza la
mquina? Lo que pasa es que los seres humanos y la tecnologa han co-
evolucionado con uno a lo largo del tiempo, siendo muy, muy co-creativa.
Hemos sobrevivido gracias a la tecnologa, y la tecnologa ha sobrevivido
gracias a nosotros.
Por lo tanto, estas reuniones Macy comenzaron en 1941, y que estaban a punto
un grupo de cientficos y antroplogos que se unen, al darse cuenta de que la
tecnologa va a ser una muy gran problema en el futuro. Y trataron de
convencer a un montn de gente de este. Pero era muy temprano.
computadores estaban recibiendo apenas un comienzo.
Hubo que esperar hasta 1992 para la antropologa cyborg ser una subseccin
real de la antropologa de la ciencia. As que vamos a hablar de la actualidad.
En la actualidad, tenemos estos dispositivos fuera de nosotros mismos, y nos
ayudan a comunicarnos unos con otros. Pero tambin, estamos llevando
alrededor de estos dispositivos que son ms grandes en el interior de lo que
son en el exterior. As que cada vez que llevas un ordenador porttil, que tiene
todo este espacio dentro de ella, y todo este espacio conectado a la nube, y
nunca se ven. Cada vez que se pone un archivo en un sistema, que no tiene el
equipo ms pesado. Aunque si se pone un archivo en un archivador, que hara
que el archivador mucho ms pesado.
Si usted toma sus ocho aos de imgenes que se almacenan en un ordenador
porttil y de hecho se imprima, esto es lo que en realidad se vera as. Esta fue
una campaa para discos duros Maxtor donde se imprimen ocho aos de fotos
de alguien. Debido a que es ms fcil de poner algo en un espacio de lo que es
para llevarlo a cabo. As que estamos llevando alrededor de este tipo de bolsas
de Mary Poppins, donde podemos tomar algo que queremos.
La otra cosa es que los seres humanos tienden a hacer este tipo de criaturas
de caracol que conducen, y que estn completamente desconectados entre s
cuando estn conduciendo por la carretera. Son algo as como naves
espaciales. Realidad no se puede caminar sobre una carretera porque habas
atropellado por un coche. Es slo para tipo de cyborgs avanzados que quieren
extender a s mismos e ir muy rpido. Pero el problema es que cuando estamos
atrapados en los coches que estamos en clase de pausa. Somos mquinas, y
no somos capaces de hablar entre s a pesar de que vamos a tener la misma
experiencia de ser molesto en el trfico.
Por lo tanto, no es esta idea de la intimidad del ambiente que no es que usted
est conectado con todo, todo el tiempo, pero siempre tienes la capacidad de
conectar con alguien. Y si usted fuera a mirar a todas las personas en su
telfono en este momento, probablemente sera as. Toda la gente que tiene
acceso a este momento en la pequea mquina que usted tiene en sus manos
a travs de correo electrnico, a travs de Twitter, a travs de Facebook, a
travs de cualquiera de las otras redes sociales que usted tiene a travs de su
telfono. Es como un pequeo pueblo en el bolsillo que est llevando alrededor
de todo el tiempo. E incluso si usted est en un lugar aislado, se puede llegar
de repente y tener contacto con alguien.
As que vamos a convertirse en un cyborg. Ahora los nios tienen una especie
de segundo yo antes de que sean siquiera hayan nacido, que aprendan a
tratar. Pero esta auto se convierte en ms importante que su ADN. As que la
gente va a crecer en este mundo donde esto puede actuar en su nombre
cuando no ests ah. Las personas pueden hacer clic en usted, su auto
secundaria, su presencia en lnea, sin que usted est all. Por lo que tiene esta
capacidad de construir lo que quiera que sea.
Al igual que usted tiene que lavarse el pelo por la maana y presentable, usted
tiene que hacer lo mismo con su yo digital. Hay una gran cantidad de personas
que se olvidan de actualizar su estado en lnea, y se sienten culpables por ello.
Y dicen que dicen, "Oh, no, mi estado es viejo." Y siguen preocuparse por su
presencia en lnea y lo que parece. Y esto va a ser cada vez ms importante, su
presentacin de s mismo en la vida digital.
As que, como usted hace ms de cyborg, las delineaciones los entre trabajo y
juego cada vez ms difcil de definir. La realidad no siempre es divertido. Usted
tiene que esperar en la cola, y usted tiene que esperar en el trfico. Ests pone
en espera mucho. Lo ests haciendo estas cosas muy molestas que los
humanos no deberan estar haciendo, y sentado all en entornos en los que los
seres humanos no deben ser realmente. Pero de repente hay esta capa en la
parte superior de la realidad, donde se puede comprobar en y se obtiene una
algunos puntos. Y se puede evaluar la realidad. Y usted puede hacerlo de modo
que usted puede tener una buena experiencia la prxima vez.
Y la otra cosa es que se obtiene recompensas acelerados. Digamos que tienes
cuatro aos en la universidad y salir. Y su recompensa es la graduacin.
Digamos que usted sabe que quiere una promocin y que te lleva seis meses a
un ao para obtener una promocin. Si juega Farmville y hace clic en algo, se
obtiene una recompensa inmediata. Se obtiene ya sea una especie de punto de
bonificacin, o algo que te hace sentir como que hay una interaccin. Y para
mucha gente, las recompensas en la vida real son ms lentos que los de lnea.
Por lo que son ms atrados por estas interfaces. Y la otra cosa es, si usted est
viviendo en un apartamento pequeo y no tiene mucho espacio para hacer
algo, puede ser de gran alcance en estos ambientes y en realidad hacer algo.
Es una especie de una cosa que hacer liberacin.
As que la informacin debe ser empujado a usted. Usted no debera tener que
salir y conseguirlo. La idea detrs de esto es que cuando se llega a un
aeropuerto y necesita una direccin del lugar donde ests, debe venir y ser
empujado a que slo en su dispositivo. No hace falta que sea un paleontlogo
digital y ir a buscar por debajo de los otros cincuenta mensajes de correo
electrnico que recibi. Debe saber dnde se encuentra, lo que est haciendo,
y luego empujar esa informacin para usted. La idea es que los robots en el
otro lado estn haciendo lo que mejor hacen las mquinas, dejando a ser un
ser humano y hacer lo que mejor sabe hacer.
As que la entrada del usuario ambiente es una manera de hacer esto, basado
en su ubicacin, basado en el historial de ubicaciones, usted conduce o camina
ms a menudo, basado en la hora del da, sobre la base de las acciones previas
o lo que sea que haces en una red, puede determinar qu enviar a usted.
Adems, en lugar de esperar a que alguien en la esquina de la calle cuando
van a recoger usted debera ser capaz de ver en tiempo real llega en su
telfono. Porque hay toda esta incertidumbre en torno a la ms simple de las
cosas, que se rene a alguien. Usted no quiere slo tiene que esperar a que
alguien durante veinte minutos. Pero si saba dnde estaban, que no tendra al
texto de ida y vuelta diciendo: "Voy a llegar tarde. Voy en camino. Oh no, me
qued atrapado en el trfico. Oh, acabo de dejar mi casa. Oh, estoy a cinco
minutos. "Debido a que en el momento en que sucedi, alguien est alrededor
de la manzana conseguir un bagel o algo as.
As, por ejemplo, tengo esta configuracin en mi casa. Cuando llego a casa, me
comprueba automticamente en mi casa porque sabe que estoy en casa, y
luego se dispara las luces para encender. Y luego, cuando me vaya, que
provoca que las luces se apagarn. Y nunca he tenido que presionar un botn
todo el tiempo. Me acaba de estar all ha desencadenado un botn invisible. As
que yo no tenga que pulsar nada, yo no tena que encender las luces o
recordar a apagar las luces. Y esa es una accin que no tengo que recordar
ms. Y eso es algo que que libera mi mente para pensar en otras cosas durante
unos segundos al da.