There’s a rapt, mindless fascination with these disembodying or ability-augmenting technologies … The desire to be wired is part of the larger fantasy of disembodiment, the deep, childlike desire to go beyond one’s body. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly for the handicapped it can be very liberating. For others, who have the desire without the need, there can be problems. Political power still exists inside the body, and being out of one’s body or extending one’s body through technology doesn’t change that.
Predictor: Stone, Allucquere Rosanne
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Wired, Gareth Branwyn quotes Allucquere Rosanne Stone. Branwyn writes: ”Academic discourse is also rife with talk of cyborg bodies and the need to rethink the postmodern relationship between humans and machines. ‘There’s a rapt, mindless fascination with these disembodying or ability-augmenting technologies,’ says Allucquere Rosanne Stone, director of the Advanced Communications Technology Lab at the University of Texas. ‘I think of it as kind of cyborg envy … The desire to be wired is part of the larger fantasy of disembodiment, the deep, childlike desire to go beyond one’s body. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly for the handicapped it can be very liberating. For others, who have the desire without the need, there can be problems. Political power still exists inside the body, and being out of one’s body or extending one’s body through technology doesn’t change that.'”
Date of prediction: September 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: The Desire to be Wired: Will We Live to See Our Brains Wired to Gadgets? How About Today?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/desire.to.be.wired_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney