ABSTRACT

Machines involving communication and information, particularly “mobile” machines (i.e., cellular, personal digital assistants [PDAs], portable laptop computers and, increasingly, microchips under the skin) represent the core of today’s technological innovation. (Hereafter, the term machines refers to those involved in communication technologies.) I have analyzed (Fortunati 2000) elsewhere how society has arrived at the point at which information and communication technologies (ICTs) saturate the body and bodily senses. In that article, I singled out two factors that make it possible for ICTs to first approach the body and then penetrate it. These factors are (1) the uncertain boundaries of the body itself and (2) people’s tendency from the very origins to imagine archetypal figures of the body as a machine or, vice-versa, of machines as the human body. This second factor is demonstrated by the terms automaton, golem, android, or robot. Not only do we imagine such human-behaving machines, but human beings have also tried to create these machines.