What is Cyborg Anthropology?

I’m writing this at Gnomedex, because I realized that a lot of people are interested in Cyborg Anthropology, but somehow it doesn’t compress well into 140 characters. Darn, this non-portable data! Thanks to Kris Krug for tweeting about it. He’s a fantastic photographer.

What I do

I study the symbiotic relationship between humans and computers, and the psychology of space that is created by online environments.

My dad is an inventor, and a computer enthusiast. So I’ve been chilling with computers and wacky things since I was born. My dad had a laboratory. I used to. Then social media happened. The ‘field’ of anthropology suddenly arrived at my fingertips. Google Analytics, RSS feeds, audio recording and Twitter have vastly enhanced my ability to understand the effects that computers have had on humans and vice versal.

History of Cyborg Anthropology

Cyborg Anthropology was declared as an actual sub-subject of the Anthropology of Science at a conference in 1993. I discovered it two years ago, and realized that I’ve been doing Cyborg Anthropology my entire life.

How Many Cyborg Anthropologists are There?

There’s probably 4 or 5. I can only name two –> Donna Haraway, the founder, and Deborah Heath, my thesis advisor. I wrote my thesis on “Cell Phones and Their Technosocial Sites of Being”. It was really fun. Lots of Supermodernism in there.

Your Mind on Anthropology

Anthropology is cool, because once you learn it your mind begins to function in There’s too much, really. Much more than 140 characters. There is a lot of applying systems theory to demographics and looking at influencers. There is a lot of mapping social networks and understanding how information is exchanged.

Cyborg Anthropology is the Reason I’m at Gnomedex

I wanted to study Gnomedex because it is an awesome event and boatloads of data is exchanged here. Thus, I E-mailed Chris Pirillo about my research, and he sent me a ticket. That was extremely kind of him. I love conferences and networking.

Applying Anthropology to Product Development

The distance between developers and consumers is shrinking. Everyone at Gnomedex knows this. But the distance between profiles and responses is also changing. It’s becoming faster! The time and space it takes to exchange information is becoming super-small, and super rapid!

Now what?

I’ll be speaking at Inverge, a conference in Portland, Oregon (that’s where I am from) about space time compression. That’s really what the conference is about. People from Wieden Kennedy will be there, as well as MIT. Hooray! Hopefully this will help. You see, I just graduated from college, so I am new to the world. I just spent the last 3.5 years of my life studying, without looking up or spreading out. Thanks for being interested in this strange (and increasingly normal) subject.

Applied Anthropology

With Anthropology, I end up looking products as fruit (ripe or not) — and people don’t like packaging that isn’t ripe. Cyborg Anthropology is very easily applied to usability studies (don’t make users excessivly tab or click!, ect.).

Plus, you get funky stuff like “Google is a picky eater, make yourself delicious” (applied to search engine optimization.

Apology

I wrote this really quickly. My internet access is pretty limited. I apologize for spelling mistakes or errors. Please E-mail me at caseorganic@gmail.com if you need more information. Consider visiting Portland and I’ll introduce you to the tech scene. I’ll be giving a lightning talk on the History of the Cell Phone at 1:00Pm on September 5th, 2008 at Inverge.

You can also follow me on Twitter at @caseorganic.