Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion

by Fortunati; Leopoldina

• ISBN13: 9780805844818
• ISBN10: 0805844813
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2003-05-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The ever-increasing integration of technology and the human body is attracting attention from religious, business, and political leaders around the world, and the topic promises to be a significant social issue in the 21st century. In Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion,editors Leopoldina Fortunati, James E. Katz, and Raimonda Riccini bring together a thoughtful group of leading international scholars and analysts to explore the effects of new technologies on human beings. They focus specifically on the intersection of new communication technologies and the body, and offer novel insights based on recent theoretical progress and current research on new interpersonal technology. Through literary analysis, historical comparisons, analytical reports, and speculative interpretations, the contributors to this volume seek to understand the experience of the body as it is mediated among competing forces and intellectual domains. Arising from The Human Body Between Technologies, Communication and Fashion symposium held in Milan, Italy, contributions cover a wide array of topics and offer varied perspectives on how communication technologies are assimilated into people's lives, bodies, and homes, and thus become part of individuals' self-images and social relationships. From this multidisciplinary, multi-national base, the volume illuminates the sense and dimension of this interpenetration between body and technology. In its broad scope, the topics range from the wellsprings of consciousness to the use of technology as a fashion statement. Bringing together scholarship from a variety of disciplines, including communication, medicine, technology, and human-computer interaction, this distinctive anthology will provide new insights to scholars and advanced students exploring body-technology intersections and the attendant implications. Mediating the Human Bodyoffers a unique contribution to future discussions, and will be relevant to continuing study and research in communication and technology, human-computer interaction, gender studies, social psychology, and design.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Foreword	xiii
Pierfrancesco Gamba
List of Contributors	xv
Introduction	1	(14)
Leopoldina Fortunati
James E. Katz
Raimonda Riccini
PART I THE BODY BETWEEN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ART
The Body: Artificialization and Transparency	15	(8)
Tomas Maldonado
Body and Technology: Continuity or Discontinuity?	23	(8)
Giuseppe O. Longo
Bodies and Robots	31	(8)
Marco Somalvico
Sade Triumphant: The Body in Contemporary Art	39	(12)
Raimondo Strassoldo
The Narrated Body: The Representation of Corporeality in Contemporary Literature	51	(10)
Ada Neiger
Real People, Artificial Bodies	61	(14)
Leopoldina Fortunati
PART II THE BODY COMMUNICATING BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY, FASHION, AND IDENTITY
Cross-Cultural Comparisons of ICTs	75	(12)
James E. Katz
Mark Aakhus
Hyo Dong Kim
Martha Turner
Mobile Phone Tribes: Youth and Social Identity	87	(6)
Claire Lobet-Maris
Fashion and Vulgarity in the Adoption of the Mobile Telephone Among Teens in Norway	93	(10)
Richard Ling
Extension of the Hand: Children's and Teenagers' Relationship With the Mobile Phone in Finland	103	(10)
Virpi Oksman
Pirjo Rautiainen
Women's Identities and Everyday Technologies	113	(10)
Raimonda Riccini
Body to Body: Copresence in Communication	123	(10)
Alberta Contarello
The Next Frontier of Technology: Awaiting UMTS	133	(6)
Giovanni Strocchi
PART III DRESSING TECHNOLOGIES
Slaves and Free People in the Gaily Colored Empire	139	(8)
Giorgio Pacifici
Paolo Girardi
Inside the Surface: Technology in Modern Textiles	147	(8)
Elda Danese
Fashion, Media, and Cultural Anxiety: Visual Representations of Childhood	155	(8)
Susan B. Kaiser
Wearing Communication: Home, Travel, Space	163	(6)
Patrizia Calefato
The Equipped Body: Wearable Computers and Intelligent Fabrics	169	(8)
Anna Poli
PART IV THE BODY AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
Artificial Sensory Perception: Vicarious Technologies for Synesthesia	177	(10)
Dina Ricco
Health Care Technologies: The Contribution of Industrial Design	187	(8)
Medardo Chiapponi
The Third Skin: Wearing the Car, Ignoring Safety	195	(6)
Jorge Frascara
Conditions of Microgravity and the Body's ``Second Skin''	201	(8)
Annalisa Dominoni
The Technologies of Body Visualization	209	(6)
Paolo Gerundini
Massimo Castellani
Conclusion: Bodies Mediating the Future	215	(6)
Leopoldina Fortunati
James E. Katz
Raimonda Riccini
Author Index	221	(6)
Subject Index	227