Reframing the Human: An Introduction to the Human Geography of the Posthuman or Cyborg

Presenter: Sachiko Slomoff (Geography)

Mentor: Ernesto Martinez

Facilitator: Matt Nelson

In our current digital age, there has been a significant focus on how globalizing technologies are changing the spaces we live in, but as individuals living in the technologically-mediated landscape, are not we too similarly affected? What is the human impact? After spending some time in a Siberian prison, Dostoyevsky posited the human is the creature that can adapt to anything. Although the electronic age is not a prison in the same regard, how are humans then, adapting to the digitally restructured environment? In this thesis, I present a human geography of the posthuman, humans with an intimate relationship to the rearranged temporal, spatial, and corporal dimensions of technology.Over time, the human species has technologically altered itself so drastically that a new anthropological understanding of what it means to be human is necessary. Whether we are gradually becoming a hybrid of man and machine – an entanglement of genetics and design, and turning into what some theorists call posthumans or cyborgs, are questions I probe to clarify what the new framing of “human” will necessitate. Reframing the human as intimately integrated with technology will have direct influence on people of many spheres because to reframe the human is not an isolated process, it is a creative work that embodies how technology is a temporally, spatially, and corporeally intimate experience in the new digital age that is restructuring the very pillars of the human experience.