that visual and auditory sensations, as well as thought, can be uploaded on, and downloaded from, humans and information technology.
The body in the digital discourse is perceived as an instrument, the material and functional levels of which can be increasingly rationalized and denaturalized, as something that can increasingly be artificially manufactured, or virtually represented, rather than naturally created, in a word, as technology. As humans—their bodies, their functional abilities, and their characteristics—come to be seen as objects and technologies, the prospect of a modular construction and reconstruction of machine-like humans and human-like machines comes to the fore in the digital discourse. One scenario brought up by the objectification of the body is the manufacturing of technologies (organs and body parts) to be incorporated into humans, as the subtitle of “Regrow your own” (Kahn 2003) cheerfully proclaims, “Broken heart? No problem. New liver? Coming right up.” (The image on the cover of the September 2000 issue of Wired tells of another fantasy of meshing humans with machines; see Cover 2000). Clearly this smooth transferability is seen as empowering and liberating.
The other side of the coin of the objectification of the body is the prospect of producing human-like robots, “Humanoids” (Capps 2004), or “Robosapiens” (D’Aluisio 2000). An exemplary article in this vein offers a catalogue of technological projects currently underway or in planning stages that “might one day add up to an android just like the rest of us” (Capps 2004). The six-page catalogue presents a dissection of this future robot into muscles, hands, expression, lips, skin, eyes, ears, nose, stomach, and legs.
It does not make much difference that these are futuristic presentations or that the digital discourse also asserts that the human body is still superior to robots on many counts. What is crucial here is that as we are presented with human-like machines, we are also encouraged to think about humans as machines. That is, we are set within a dual framework of instrumentality and commensurability. Instrumentality pertains to seeing the body as a technology, a functional tool, and an instrument; commensurability pertains to the ability to see humans and technology as interchangeable and conflatable. Robots are therefore central in the digital discourse not only because of their potential service to humans but also, more importantly, because robots—as a discursive category—play a central role in redefining the identity of humans. As such, they dot the digital discourse and are often reported on in Wired in the context of interaction and conflation rather than utilization. This is evident, for example, in the words of an MIT scientist in the introduction to “The Humanoid Race” (Capps 2004), who predicts that “within five years, robots will cross a critical threshold, becoming partners rather than tools—in other words, we’ll have friends, not appliances” (Capps 2004).
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age