Ready to Wear

Isabel Pedersen

Description

Ready to Wear: A Rhetoric of Wearable Computers and Reality-Shifting Media explores how and to what ends wearable inventions and technologies augment or remix reality, as well as the claims used to promote them. As computer components shrink and our mobile culture normalizes, we wear computers on the body to create immersive experiences.

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 03 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602354036
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

New Media Theory
Series Editor, Byron Hawk
The New Media Theory series investigates both media and new media as a complex ecological and rhetorical context. The merger of media and new media creates a global social sphere that is changing the ways we work, play, write, teach, think, and connect. Because this new context operates through evolving arrangements, theories of new media have yet to establish a rhetorical and theoretical paradigm that fully articulates this emerging digital life.
The series includes books that combine social, cultural, political, textual, rhetorical, aesthetic, and material theories in order to understand moments in the lives that operate in these emerging contexts. Such works typically bring rhetorical and critical theories to bear on media and new media in a way that elaborates a burgeoning post-disciplinary “medial turn” as one further development of the rhetorical and visual turns that have already influenced scholarly work.
Books in the Series
Ready to Wear: A Rhetoric of Wearable Computers and Reality-Shifting Media by Isabel Pedersen (2013)
Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio- Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers , by Bump Halbritter (2013)
The Available Means of Persuasion: Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric , by David M. Sheridan, Jim Ridolfo, and Anthony J. Michel (2012)
Avatar Emergency by Gregory L. Ulmer (2012)
New Media/New Methods: The Academic Turn from Literacy to Electracy , edited by Jeff Rice and Marcel O’Gorman (2008)
The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition , by Alexander Reid (2007). Honorable Mention, W. Ross Winterowd/ JAC Award for Best Book in Composition Theory, 2007.
Ready to Wear
A Rhetoric of Wearable Computers and Reality-Shifting Media
Isabel Pedersen
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com


Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, USA
© 2013 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pedersen, Isabel.
Ready to wear : a rhetoric of wearable computers and reality-shifting media / Isabel Pedersen.
pages cm. -- (New media theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60235-400-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-401-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-402-9 (Adobe eBook) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-403-6 (ePub) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-404-3 (iBook)
1. Wearable computers. 2. Mobile computing--Social aspects. 3. Discourse analysis, Narrative. I. Title.
QA76.592.P43 2013
004.16--dc23
2012049559
1 2 3 4 5
New Media Theory
Series Editor: Byron Hawk
Cover image: CuteCircuit Galaxy Dress, © Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. Used by permission.
Cover design by David Blakesley.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [e-mail].


For my Mother


Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Rhetoric, Reality-Shifting Media, and Imminence
1 Mobile Devices, Movement, and Myth
2 Transparency, Nanotechnology, and the Rhetorical Justification for Invisibility Inventions
3 Interactivity, Wearability, and the Rhetoric of Proposed Brain-Machine Interfaces
4 Augmented Memory, Digital Life, and Computers that Promise to Remember Everything
5 Carryable Technologies, Participatory Culture, and Rhetorical Transformation
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index to the Print Edition
About the Author


List of Illustrations
Figure 1.Steve Mann with EyeTap Wearable Computer and Augmented Reality System (1999).
Figure 2. Rob Spence holding his Eyeborg device.
Figure 3.Rob Spence wearing his Eyeborg device.
Figure 4. “Japan Optical Camouflage” Susumu Tachi’s so-called “invisibility cloak” achieved with the technique called “Optical Camouflage.”
Figure 5. Nokia Morph. Nokia and Cambridge University.
Figure 6. YouTube video, “Nokia Morph Concept (long).” 3,015,903 views. Nokia and Cambridge University.
Figure 7. Skinput interface. Chris Harrison, Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon.
Figure 8. Emotiv’s Epoc headset.
Figure 9. Improvised Empathetic Device (I.E.D.).
Figure 10. Artist Wafaa Bilal, “Domestic Tension” installation.
Figure 11. Artist Wafaa Bilal, “3rdi.”
Figure 12. “iPod ad” on Queen West in Toronto.
Figure 13. “Toronto—iPod City.”
Figure 14. “iFamine.”
Figure 15 Inventor Steve Mann wearing MindMesh (mesh-based wearable computing for Brain-Computer-Interaction), “GlassEye” (EyeTap).
Figure 16. Inventor Steve Mann wearing EyeTap while playing the hydraulophone.


Acknowledgments
Every book bears the trace of other people; there are a few individuals who left a substantial mark on Ready To Wear . Thank you to Virginia Doig, Lyuba Encheva, Luke Simcoe, and Peter Turk for reading copious drafts, questioning concepts, challenging my ideas, and entering the ongoing conversation that we have had for so many years that has ultimately resulted in this book.
The book is also homage to my academic mentors and dear friends, Glenn Stillar, Susan Cody, R. Bruce Elder, Marcel Danesi, Dennis Denisoff, Paul Moore, Deborah Fels, Gerd Hauck, and Neil Randall. Your time, thoughts, and brilliant ideas have always been a beacon; I will forever hear your words of encouragement in my ears. My dear friend, mentor and collaborator, Jennifer Rowsell, deserves special mention; your wisdom has never gone unnoticed. Close to me over this time have been my friends, students, mentors—Shahid Alvi, Nawal Ammar, Kristen Aspevig, Martin Chochinov, Arlene Dagys, Joanne DiNova, Brenda Doig, Kirsten Ellison, Greg Elmer, Dan Epstein, Natasha Flora, Gary Genosko, Ganaele Langlois, Tatjana Lazar, Julie McDonnell, Fenwick McKelvey, Richard McMaster, Katrine Milner, Tanner Mirrlees, Sheila O’Neill, Sherry Pedersen, Barbara Perry, Teresa Pierce, Angela Ridout, Fotios Sarris, Douglas Trueman, Kalan Vuksanovich—whose rich knowledge, creativity, generosity, and camaraderie have been a solace to me. I thank the Pedersens for the rich conversations and debates. I thank the “lone gunmen” I’ve known over the years: Matthew Turk, Keith Ajmani, and Kelly Curtis, your technical knowledge astounds.
I am grateful for the excellent mentorship and editorial guidance of Parlor Press Publisher David Blakesley. I thank Series Editor Byron Hawk for so much advice and help in the creation of this book. Their academic support was invaluable. Thanks to the excellent editorial assistance of both Jeff Ludwig and Terra Williams at Parlor Press. Also, thanks to reviewer John Tinnell, whose review was instrumental to the improvement of this book and great food for thought. I must recognize the countless blind reviewers who have commented on my work over the years, whose advice ultimately altered this book. Lise Creurer deserves mention for her copy-editing wizardry at earlier stages of the manuscript. Thanks to Jeremy Littler and Stacey Merkoulov. Finally, I want to extend my thanks to all the people who let me publish photos or visual materials; I am in their debt.
The thrilling aspect behind writing this book was the chance to look closely at new inventions and ponder their potential to change people’s lives. I thank artists who were an inspiration during this process including Steve Mann, Rob Spence, Kate Hartman, Wafaa Bilal, Susumu Tachi, Matthew Kenyon, Doug Easterly, Joseph Hurtado, Joanna Berzowska, Erin Lewis, and Marcel O’Gorman.
I acknowledge the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada , which has enabled me to pursue my research. This research was also undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chair’s Program .
I am indebted to writers whom I have had the privilege to read and ponder over my academic life, namely, Kenneth Burke, Rudolf Arnheim, Pierre Bourdieu, Gunther R. Kress, David L. Burrows, Vivian Sobchack, and N. Katherine Hayles.
I thank Paul, Aurora, and Blake for making life always serendipitous.


Introduction: Rhetoric, Reality-Shifting Media, and Imminence
We want to read people’s minds. We want to live forever. We want to be invisible. 1,2 Such comic strip scenarios and science fiction dystopias are key players in the advancement of science. Putting this fact aside for the moment, let us deal with the last item in the list of seemingly far-flung human ambitions that science seems to be addressing these days: invisibility.
Invisibility has indeed recently made its way onto the radar of the possible. Researchers in the United Kingdom, Russia, and the United States are racing toward the culmination of an invention that will render a thing or a person imperceptible to the human eye. A wearable invisibility device will clearly enable a person to shift reality for herself and for others whom are una