Computable Bodies

Reviews / Votes

What algorithm scans, slices, peels away and reincarnates shapes this groundbreaking work into the cybernetic human carcass. -- John R. Stilgoe, Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape Development, Harvard University, USA This dazzlingly original, beautifully written text explores fundamental issues of the body's imbrication with data and instruments. Exploring the variety of ways in which we have rendered ourselves computable, it offers a richly social understanding of selfhood and the body. -- Geoffrey C. Bowker, Professor of Informatics, University of California at Irvine, USA Berson brings readers along on a detective-like journey through the contemporary terrain of pervasive computing, probing its effects on the interface between body and world. What, he asks, does a world saturated by human data feel like? Drawing our attention to the uncanny ease with which computing insinuates itself into embodied existence, Berson illuminates the new kinds of entrainment, rhythms, instrumentation, and experiential modulation that result. At once playful and profound, his original admixture of auto-ethnography, critical analysis, and semiotic theorization produces an analysis that is sure to galvanize the current conversation around technology and its intimate effects. -- Natasha Dow Schuell, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and author of 'Addiction by Design' and 'Keeping Track' [A] fascinating reflection on what a body is and how we hold and move and feel and are aware of it ... [Computable Bodies is] recommended for anyone interested in technology and in what it means to have/be a body. * Centre for Medical Humanities, Durham University, blog *