Newstory Reflection, by Ashley Wong

The Body Electric

This news feature talks about the views of Steve Mann, who is a cyborg, on human-technology relationship. Why cyborg? And what’s his invention?

Steve is a professor of engineering at the University of Toronto and a devoted techno-futurist. In his young age, he was already invented a WearComp (a series of wearable computer devices). He is used to attach this electronic device such Eye Tap to his body (a camera attached to his head). We can define that when he attaches electronic devices to his body, he is already a cyborg, which contains both biological and artificial parts.

Steve’s behavior is interesting me. According to the news article, he wore the WearCam when giving talk at Universities. What the camera recorded at that moment which would project onto screen and audiences could see what he drew at the desk through the projection. He points out that is “a deeper identification with another person”, which means it was a different way to connect with audiences and they can “become” him to see what he sees exactly.

We can see that what he does is confusing the boundaries of body and machine – neither fully human nor fully machine. I think he was not just combining the camera and body, but controlled what audience saw and how the world or reality was represented.

Is it weird? In my opinion, it is quite interesting. It makes me think of JenniCAM. In the case, Jenny set a cam in her room. People can see her daily life in her room through the online cam in her blog. I think the difference between Steve and Jenny is Jenny is both the object and subject in her cam, but Steve is the director and monitor behind the cam. We see what Steve look at this world through his eye cam and see the daily life and what Jenny do in her room. Even they are also control what we can see through the cam, Steve brings a new perspective to us. He arouses the attention of why we have to rely on technology but not aversely monitor them?

With the development of technology, we used to use it and somehow rely on them. Steve fears our ability to communicate with other will be suppressed as we are living in a panopticon. Hence, he created the WearComp in order to “reclaim our individual and collective freedoms”. After reading this news article, I have a question: Is human now controlling technology (machine) or technology controlling us? Just like the example in the article: if you receive a Microsoft Word document, you have to buy and learn Windows and Word. So how does the technology affect our society? What are the relationship between human & technology in the future?

Here's the video from YouTube: Steve explains the Eye Tap




Source: http://thevarsity.ca/articles/44525