{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","uuid":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","normalized_title":"mediaandnewcapitalisminthedigitalagethespiritofnetworks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","isbns":["9781349379743","9780230106062"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":258,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Media%20and%20New%20Capitalism%20in%20the%20Digital%20Age%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Networks","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/search"},"page":{"printed_page":149,"pdf_page":151,"physical_index":151,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"803153feb2dc9946cd2c547144afb5653b877853d1e05223778f6a4f54e242b6"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"At the center of this work is a small package designed with the iconography of an existing and popular household object: a box of Band-Aids (Bodow 2002). But unlike the real Band-Aid, which is an external object meant to facilitate the healing of damaged skin, the futuristic product featured in “Found” offers a solution that brings the very distinction between the “artificial” product and the “natural” skin into question. The imaginary product is branded “Quick-Skin” and offers “Self-Grafting Bandages.” The pronouncements on the package describe the product as “healing wounds with living tissue”; promise that it “starts replacing damaged skin on contact”; and enthuse about “30 percent faster grafting!” Since both the “first” and “second” skins are made of “living tissue,” the very distinction between internal and external, original and imitational, real and simulated, becomes insignificant. As the photo on the package and the samples lying around reveal, while the material may be synthetic in the formal sense (alluded by the maker’s name “Plastex Inc.”) the validity of the dichotomy between synthetic and organic is brought under scrutiny. Thus, for example, one pronouncement on the package promises “25 nerve receptors/cm<sup>2</sup> for seamless sensory networking” (Bodow 2002). This seamlessness implies the complete erasure of difference between the (synthetic) graft and the (organic) skin once Quick-Skin has caught on; if the synthetic material works as if it were a real skin (in terms of look, sensation, and function), then it is real. In other words, the definition of the body in the digital discourse becomes pragmatic and instrumental (rather than, for example, transcendental or lyrical).\n\nT<sub>HE</sub> C<sub>OMMENSURABILI</sub>T<sub>Y O</sub>F H<sub>UMANS AND</sub> T<sub>ECHNOLOGY</sub>\n\nAnalytically speaking, this is the preliminary task of the discourse on network humans: to insist that network technology and humans are of the same order. The distinction between humans and network technology is blurred and flattened in the digital discourse by placing both humans and technology on the same plane and suggesting that both are paradigmatically and essentially the same. On this plane they might not be quantitatively the same (e.g., a computer processor might be quicker than humans at calculations; a robot may be less competent in visual skills), but qualitatively and ontologically they are perceived to be of the same kind. This narrative of humans and technology sharing the same plane allows for a seamless and frictionless transference between them, a shared discourse of concepts, categories, and imagery where humans (and human qualities and characteristics) can stand for computers and vice versa. By undermining claims for substantive difference between humans and network technology, two scenarios become possible: the commensurability between humans and technology and their conflation.\n\nNetwork Human\n\n149","previous_page":148,"next_page":150}