by Diana Saco Guest Presentation to the Seminar on Approaches to Knowledge and Truth: Ways of Knowing DSSC 8111 University of Minnesota May 5, 2000

Why "Netting the Body"?

A Distinction: The Body and Embodiment
An Interface: [City of Bits] 3. Cyborg Citizens (if link fails, click here for cached page)
Bodies in Space

Netting the Body, therefore, is about Ways of Knowing "the Body"/bodies as both object and subject of knowledge -- as effects of a combination of inscribing and incorporating practices at the interface between physical space and cyberspace.
 

Digitally Writing the Body

The Net is a virtual repository for electronic texts about "the body."

The Net, however, is also more than this. Digital technologies and computer-mediated communication also help create new ways of knowing the body.
William Gibson and The National Library of Medicine: The Body as Meat
Simulations
 

Embodying the Technology

The first electronic computer -- the ENIAC -- was an enormous mainframe filled with tens of thousands of vacuum tubes and occupying a room measuring 1500 sq. ft. The development of transitors and microprocessors helped miniaturize the electronic components needed for computing. Fifty years after the development of the ENIAC, researchers at University of Pennsylvania commemorated the anniversary by reproducing the computational power of the ENIAC on a chip less than 40 sq. mm. in size.

This miniaturization enabled the development of personal computers, sized in relation, first, to regions near the individual body -- i.e., desktops -- and then to regions on the individual body -- i.e., the laptop and the hand-held computer.

The content has been primarily audio-visual in nature, but researchers are developing new ways of incorporating the sense of touch, moving from a WYSIWYG interface ("What You See Is What You Get") to a WYSIWYF interface ("What You See Is What You Feel").

 Human-Machine Interface Lab
 Haptics
 What Is...haptics (a definition)

The next generation of computers will occupy spaces inside the individual body.

Chemical Computers
 UCLA, Hewlett-Packard Report on Chemical Computers
 Hewlett-Packard Labs Worldwide - News

Cybernetic Implants and Intelligent Buildings
 BBC News | Sci/Tech | Technology gets under the skin
 Kevin Warwick Watch
 

Leaving the Body Behind?

Digital technologies both inscribe the Body and incorporate bodies. The idea that the body is "left behind" is a liberal conceit.

The Pained Body
     Carpal Tunnel Facts

The Orgasmic Body
     Coming Apart at the Seams: Sex, Text and the Virtual Body
     Alt-Sex Newsgroups listing
 

Coda

Sandy's Stone comments on the physical body, from Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture (1996)