Cyborg Theory

This page is a stub, and a gateway for the development of more content. Please contribute!

It seems reasonable that we create a space in this wiki to discuss less concrete aspects and cyborg-related questions. I initiate this page in part because I'm a huge geek for these questions, and in part because I think that having actual separation between the theoretical and the concrete will allow more rigorous integration between theory, and practice. And I'm assuming that by sort of thinking about that kind of high-level integration we'll be able to get a product that is more valuable in the long run, particularly as practices and technologies continue to change and develop. See also: Practices

I've attempted to compile a the beginnings of a bibliography in ?BibTeX format of sources that might be useful in this context. If you have additions, please do add them to the file, or give me a link or citation and I'd be more than happy to add it for you. The bibliography is at the following URL: http://www.cyborginstitute.com/wiki/resources.bib

Some of the big, higher level, theoretical questions are:

How does "cloud computing" or ?InfrastructuralTechnology change the nature of the cyborg instance, or does it?

Is freedom in the ?CyborgMoment (CyborgFreedom?) the same thing (or connected to) SoftwareFreedom, or must we rethink the way that people experience freedom and ?self-actualize?

What defines the ?CyborgMoment?

What does progress look like? Are we trending toward a ?singularity, or is current technological development "progressing" no faster than it always has. Is the ?SingularityApproachingQuickly or is the ?SingularityApproachingSlowly? Or is the ?SingularityTheWrongIdea?

(et cetera)

(Intital page draft by tychoish)

I'm also moving the "cyberculture" section here as a move towards consolidating a lot of crap that I put here.

Cyberculture

Cyborgs don't exist in a vacuum, technology, particularly in the age of the Internet, the ways that technology, computers, and networks mediate social relationships, is as important (if not more so) than the ways that technology mediates human behavior.

This is mostly a truism these days. We've been talking about social computing and "social networking," for years now, and indeed the topics most relevant to a discussion of cyberculture are simply additional dimensions to the kinds of practices, systems, and theory that other areas of this wiki focuses on.

The ?open source development methodology is--when most successful--a social endeavour, that has found success in ?Network Mediated contexts, and free software certainly has its origins in the "?meatspace" environments of academic computer science.

Virtual communities seem to be defined by:

1. "Where they gather," which is to say, comunities that center on a particular community, website, network or service. ?SocialNetworking sites, ?IRC channels, ?twitter, ?LiveJournal, ?c2Wiki, ?Wikipedia.

2. "What they talk about," for example: ?fandom, ?HackerCulture, ?TopicalNiches like parenting, crafts, consumer electronics/gadgets, poetry, academica, etc.

3. "What technology they use," with regards to blogs, wikis, microblogging (eg. twitter, identi.ca), IRC/Chat, webfourms.