The Body Electric: elag, Penelope Complex and other epathologies

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The Body Electric e-lag, Penelope Complex and
other e-pathologies

• Derrick de Kerckhove
• McLuhan Program
• Faculty of Information Studies
• University of Toronto

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Three eras
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The telegraph a marriage between language and
electricity
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The technobiology of electricity

• Electricity is both within and without the human
  body (CNS projected outside)
• In the analogue mode, electricity emulates
  muscular functions of the body
• In the digital mode, it emulates cognition
• All digital appliances are extensions of our
  senses and our communications capabilities
• Some of them such as the cell phone bring the
  electric grid back to the body

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The technobiology of wirelessness

• Wireless means permanent, ubiquitous access to
  all our extensions
• The cellular phone spells the integration of the
  whole world within the personal body space of the
  user
• Wearable computing heralds the quasi
  internalization of this process
• Cyborgism (techno-romanticism)

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Three cyborgs
Steve Mann
Stelarc
Kevin Warwick
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The body electric
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The body electric

• An augmented body
• Fuzzy boundaries
• With Wi-Fi, total interconnectivity
• Restructuring our sensory life
• Changing our use of time and space
• A bionic condition

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Date   Sun, 21 Mar 2004 185153 0000
Subject Francesco From   roy
ltroy.ascott_at_btinternet.comgt To     ltd.dekerckhov
e_at_utoronto.cagt

• DerrickDisaster struck last week a critical
  crash corrupted/erased all my email files. Im
  back online now but it put things out
  slightly.Francesco Monico might like to get in
  touch with me directly. The Planetary Collegium
  website is up and running and should explain
  things pretty thoroughly -  but of course I can
  clarify any uncertainties, as well as making sure
  there would be a good fit between the area he
  wants to research and the expertise etc we have
  to offer.Best wishesRoy______________________
  ____________________ Professor Roy Ascott
• DirectorThe Planetary CollegiumUniversity of
  PlymouthPlymouth PL4 8AAUnited Kingdom44
  (0)796714871944 (0)1752 232558http//www.planet
  ary-collegium.net

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New bionic ailments

• Not talking about clinical issues, e.g.
  radiations re cell-phones, eyesight and migraine
  problems re overuse of screen, back-aches re
  bad ergonomics of PCs
• Not talking about what happens to the technology
  itself (obsolescence, breakdowns, spam, viruses,
  black-outs)
• Only about what happens to us as we use such an
  intimate array of technologies

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Addictions

• Whatever it is, once you are hooked, you can no
  more live without it
• PC (as in chained to my PC)
• Cellular phone
• E-mail
• Wi-Fi
• SMS
• Social Software (LinkedIn, Orkut)
• Games
• Blogs
• Chats

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Symptoms of Internet addiction

• 1) Using the online services everyday without any
  skipping.2) Loosing track of time after making a
  connection.3) Going out less and less.4)
  Spending less and less time on meals at home or
  at work, and eats in front of the monitor.5)
  Denying spending too much time on the Net.6)
  Others complaining of your spending too much time
  in front of the monitor.7) Checking on your
  mailbox too many times a day.8) Thinking you
  have got the greatest web site in the world and
  dying to give people your URL.9) Logging onto
  the Net while already busy at work.10) Sneaking
  online when spouse or family members not at home,
  with a sense of relief.
• Occupational impairment due to Internet
  Addiction

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Anxieties

• E-lag guilt of not having answered tons of
  e-mail
• Fear of virus attack
• Passworditis
• Fear of giving out card numbers
• Broadband anxiety

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Depressions

• Weathering down-time and
• Lack of connectivity
• Loss of self-confidence to decreasing e-mail
• Information-overload from increasing e-mail
• Losing unsaved content to unpredictable crashes

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Phobias

• Cyberphobia
• Cyberphobia is the fear of computers. This term
  was coined in 1985 as an aversion or anxiety
  caused by technology (Harris). A Dell Computer
  study shows 55 of people have some fear of
  technology. 36 of office computer users feel
  their skill levels are inadequate.
• Technophobia
• Technostress
• Matrix

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Fear of Matrix

• Fear real-life Matrix will be monitoring you By
  MADELEINE BARANDAILY NEWS WRITER
• The Matrix has arrived. The most massive database
  surveillance program in history, the Multistate
  Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange could soon
  offer authorities extensive information on the
  lives of New Yorkers.
• Potentially more information than they'd ever
  expect past addresses and phone numbers
  marriage and divorce records arrest records
  real estate information photographs of neighbors
  and business associates car make, model and
  color hunting and fishing licenses and more.
  Much more.

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Contaminations

• Viruses were invented in the early 1980s, and
  while historians differ in their opinions as to
  which was first, it may have been Cloner, a 1981
  Apple II virus whose only symptom was that it
  occasionally displayed a poem onscreen. Shortly
  thereafter, researcher Fred Cohen published a
  technical paper called "Computer Viruses-Theory
  and Experiments," and by 1986 a number of new
  viruses were starting to appear "in the wild," as
  computer security experts like to say.Virtually
  all of these viruses were spread by the
  relatively inefficient means of floppy disks.
  Computers in which many different floppy disks
  were used-as in campus computer centers-tended to
  be the centers of contagion. It was not until the
  IBM Christmas virus (which probably spurred this
  NEWSWEEK story) that an infection was seen
  actively spreading through a network-in this
  case, IBM's worldwide collection of mainframes.
• Spam
• Cookies

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Obsessive-compulsive behaviors

• Owning the latest equipment, the highest
  performance (My CPU is bigger than yours)
• Wi-Finitis
• Googlis
• File-saving

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Neuroses

• Fear of invasion of privacy
• Penelope Complex
• DDD (Deletion Deficit Disorder)
• Surfing for symptoms

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Spam rage

• Spam rage drives some e-mailers to extremes By
  Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
• SAN FRANCISCO Charles Booher was so mad, he did
  what others have longed to do He told a spammer
  to stop or else. But the Silicon Valley tech
  worker went too far, prosecutors say. Last year,
  he allegedly threatened to shoot and torture an
  employee of a Canadian company that spammed him,
  court documents say.
• The testicular cancer survivor was especially
  enraged at spam touting penis enlargements, he
  says.

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Identity crises

• Emigration of mind from head to screen
• Digital persona
• Blogger
• Gender bending
• Anonymous poking or pseudos handles

Mark Ngui
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Partial or total lobotomies

• Hard-disk loss (who keeps back-up anyway)
• Unexplained and sudden crashes at the most
  interesting moment
• Wipe-out of whole directories (Eudora)
• Your system may need reconfiguring, but so do
  you
• A stressful condition

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How can we deal with it ?

• Guru meditation 787848798478794
• Is there a tecchie in the house ?
• Hope (for an improved round of technology, i.e.,
  XP over Millennium)

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Do we need a new specialization in psychotherapy

• Adding to the Bios program

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What is health in the Digital Era ?

• Total, ubiquitous, broadband, always on, mobile
  access
• Change of self-image (body-image)
• Change of scale
• Change of physical distribution
• Change of time (macro and micro scales)

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In the electric age, we wear all mankind as our
skin
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Estienne 1545
Estienne 1545
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Vesalius 1543
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Spieghel 1627
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Mascagni 1823
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Brödel c.1910
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Wishart c.1930
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OUTS
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We shape our tools and
thereafter, our tools shape us Marshall McLuhan
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Whatever Stelarc is looking at goes on line for
anyone to see
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Stelarc connects his CNS to someone elses via
the www
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Warwick implants sensors for contextual cues from
the environment