ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with how the development of telecommunication technologies in the city has affected the ways in which ordinary people practice their everyday lives as mundane cyborgs which are human-machine hybrids, and how the combination of human bodies and mobile phones has transfigured the landscapes of urban streets. It provides a brief consideration about the vulnerability of mundane cyborgs as bodies-with-mobiles which are activated and mediated through outside technological networks beyond the boundaries of human bodies. Smartphones can be seen as technological objects which afford the new practices of human bodies as mundane cyborgs in a mobile and networked environment. In relation to the use of smartphones, one of the interesting phenomena is that bodies without smartphones can be thought of as abnormal, deficient, or bizarre ones, although currently they are rarely seen so.
