Manifesting the Cyborg through Techno-Body Modification
Lauren M. Britton, Bryan Semaan · 2017
A community of DIY cyborgs has emerged, known as 'grinders', who practice techno-body modification-the embedding of computing technology into the body. This paper reports on an ethnographic study following GrinderTech, an organization working to design, build and sell these technological artifacts, as it shifts from hacker collective to biotech startup. As technologies are embedded in the body, the boundary between human and machine starts to blur. We find that GrinderTech members, through the design and making of technologies for embedding, do so as a means to move beyond social and gendered binary constructions-or, societal norms that are practiced and performed, and re-enforced through language, as a way of creating power differentials in society, e.g. citizen/scientist and man/woman. Moreover, their motivations for designing and making these devices reflects their desire to re-imagine society. Finally, we re-conceptualize Human-Computer Interaction to include Integration-when technology is embedded in the human body-and discuss the theoretical and design implications of human-computer integration.