Mind the gap: technology as soma

The author argues that the notion of wearable technology betrays a materialistic approach to design that constrains the construction of a means to fully facilitate the functionality of technology. It is argued that by taking the view that technology can be considered an extensive form of humanity a space can be opened for designers to explore how the body can be considered an architecture for facilitating consciousness and technology a means of distributing consciousness by means of an extended body. The author—by sketching out a new design territory calling into question some current approaches to usability—intends to provoke thought rather than to provide answers.

[1]  Tor Nørretranders,et al.  The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size , 1998 .

[2]  N. Curtis.  The Inhuman , 2006 .

[3]  C. Sherrington.  Integrative Action of the Nervous System , 1907 .

[4]  B. Stafford.  Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting , 1999 .

[5]  B. Burroughs.  The Whitney Museum of American Art , 1932 .

[6]  E. Shapiro,et al.  Programmable and autonomous computing machine made of biomolecules , 2001, Nature.

[7]  T. Armstrong.  Modernism, Technology and the Body: A Cultural Study , 1998 .

[8]  B. L. Whorf.  Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf , 1956 .

[9]  D. Wegner.  The Illusion of Conscious Will , 2018, The MIT Press.

[10]  M. Polanyi.  Chapter 7 – The Tacit Dimension , 1997 .

[11]  W. Smith.  The Integrative Action of the Nervous System , 1907, Nature.

[12]  J. Brobeck.  The Integrative Action of the Nervous System , 1948, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

[13]  Rachel Bowlby,et al.  The Inhuman: Reflections on Time , 1991 .

[14]  B. Baars.  A Thoroughly Empirical Approach To Consciousness , 1994 .

[15]  Peter Fromherz,et al.  Recombinant maxi-K channels on transistor, a prototype of iono-electronic interfacing , 2001, Nature Biotechnology.

[16]  Cristian S. Calude,et al.  Computing with Cells and Atoms: An Introduction to Quantum, DNA and Membrane Computing , 2000 .

[17]  D. Chalmers,et al.  Toward a Science of Consciousness III : the third Tucson discussions and debates , 1999 .

[18]  Maurice Merleau-Ponty.  Phenomenology of Perception , 1964 .