The Vulnerability of Cyborgs

The Case of ICD Shocks

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5337923
AutoresNelly Oudshoorn (University Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen41
Número5
Páginas767-792
Fecha de publicación2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243916633755
OpenAlexW2339456378
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas30

This article contributes to Science and Technology Studies on vulnerability by putting cyborgs at center stage. What vulnerabilities emerge when technologies move under the skin? I argue that cyborgs face new forms of vulnerability because they have to live with a continuous, inextricable intertwinement of technologies and their bodies. Inspired by recent feminist studies on the lived intimate relationships between bodies and technologies, I suggest that sensory experiences, material practices, and cartographies of power are important heuristic tools to understand the vulnerabilities of hybrid bodies. Based on an analysis of how patients in the Netherlands and the United States cope with appropriate and inappropriate implantable cardioverter defibrillator shocks, I describe how defibrillators introduce two new kinds of vulnerabilities: vulnerability as an internal rather than an external threat, and as harm you may try to anticipate but can never escape. Despite these vulnerabilities, some heart patients don't position themselves as passive victims of faulty machines. They actively engage in material practices of resilience by using magnets to stop inappropriate shocks. I conclude that anticipating and taming the improper working of technologies inside bodies constitutes a new form of invisible labor that is crucial to diminishing the existential uncertainties of cyborgs

Aesthetics · Art · Computer security · Emerging technologies · Environmental ethics · Existentialism · Harm · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Law · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence