Mediating the Body: Wearable Tech and Disembodied Reality [Opinion]

Where does wearable technology exist? The question is more complex than it might first appear, when one considers the thin corpus of metaphors that are available to us to describe the Internet and technology. Do wearables exist somewhere between the physical and the virtual worlds? When you use them, are they like a pencil or are they like your body? In terms of regulation, are they like an iPhone, a house, or a limb? Can they be compared to prosthetics? What kind of conceptual domain are we working with? The metaphors we use matter because metaphors carry weight. “Metaphors are encumbered with assumptions,” says a recent Atlantic article, “and when people use metaphors, they embed those assumptions in the discussion. These assumptions are the residue of the physical analogues from which the metaphors draw.” One of the most widely accepted metaphors for describing the virtual reality of the online world is the concept of cyberspace, described in William Gibson's 1984 sci-fi novel Neuromancer this way: “Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.” Cyberspace exists outside of the realm of the real, according to Gibson. It is a “nonspace” that simultaneously possesses spatial contours and yet doesn't.