Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion

Leopoldina Fortunati, James E. Katz, Raimonda Riccini9780805844801, 0-8058-4480-5

“In Mediating the Human Body, Technology, Communication, and Fashion, editors Leopoldina Fortunati, James E. Katz, and Raimonda Riccini bring together a thoughtful group of international scholars and analysts to explore the effects of new technologies on human beings. They focus selectively 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. 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 Body offers 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.

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Table of contents :
Team DDU……Page 1
Contents……Page 8
Acknowledgments……Page 12
Foreword by Pierfrancesco Gamba, Alderman of the Fashion and Events Department of Milan City Council……Page 14
List of Contributors……Page 16
1 Introduction……Page 22
PART I THE BODY BETWEEN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ART……Page 34
2 The Body: Artificialization and Transparency……Page 36
3 Body and Technology: Continuity or Discontinuity?……Page 44
4 Bodies and Robots……Page 52
5 Sade Triumphant: The Body in Contemporary Art……Page 60
6 The Narrated Body: The Representation of Corporeality in Contemporary Literature……Page 72
7 Real People, Artificial Bodies……Page 82
PART II THE BODY COMMUNICATING BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY, FASHION, AND IDENTITY……Page 94
8 Cross-Cultural Comparisons of ICTs……Page 96
9 Mobile Phone Tribes: Youth and Social Identity……Page 108
10 Fashion and Vulgarity in the Adoption of the Mobile Telephone Among Teens in Norway……Page 114
11 Extension of the Hand: Children’s and Teenagers’ Relationship With the Mobile Phone in Finland……Page 124
12 Women’s Identities and Everyday Technologies……Page 134
13 Body to Body: Copresence in Communication……Page 144
14 The Next Frontier of Technology: Awaiting UMTS……Page 154
PART III DRESSING TECHNOLOGIES……Page 158
15 Slaves and Free People in the Gaily Colored Empire……Page 160
16 Inside the Surface: Technology in Modern Textiles……Page 168
17 Fashion, Media, and Cultural Anxiety: Visual Representations of Childhood……Page 176
18 Wearing Communication: Home, Travel, Space……Page 184
19 The Equipped Body: Wearable Computers and Intelligent Fabrics……Page 190
PART IV THE BODY AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR HEALTH AND WELL-BEING……Page 196
20 Artificial Sensory Perception: Vicarious Technologies for Synesthesia……Page 198
21 Health Care Technologies: The Contribution of Industrial Design……Page 208
22 The Third Skin: Wearing the Car, Ignoring Safety……Page 216
23 Conditions of Microgravity and the Body’s “Second Skin”……Page 222
24 The Technologies of Body Visualization……Page 230
25 Conclusion: Bodies Mediating the Future……Page 236
Author Index……Page 242
Subject Index……Page 248