ABSTRACT
In her Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway positioned the human being between animal and machine, declaring that, when the boundaries between natural and artificial organisms become permeable, hybrids start to emerge – half animal and half human; half machine and half human – chimeras, cyborgs. Yet hybrids are neither characters from the future nor prototypes for science-fiction movies and computer games; they are, first and foremost, indicators of what is happening here and now. This puts the spotlight on the body as a networked entity; the body comes into view as an information processor: a “biomediated-body” (Clough 2010). With this starting point, the chapter explores recent developments in which humans increasingly come to be bonded to technological others – digital assistants, control systems, network infrastructures – forming intensive milieus. Particular emphasis is placed on how the algorithms of affective computing have begun to intervene to link up man and machine in ever more affective and thus psycho-cybernetic ways.
