We are creating nature: the boundaries between the virtual and real are becoming increasingly confused. We're becoming less self-conscious, on the one hand, of the pretense of our virtual worlds, and, on the other, more aware of how technology inscribes our conceptions of the natural. We're still trying to negotiate our way between the artificial, clumsy interface and the unconscious, fully interactive experience.

Theorists poised at these intersections are especially interested in how expressivity (or "atoms" according to Negroponte) gets translated (or not) into "bits," especially in the ways in which these transformations can be said to occur with less interference or "noise."

Soon, if we believe the techno-prophets, the "implosion" of culture and nature (the human genome project is the most talked about example) will allow us to reprogamme bodies that will not only be genetically "clean," but that will also reconfigure our conceptions of the perfect body. We will with horrifying precision be able to control what lives and dies (and what constitutes life and death) in our virual-real surroundings.

We are "cyborgs": the artificial (i.e., a prosthetic device that mediates a virtual world, but also anything that reprogrammes our bodies, such as a vaccination) and the "real" are no longer demarcated by neat boundaries. Human/machine, nature/culture, virtual/real, object/subject, male/female: technology disrupts boundaries, and, hopefully, encourages us to see how what had once been natural (e.g., the distinction between male and female subject positions) is socially constructed. Permeability reigns here, but, because we can't be sure of anything anymore, so does paranoia.

I'm particularly interested in carving a path through the not-easily-reconcilable perspectives that make up this interest area. I want to use this site as a kind of "hub" for the dissemination of texts concerned with the diverse, often conflicting, aspects and byways of technology and culture. If you are interested in adding a text (or a link to a text), I welcome your inputs.