Birthing pains: How cyborgs refigure medical bodies, technologies, and objectives

Cyborgs are polymorphic and not yet visibly different from humans in part because cyborgic technologies have just been developed, in part because we are not trained to see how the post human arises. The birth of cyborgs alters the core of medicine from disease-containment and death-assessment to enhancement of function and image, to transgression of previous natural bounds as established by the possibility of space and oceanic travel. Cyborgs, as postmodern/ posthuman products of medicine, make visible the current shift in the construction of medical bodies, technologies, and objectives. Medical bodies have been determined by a conception of patienthood or diseased body. The connection of body and disease as distinct species happened in the medical enclosure: the hospital-clinic, during mid-late 19th century. In the hospital-clinic, the medical body has been clearly mapped in terms of disease identity or malfunction, and it has encountered medical technologies used to aid in diagnosis. The patient-doctor relationship has shifted because of the revolution in instrumentation at the turn of the century. Another shift can be discerned, as it is again mirrored in the relations of doctor-patient, as it has been re-structured through cyberspace and expert systems. Clearly, the revolution or scientification of medicine has been fueled by the tuberculosis crisis as it challenged medical and political institutions. A similar crisis has occurred with AIDS: is cyborg-technology the fulfillment of the modem dream of immortality and total control in the face of the epidemic? An easy answer to such question cannot be produced. Cyborgs are a product of the meeting of natural and human sciences through cybernetics. Their existence and proliferation destabilize assumptions at the philosophical foundations of knowledge and medicine as well as our conceptions of identity and rights, through an unsettling of the connection between community-individuality, of the distinction between private and public domains

Beyond Disability: Extraordinary Bodies in the Work of William Gibson

This dissertation conceptualizes figurations of disability in the work of contemporary U.S.-American writer William Gibson arguing that there is a distinct development in the representation of the manner and effect of corporeality from the Sprawl to the Bigend trilogy. In the Sprawl trilogy, prosthetic repair and rehabilitation are depicted as a common cultural practice, whereas in the Bigend trilogy the medical cure of the characters’ “deficiencies” for purposes of normative alignment is no longer a desired measure. By adopting a disability studies framework, I argue that this transition is not primarily related to a shift in genre, which does exist, but instead that it is motivated by a changing attitude toward the “broken” body that seeks restoration. A main concern of this book is, therefore, to understand the formal qualities of Gibson’s writing with regard to the forms and functions of the disabled figure, and to further demonstrate how this literary style and underlying ideology changes in parallel with the advancement of cultural conceptions of disability. This thesis distinguishes two major shifts over the course of the novels, one on the level of genre and the other on the conceptual level. I show how Gibson’s depiction of characters draws increasingly on a processual understanding of the human body, and decreasingly on traditional prosthetic technologies. This conceptual trajectory from prostheses to processes corresponds with the genre-specific shift in Gibson’s work that I classify as one from technoromanticism to new realism. The analysis is methodologically met with a theoretical triad that feeds on the socio-historical developments of the concept of disability, drawing specifically on the theory of intersectionality, new materialism, and actor-network theory

Wright State University\u27s Symposium of Student Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities from Thursday, October 26, 2023

The student abstract booklet is a compilation of abstracts from students\u27 oral and poster presentations at Wright State University\u27s Symposium of Student Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities on October 26, 2023.https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/celebration_abstract_books/1001/thumbnail.jp

A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.

This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM. PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer. The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used. The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are discussed

Reducing risk in pre-production investigations through undergraduate engineering projects.

This poster is the culmination of final year Bachelor of Engineering Technology (B.Eng.Tech) student projects in 2017 and 2018. The B.Eng.Tech is a level seven qualification that aligns with the Sydney accord for a three-year engineering degree and hence is internationally benchmarked. The enabling mechanism of these projects is the industry connectivity that creates real-world projects and highlights the benefits of the investigation of process at the technologist level. The methodologies we use are basic and transparent, with enough depth of technical knowledge to ensure the industry partners gain from the collaboration process. The process we use minimizes the disconnect between the student and the industry supervisor while maintaining the academic freedom of the student and the commercial sensitivities of the supervisor. The general motivation for this approach is the reduction of the entry cost of the industry to enable consideration of new technologies and thereby reducing risk to core business and shareholder profits. The poster presents several images and interpretive dialogue to explain the positive and negative aspects of the student process

A review of the effectiveness of lower limb orthoses used in cerebral palsy

To produce this review, a systematic literature search was conducted for relevant articles published in the period between the date of the previous ISPO consensus conference report on cerebral palsy (1994) and April 2008. The search terms were 'cerebral and pals* (palsy, palsies), 'hemiplegia', 'diplegia', 'orthos*' (orthoses, orthosis) orthot* (orthotic, orthotics), brace or AFO

Disentangling the Posthuman: Broadening Perspectives of Human/Machine Mergers through Inter-relational Subjectivity

In the conclusion of How We Became Posthuman, N. Katharine Hayles states that the terror of posthumanism comes from its dual connotation of superseding the human and coming after it, implying that the days of being human are coming to an end. Certain branches of posthuman discourse suggest that the intersection of humans and advanced technologies has already resulted in the dissolution of essentialist understandings of the human to make way for the posthuman. While some theorists interpret this emergence as marking the human’s fall and subsequent rise as a transcendent being imbued with technological adornments, others rightly see it as the disbanding of the human of Enlightenment philosophy. Yet as this dissertation argues, even iterations of posthuman thought that attempt to reject anthropological and sociocultural essentialisms inadvertently re-affirm humanist ideologies. This is mainly due to normative and dogmatic ideas about technology’s place in the human world that frame it as dehumanizing and oppositional on the one hand, or transcendent and empowering on the other. In both cases, the human/technology relationship is pre-coded by the assumption that technology gesticulates a dislodging of “natural” human purity, which encourages the fear that human agency predicated on self-possession is at risk. Engaging with the works of Hayles, Rosi Braidotti and Karen Barad, I propose that agency is not something one possesses, but an outcome of entanglements where identity is formed when the subject recognizes difference over assimilation. My contention is that humans typically approach potential connections with technologies as opportunities to extend the individual unitary self, rather than exploring the self as open, incomplete and always emerging. When technology is perpetually seen as an intrusive addition to the human, a false dichotomy develops where authentic self-representation is endangered by technological mediation. As well, the rhetoric that technology possesses the power to make us “more human” (Case 2010; Hauskellar 2013; Taylor 2011; Casey 2013) frames it as a vehicle with which the normative able-bodied human elevates its control over the world. Thus, in response to the increasing demonization of communication technologies, my critique of digital abstinence initiatives reveals the ableist, racist and classist underpinnings that discount the varied ways all humans entangle with artifacts to participate in subject-making. Rather than theorizing how posthumanism represents the promises of technological extension, I evaluate the underlying exclusions that assign certain humans as lacking and needing improvement. Building on Braidotti’s ethics of becoming and the movement from a unitary to nomadic subject, my conception of “inclusive posthumanism” disengages from the idea that the human’s purpose is to progress. By rejecting individualism and self-interest to promote a larger inter-relationality with other human and non-human artifacts, I see the inclusive posthuman as an opportunity to theorize subjectivity as a decentralization of the human’s role within a larger system. This both recognizes the human’s importance without implying its obliteration, and offers constitutions of a collective self that is uncovered through chance encounters

Translations of culture and identity : a study of Internet use in the Haitian community

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-95).Despite the reality of the digital divide, over the years many bridges have been built over this chasm; diverse people of diverse backgrounds, cultures and countries utilize computers and their inherent technologies. One of the communities that use the Internet is the Haitian community. A detailed study on what the Haitian community - citizens and those of the Diaspora - finds in the Internet, what they make of this tool and how they relate its possibilities to themselves will reveal a profusion of information about both the Haitian culture and about the Internet. This ethnographic research will shed light on how useful the Internet is to this particular community. These findings may be used to engineer design that is more specific to the needs of this community. This 'culturized' study is presented through the lens of theoretical frameworks that view the user as playing a dominant role in defining the nature, scope and functions of the technology. This research hopes to focus on users and the way in which they shape the Internet media to have meaning in their everyday life and culture. The research examines the way in which the role of the technology is shaped within the domestic environment - how it is manipulated to compliment existing patterns of behavior and routine. The purpose of this research is to ask what domestic Internet users do with their media and how they construct it as meaningful in the existing network of everyday life. A qualitative approach has been adopted, which prioritizes the role of the user.by Johanne A. Blain.S.M