Podcast for Social Research, Episode 79: CYBORG — A Conversation on Technology, Feminism, and the Future of a Concept
Have 21st century technologies—from smartphones to medical devices to the commonplace use of artificial intelligence—made cyborgs of us all? In this episode of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at BISR Central, BISR faculty Rebecca Ariel Porte sits down with fellow faculty Danya Glabau and co-author Laura Forlano to parse what the latter, in their recent book Cyborg (MIT Press), have termed “critical cyborg literacy”: a lens through which to critically examine the constitutive role technology plays in the ways we think, behave, know, and interact. Glabau and Forlano begin with a synthetic overview of the history and affordances of thinking with the figure of the cyborg, after which the three discuss, among other things, the hidden human labor behind apparently automated systems, failures and glitches, feminist scholarship as collaborative process, and the cyborg as, beyond its technicity, a social, political, and aesthetic project.
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This episode of the Podcast for Social Research was produced by Ryan Lentini. If you like what you’ve heard, consider subscribing to Brooklyn Institute’s Patreon page, where you can enjoy access to all past and future episodes of the podcast.