The Anatomy of Frank and Stein. An Ontological Exploration of Cyborg Identity, Culture, and Education

Abstract

This contribution aims to unpack the ontological nexus of cyborg identity and culture. It highlights a set of core assumptions driving its operations that merit critical attention as cyborgic and AI discourses continue to unfold and penetrate societies deeper, ultimately questioning the normative and conceptual logic and social distribution of these core assumptions. keywords Social technology, democratic citizenship, cyborgism, enhanced identity, capitalist culture Over the last twenty years technological immersion and enhancement have emerged as core resources for framing education and culture (cf McPheeters 2010, Gourlay 2012, Gleason 2014). Digitalisation, mediatisation, and commodification of social patterns of communication and interaction have provided firms, states, and stakeholdersas well as citizens, pupils, educators, scholars, and consumerswith incomprehensibly fast and vast tools by which to mobilise and synchronise action as well as deliberation. At the onset of the digital age, starry-eyed levels of hope were pinned to the promises of eenhanced modes of education, democracy, community, knowledge formation, political accountability, justice, trade, and information as borne out by early Macintosh computers, and later by emailing, digital connectivity, virtual realities, and social media. Today digital interaction, amplification, enhancement, and monitoring reach into (and apparently harvest) public and personal aspects of citizens' lives on a scale still barely generally understood. Confoundingly complex and new layers of societal interaction and norm-giving are folded into this transformation. This contribution is dedicated to exploringand to some extent conceptually unpackingthe meaning of these changes for democratic identity-making, culture, and education. As all revolutions, the bio-technification of contemporary social life delimits, defines, enables, and directs who we are and the conditions and premises of our becoming these people. This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.