Re-assembling the cyborg:an exploration of the analytical and emancipatory potentials of cyborg diseases

Our existence is increasingly entangled with modern technology. As technologies evolve, our human-technology cyborgs are stuck in a cycle of reterritorialization and coding. The ailments of the technology and those of the human were our concern however; we ignored the diseases of cyborgs as a fluid ontology. In this paper, we aim to develop a pathological analysis of cyborgs. We conceptualise the diseases of cyborg as lines of flights that create windows of opportunity for de-stratifying and reterritorializing cyborg configurations. To do this, we use the case of “Maladox”, a speculative design work by one of the authors, investigating our entanglements with modern technology through a conceptual development of cyborg diseases. First, we discuss the role that the idea of sickness played in framing of human-technology interactions. Our focus is on how technology codifies our bodies (Svenaeus, 2013) and our ideas of self. We then extend Haravay’s notion of cyborgs and reflect on its ailments from a Deleuzian perspective. We apply the notion of body-without organs to analyse “Maladox” and further develop the notion of cyborg diseases. Finally, we expand on the critical/emancipatory potential of cyborg diseases as short-lived moments when a new cyborg ethics and reconfigurations can come about

There's rue for you, and here's some for me

Here, we explore the notions of streams and streaming; processes such as datafication, new time space configurations and their effects on us and our bodies through tragedies of Hamlet and Narcissus. The stratification of time and experience contributed towards overcoding of self-identity and self-awareness, imagination, un/consciousness, perceptions and the expectations of individuals. Capitalist processes of double articulation from one side codified our senses through unification of time and experience. From the other side, a second articulation transformed time and space into a new flow of digital streaming through reterritorialization of time-space topologies by intensifying data streams. Streams are a “set of operations that regulate space-time through the cybernetic feedback loop.”. Loop and feedback loops are one of the most common exercises of power.We start by examining the important epistemic role tragedies can play in-forming our understanding of our entanglements with technology. We then discuss streams and their effects by revisiting the experiences of Ophelia and her body in the stream, its conscious and unconsciousness state, pain and her death. Second, we mobilize the tragedy of Narcissus and draw comparisons between biological and digital ontologies of streams and suggest techniques to ‘trouble the waters of’/ challenge existing digital streams

Disrupting surveillance: critical software design-led practice to obfuscate and reveal surveillance economies and knowledge monopolies

Big data collection, behavioural economics and targeted advertisement are changing the dynamics and notions of our individuality and societies. By mobilising critical design methods, I made a series of critical design works to reveal and disrupt surveillance and knowledge monopolies. The aim of this practice-led investigation is to challenge surveillance and knowledge practices within internet search and advertising industries and through this contribute to surveillance debates and critical design practice. The four critical design practices that I developed during the course of this investigation namely Zaytoun, Philodox, Maladox and Open Bubble all interrogate humans’ relations to technology and more specifically their transformations as objects and subjects of surveillance capitalism. Zaytoun challenges notions of data consumption, quantification and distancing. Philodox reveals and critiques some trust issues and algorithmic biases of internet search engines. Maladox, is an anatomical engine of fictional speculative cyborg dis-eases, creating a critical space to reconsider our relationship to technology. Finally, Open Bubble is a counter surveillance browser extension that obfuscates and challenges knowledge enclosures imposed by search engines. Based on a review of philosophy of technology and especially as it relates to Science and Technology Studies (STS), I reflect on some of the underlying conditions that made possible the existence of modern technology in its current form. I analyse the contextual background of this body of work and its take on technology as a central lever for governance and for shaping of human subjects. This thesis investigates the taken for granted ways our interactions with surveillance capitalism infrastructures are transforming our individual and collective beings and in turn the new cyborg ontologies that we are being integrated into. The four critical design works included in this investigation offer alternative possibilities for critical engagement with, and interpretation of, big data and the algorithmic manipulations we are subjected to. This thesis attempts to take the below contributions to the theoretical developments around governmentality, surveillance capitalism, but also to critical design and design informatics. I develop ideas aiming at moving from humans and subjectivity as the nexus for governance towards attention to the cyborg as the emerging central site for both governance and resistance. Furthermore, through my practices I illustrate the importance of non-visual relations to audiences be it through touch or hearing in opening up spaces for questioning and resistance. I believe attention to the sensory dynamics of the experience and resistance have strong potentials for contributing to the debates around resistance within governance regimes. Furthermore, this thesis brings attention to the micro processes & software codes and algorithms that enable surveillance capitalism and engages in exercises aiming at disrupting them. I believe such detailed work focused on the ways humans interact with internet-based regimes of surveillance is a much-needed complement to the already well-developed critiques of institutions and structures of surveillance capitalism. Concerning critical design, my works bring attention to the role of spatial configuration of the works in conditioning the users’ rhythm, intensity and span of engagement with the work. In addition, I believe my practices and my theoretical developments around them open possibilities for new reflections on different forms of satire and laughter and how they can be situated in users’ experiences with critical design work

GeoCoin

Emerging digital infrastructures such as cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers and smart contracts are gaining more attention within Design and HCI research. These complex assemblages of technologies bring unquestioned benefits, but also new uncertainties and failures. Whilst many users and individuals have heard of or used cryptocurrencies and smart contracts, understanding, ideating and innovating with such technologies is a complex process and requires a range of knowledge and skills not easily accessible to many users. In this work, we created a platform to facilitate development and experimentation with location-based smart contracts. <br/

GeoCoin:supporting ideation and collaborative design with location-based smart contracts

Design and HCI researchers are increasingly working with complex digital infrastructures, such as cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers and smart contracts. These technologies will have a profound impact on digital systems and their audiences. However, given their emergent nature and technical complexity, involving non-specialists in the design of applications that employ these technologies is challenging. In this paper, we discuss these challenges and present GeoCoin, a location-based platform for embodied learning and speculative ideating with smart contracts. In collaborative workshops with GeoCoin, participants engaged with location-based smart contracts, using the platform to explore digital `debit' and `credit' zones in the city. These exercises led to the design of diverse distributed-ledger applications, for time-limited financial unions, participatory budgeting, and humanitarian aid. These results contribute to the HCI community by demonstrating how an experiential prototype can support understanding of the complexities behind new digital infrastructures and facilitate participant engagement in ideation and design processes

Designing new socio-economic imaginaries

This short paper recovers the term ‘imaginaries’ which is often used in the social sciences to describe a meaning system that frames individuals lived experience of an inordinately complex world. The paper goes on to reflect on the extent to which design has the capability to disrupt imaginaries through the development of products in order for people to construct new ones, or whether the discipline is perpetuating old models of the world. The paper uses a workshop method to explore socioeconomic models in order to better balance the multiple imaginaries that participants hold with the opportunity to design disruptive and critical propositions. Reflections upon the workshop and the concept of imaginaries allows the authors to identify a challenge for design in which it must accept its role as mediator and exacerbator. <br/

FinBook: literary content as digital commodity

This short essay explains the significance of the FinBook intervention, and invites the reader to participate. We have associated each chapter within this book with a financial robot (FinBot), and created a market whereby book content will be traded with financial securities. As human labour increasingly consists of unstable and uncertain work practices and as algorithms replace people on the virtual trading floors of the worlds markets, we see members of society taking advantage of FinBots to invest and make extra funds. Bots of all kinds are making financial decisions for us, searching online on our behalf to help us invest, to consume products and services. Our contribution to this compilation is to turn the collection of chapters in this book into a dynamic investment portfolio, and thereby play out what might happen to the process of buying and consuming literature in the not-so-distant future. By attaching identities (through QR codes) to each chapter, we create a market in which the chapter can ‘perform’. Our FinBots will trade based on features extracted from the authors’ words in this book: the political, ethical and cultural values embedded in the work, and the extent to which the FinBots share authors’ concerns; and the performance of chapters amongst those human and non-human actors that make up the market, and readership. In short, the FinBook model turns our work and the work of our co-authors into an investment portfolio, mediated by the market and the attention of readers. By creating a digital economy specifically around the content of online texts, our chapter and the FinBook platform aims to challenge the reader to consider how their personal values align them with individual articles, and how these become contested as they perform different value judgements about the financial performance of each chapter and the book as a whole. At the same time, by introducing ‘autonomous’ trading bots, we also explore the different ‘network’ affordances that differ between paper based books that’s scarcity is developed through analogue form, and digital forms of books whose uniqueness is reached through encryption. We thereby speak to wider questions about the conditions of an aggressive market in which algorithms subject cultural and intellectual items – books – to economic parameters, and the increasing ubiquity of data bots as actors in our social, political, economic and cultural lives. We understand that our marketization of literature may be an uncomfortable juxtaposition against the conventionally-imagined way a book is created, enjoyed and shared: it is intended to be

Smartphone applications designed to improve older people’s chronic pain management:an integrated systematic review

(1) Background: Older people’s chronic pain is often not well managed because of fears of side-effects and under-reporting. Telehealth interventions, in the form of smartphone applications, are attracting much interest in the management of chronic diseases, with new and evolving approaches in response to current population demographics. However, the extent to which telehealth interventions may be used to promote and effect the self-management of chronic pain is not established. (2) Aim: To provide an objective review of the existing quantitative and qualitative evidence pertaining to the benefits of smartphone applications for the management of chronic pain in older people. (3) Methods: A literature search was undertaken using PubMed, Medline, CINAHL, Embase, PsychINFO, the Cochrane database, Science Direct and references of retrieved articles. The data were independently extracted by two reviewers from the original reports. (4) Results: This integrative systematic review identified 10 articles considering smartphone applications related to self-management of chronic pain among older adults. (5) Conclusions: It is important for future research to not only examine the effects of smartphone initiatives, but also to compare their safety, acceptability, efficacy and cost–benefit ratio in relation to existing treatment modalities.</p