Content area
Full Text
Metal and Flesh.
By Ollivier Dyens. Translated by Evan J. Bibbee. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Pp. 178. $24.95.
Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer.
By Steve Mann and Hal Niedzviecki. Toronto: Random House Doubleday Canada, 2001. Pp. 304. $34.95.
We take our tools for granted. Even those that we carry on our bodies, such as eyeglasses or palmtops, we consider as add-ons, foreign objects. Although contact lenses or pacemakers acquire a certain degree of intimacy, even they are still perceived as mere "add-ons," not part of our organic flesh or mind. Should we be made aware of the hidden effects of technologies both on body and mind, or should we continue in the blissful ignorance of our own transformation? Two books by Canadian authors explore that question in complementary ways. Ollivier Dyens' Metal and Flesh (translated from the French in this edition by MIT Press) practices "depth philosophy"-as in "depth psychology"-to find out what makes us human with or in spite of technology. Steve Mann does the experimental grunt work: his Cyborg is a detailed analysis of the tools themselves and of their present and predictable consequences. Both writers take McLuhan seriously and quote his lesser known paraphrase of "The medium is the message": "We shape our tools and hence after, our tools shape us."
Dyens, a professor and author living in Montreal, states...