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Cyborg : digital destiny and human possibility in the age of the wearable computer
Mann S., Niedzviecki H., Doubleday Canada, Toronto, ON, 2001. 304 pp. Type: Book (9780385658256)
Date Reviewed: Jul 9 2004

“We are all already cyborgs,” proclaims Mann. A pioneer in the field of wearable computers, he believes that it’s only a matter of time before society embraces such prosthetic devices, and becomes as dependent on them as we are now on the Internet.

Two main themes run through this book: the flow of information and its potential to empower or oppress, and the need to preserve and promote self-determination and individual freedom. Mann’s goal with this book is to encourage us to equip ourselves with technology like his, to become cyborgs, so that big business and government can’t control us.

Mann, now an electrical engineering professor at the University of Toronto, began experimenting with wearable computer technologies in the 1980s. The most current incarnation of these is his invention called WearComp, whose main feature (EyeTap) allows the eye to function as both a camera, and as a display with text and graphic capabilities. This prosthesis enables Mann to record a scene (take pictures) with his eye, and to broadcast scenes he is viewing in real time.

Mann has used this and other inventions to conduct wide-ranging social and behavioral experiments, most notably those in which he confronts authority figures (such as a manager in a department store, or airport security personnel) with his version of their own surveillance technology. The descriptions of these experiments are the most engaging parts of the book. They can best be described as confrontational performance art: in one experiment, “Please Wait,” Mann turns himself into a faceless mannequin in a department store that can only be “activated” by swiping a card through a slot in his headgear. Such actions show Mann turning bureaucracy back upon itself in clever and subversive ways.

Mann rejects what he sees as “limiting technologies,” such as Microsoft Windows, and “smart” buildings in which “rote functionality has triumphed over possibility” (page 60). Conversely, he embraces “expanding technologies,” such as photography and the Visual Memory Prosthetic, with which we can reclaim our mental space, and have control over our memories and intellectual content in the “coming battle for ownership of cyborgspace” (page 96). He encourages us to develop a more sophisticated, symbiotic, and intimate relationship with technology, instead of embracing “gee whiz” inventions, around which their inventors and marketers build unrealistic promises, catering to fantasies rather than offering true empowerment. Here, Mann is most persuasive.

Less convincing are the passages in which Mann sets himself up as the bold inventor pitted against the military/industrial/academic complex. Some of his experiments could be construed as violating privacy instead of protecting it. For example, in his project “Shooting Back,” he pulls out a video camera, and films those who attempt to film him. “Surveillance is actually desirable when aimed at Big Brother,” he declares (page 173). This implies that spying is morally acceptable when performed by an individual or renegade group, on governments or big business, but not vice versa.

An appropriate audience for this book would be students in an introductory computer science or humanities course studying ethics and information technology. Interested students and researchers can follow Mann’s progress through the cyborg world by reading papers he’s written for various IEEE and ACM journals and symposia dealing with human-computer interaction (HCI), or by visiting his home page, http://wearcam.org.

Reviewer:  C. A. Wierzbicki Review #: CR129875 (0501-0002)
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Portable Devices (C.5.3 ... )
 
 
Assistive Technologies For Persons With Disabilities (K.4.2 ... )
 
 
Ethics (K.4.1 ... )
 
 
Privacy (K.4.1 ... )
 
 
General (I.4.0 )
 
 
User Interfaces (H.5.2 )
 
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