Arturo Escobar Anthropology and the Future

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UTTFRWORTHEINEMANNFutures. Vol. 27. No. 4, pp. 409-421. 199

Elsevier Science LtdPnnted in Great Britain

0016-3287195 $10.00 + 0.000016-3287(95)00013-5ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE

FUTURENew technologies and the reinventionof cultureArturo Escobar

Computer, information and biological technologies are bringing about afundamental transformation in the structure and meaning of modernsociety and culture. Not only is this transformation clearly susceptible toanthropological inquiry but it constitutes perhaps a privileged arena foradvancing anthropologys project of understanding human societies fromthe vantage points of biology, language, history and culture. This articlereviews the types of cultural analyses that are being conducted today in thesocial nature, impact, and use of new technologies and suggests additionalcontexts and steps toward the articulation of an anthropology ofcyberculture.

While any technology can be studied anthropologically from a variety ofperspectives, cyberculture refers specifically to new technologies in twoareas-artificial intelligence (particularly computer and information technologies),and biotechnology. It would be possible to separate out these two sets oftechnologies for analytical purposes, although it is no coincidence that they haveachieved prominence simultaneously. While computer and informationtechnologies are bringing about a regime of technosocinl i ty , a broad process ofsoc iocultural construction set in motion in the wake of the new technologies,biotechnologies are giving rise to biosocial i ty , a new order for the production oflife, nature and the body through biologically based technological interventions.Professor Escobar may be contacted at the Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts.Amherst, MA 01003, USA (Tel: +l 413 545 01 11 ; fax: +l 413 545 2326). The author thanks David He5sfor useful information on aspects of this article. It has been enriched by conttnuing conversations ontechnology with Alelandro Piscitelli. Some aspects of this paper are treated at greater length In Welcometo Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture, Current Anthropohgy 35(3), pages 21 l-2 31,1994.


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These two regimes form the basis for what I call cyberculture. They embody therea lization that we increasingly live and make ourselves in techno-bioculturalenvironments structured by novel forms of science and technology.

Interest in science and technology on the part of soc ial/cultural anthropologistshas been growing steadily in recent years. Steps have already been taken towardsbuilding an institutional presence for the anthropology of science and technologywithin the American Anthropological Assoc iation. 5 Several panels related to STSissues were held at the 1992 and 1993 AAA meetings.6 Topics of interest toanthropologists in recent years have included ethnographies of scientists, studies ofreproductive and medical technologies, topics in gender and science, ethics andvalues, and science and engineering education. The more fashionable studies ofcomputer and biologica l technologies, virtual reality, virtual communities andcyberspace are attrac ting increasing attention. An effort to theorize the anthropologyof science and technology is also under way and promises to become a salient trendwithin the discipline in the near future.

Although most anthropological science and technology studies have takenplace in highly industrialized countries, increasing attention to issues in Third Worldcountries can be expected, given that the globalization of cultural and economicproduction relies more and more on the new technologies of information and life.Whether it is in the domains of biotechnology-driven development, information orwarfare, the encounter between North and South continues to be heavily mediatedby technologies of manifold kinds. Recently, the impact of technologies such astelevision and videocassettes on local notions of development and modernity andtheir effect on longstanding soc ial and cultural practices have been approachedethnographically. Once seen as produc ing worldwide homogenization andgeneralized acculturation, cosmopolitan science and technology are now viewed interms of their real or potential contribution to the formation of hybrid cultures and toprocesses of self-affirmation through selective and partially autonomous adoption ofmodern technologies.Y There is also hope that advances in biotechnology might beused by local groups in biodiversity-rich regions of the world to defend theirterritories and articulate novel economic and cultural strategies. As David Hessargues, lo however, the effect of cosmopolitan technologies on Third World groupsremains insufficiently understood, particularly from the vantage point of the culturalpolitics they set in motion, including issues of cultural destruction, hybridization andhomogenization, and the creation of new differences through forms ofconnec tedness fostered by the new technologies-another aspect of what ArjunAppadurai calls global ethnoscapes. Work on these issues is advancing rapidly,particularly in connec tion with the redefinition of development.2

The anthropological projectAnthropological reflection on the relation between culture and technology is ofcourse not new. The impact of Western technologies on cultural change andevolution has been a subject of study since the early 195Os.- Questions oftechnological control and political economy have been broac hed. Nevertheless,studies of material culture and technology have suffered from dependence on what areviewer of the field recently called the standard view of technology (based on adecontextualized teleology that goes from simple tools to complex machines). Onlywith modern science and technology studies has the possibility arisen to see scienceand technology in relation to complex soc iotechnical systems. This lays the

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foundation once aga in for fruitful communication among soc ial anthropologists,ethnoarchaeologists, archaeologists, and students of human evolution.4 It alsofosters exchange between anthropologists and other disciplines involved in thesestudies, such as philosophy, cognitive science and linguistics.In the First World, attempts at articulating an anthropological strategy explicitlycentred on new information, computer and biologica l technologies has just begun.An important precursor in this regard was Margaret Meads work in the context of theemergence of cybernetics during the World War II and up to the middle of the1960s.15 At the beginning of the 199Os, it is possible to identify three differentproposals. The first, by the anthropologist David Thomas, builds on the growingliterature on the notions of cyberspace and cyborg-broadly speaking, a mixtureof human and machine. Arguing that advanc ed forms of Western technology arebringing about a rite of passage between industrial and postorganic soc ieties,between organically human and cyberpsychically digital life-forms as reconfiguredthrough computer software systems, Thomas calls on anthropologists to engagevirtual worlds technologies during this early stage of speculation and development,particularly from the point of view of how these technologies are soc ially produced.From print-based paradigms of visual literacy to the virtual worlds of digitalizedinformation, we are witnessing a transition to a new postcorporea l stage that presentsgreat promise in terms of creative soc ial logics and sensorial regimes. Cyberspaceaffords unprecedented possibilities for anthropologists in terms of realizing thispromise.

The second project, cyborg anthropology, formally launched with a two-panelsession held at the annual meetings of the AAA in San Francisco in December 1992,takes as science and technology studies, in particular feminist ones, as a point ofdeparture. While its domain is the analysis of science and technology as culturalphenomena, the main goa l of cyborg anthropology is the ethnographic study oi theboundaries between human and machines thare are specific to late 2Oth-centurysoc ieties. Believing that anthropos as the subject and object of anthropology must bedisplaced, the emerging cyborg anthropologists argue that human and soc ial realityis as much a product of machines as of human ac tivity, that we should grant agencyto machines, and that the proper task for an anthropology of science and technologyis to examine ethnographically how technology serves as agent of soc ial and culturalproduction. I8Critical positions regarding these two projects are beginning to be articulated,most notably in visual anthropology. Given the importance of vision for virtualreality, computer networks, graphics and interfaces, and for imagingtechnologies-from satellite surveillance, warfare and space exploration to medicaltechnologies such as tomography and the visualization of the foetus-it is notsurprising that the branch of anthropology most attuned to the analysis of visuality ascultural and epistemological regime has been the first to react to uncriticalcelebration of cyberspatial technologies. Claims by cybcrspace designers that thenew technologies will make the body obsolete, destroy subjectivity, create newworlds and universes, change the economic and political future of humanity, andeven lead to a posthuman order, are for these critics at best wishful thinkingmotivated by the seductiveness of virtual reality and like technologies and at worstmisguided efforts at engineering soc ial reality. So, thev argue, is the seeminglyexclusive focus on a cyborgian society mediated by human-machine interactions.

Rather than developing a new anthropological subdiscipline, Gray and Driscollprefer to speak of an anthropology of, and in, cyberspace. This third project would


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study technologies in the cultural contexts from which they originate and in whichthey operate, including their continued links to the dominant values of rationa lity,instrumentality, profit and violence. It is no coincidence, these writers suggest, thatvirtual reality-one of the recent developments at the heart of the cyberspatialmovement-has been and is likely to continue to be circumscribed by military andeconomic interests and that, despite its much touted potential for liberatory andhumanizing purposes, the military and profit-oriented applications will undoubtedlyremain dominant. Their prescription is for examining these technologies from theperspective of how they allow various groups of people to negotiate specific forms ofpower, authority and representation.

One of the most fruitful insights is that technoscience is motivating a blurringand implosion of categories at various levels, particularly the modern categories thathave defined the natural, the organic, the technical and the textual. The boundariesbetween nature and culture, between organism and machine are ceaselesslyredrawn according to complex historical fac tors in which discourses of science andtechnology play a dec isive role.2 Bodies, organisms, and communities thushave to be re-theorized as composed of elements that originate in three differentdomains with permeable boundaries: the organic, the technical (ortechnoeconomic), and the textual (or, broadly speaking, cultural). While nature,bodies and organisms certainly have an organic basis, they are increasinglyproduced in conjunction with machines, and this production is always mediated byscientific narratives (discourses of biology, technology, and the like) and by culturein general. Cyberculture must thus be understood as the overarching field of forcesand meanings in which this complex production of life, labour and language takesplace.

For sorne,j while cyberculture can be seen as the imposition of a new grid ofcontrol on the planet, it also represents new possibilities for potent articulationsbetween humans, nature and machines. The organic, these critics suggest, is notnecessarily opposed to the technological. Yet it must also be emphasized that newknowledge and power configurations are narrowing down on life and labour, suchas in the Human Genome Project. Indeed, the new genetics, linked to novelcomputer techniques, its promise most eagerly visualized in the image of thebioc hip, might prove to be the greatest force for reshaping soc iety and life everwitnessed in history. In the future, nature will be known and remade throughtechnique; it will be literally built, in the same way that culture is, with the differencethat the making of nature will take place through the reconfiguration of soc ial life bymicroprac tices originating in medicine, biology and biotechnology.

The corollary of these analyses is the need to pay attention to the soc ial andcultural relations of science and technology as central mechanisms for theproduction of life and culture in the 21 st century. Capital, to be sure, will continue toplay a crucial role in the reinvention of life and soc iety. The worldwide spread ofvalue today, however, does not take place so much through the direct extrac tion ofsurplus value from labour or conventiona l industrialization as by the furthercapitalizing nature and soc iety through scientific R&D, particularly in the areas ofartificial intelligence and biotechnology. Even the human genome becomes animportant area for capitalist restructuring and, thus, for contestation. The reinventionof nature and culture currently under way-effected by/within webs of meaning andproduction that link science and capital-must therefore be understood according toa political economy appropriate to the era of cyberculture. Anthropologists need tobegin in earnest the study of the soc ial, economic and political practices related to

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the technologies through which life, language and labour are being articulated andproduced.

Areas for ethnographic researchGeneral questions to be raised by the anthropology of cyberculture include thefollowing: what new forms of soc ial construction of reality and of negotiation of suchconstructions are being created or modified? How are people soc ialized by theirroutine experience of constructed spaces created by new technologies? How dopeople relate to their technoworlds (machines, reinvented bodies, and natures)? ifpeople are differently placed in technospaces (according to race, gender, c lass,geographical location, physical ability), how do their experiences of these spacesdiffer? Finally, would it be possible to produce ethnographic ac counts of themultiplicity of practices linked to the new technologies in various soc ial, regionaland ethnic settings? How do these prac tices relate to broader soc ial issues, such asthe control of labour, the accumulation of capital, the organization of lifeworlds, andthe globalization of cultural production? Several areas, or domains of ethnographicinvestigation, can be distinguished, and refined as the research advanc es:The produc t ion and use of new technologies. Here anthropological research wouldfocus on scientists and experts in sites such as genetic research labs, high-technologycorporations, and virtual reality design centres, on the one hand, and the users ofthese technologies, on the other. Ethnographies in this domain would generallyfollow on the footsteps of the handful of ethnographies of modern science andtechnology conducted to date,15 science and technology theorizing, particularly inrelation to anthropology,* and feminist studies of science and technology,7although they will have to be resituated within the conceptual space of theanthropology of cyberculture. A handful of ethnographic studies of this kind arealready under way.

A salient aspect of research in this domain is the ethnographic account of theproduction of subjectivities that accompanies the new technologies. That thecomputer is an evocative object, a projective medium for the construction of avariety of private and public worlds, has been shown bv Sherry Turkle. As thecomputer culture spreads, Turkle shows in a pioneering study, more and morepeople start to think of themselves in computer terms. Computers are changingnotions of identity and the self in ways that are little understood. Cyberculture isindeed creating a host of veritable technologies of the self that go beyond the viewof self as machine, and the cultural productivity of these notions can only beassessed ethnographically. Virtual worlds, for instance, such as the use ofanonymous computer role-playing games (MUDS) as ther-apeutic media, can be away to move out of the self and into the world of soc ial interac tions. Although thesemedia are frequently thought of negatively, Turkle? recent work indicates that theycan become instruments for reconstructing identities in interac tive ways and sourcesof knowledge about other cultures and the outside world. There is also a globalcomponent to the produc tion of subjectivities that needs to be explored. What is themeaning of the globalization of Nintendo and Sega, for instance, in youth cultureworldwide? How are computer games consumed in soc ieties that have differentcultural codes?The appearance of computer-mediated communit ies, such as the so-called virtual


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communities and, generally, what one of the most creative computer environmentdesigners has called the vibrant new villages of activity within the larger cultures ofcomputing.30 Anthropological analysis can be important not only for understandingwhat these new villages and communities are but, equally important, forimagining the kinds of communities that human groups can create with the help ofemerging technologies. Again, research in this area is just beginning. We cananticipate active discussion on the proper methods for studying these communities,including questions of online/offline fieldwork, the boundaries of the group to bestudied, interpretation and ethics.

A variant of this line of research is what Laurelj termed interfaceanthropology. The creation of human-computer interfaces has been treatednarrowly as a problem of engineering design which attempts to match tasks to beperformed with the tools at hand. Yet the key question of the distinct userpopulations for whom the technologies are intended is often ignored or inferred fromstatistical information, and the critica l question of what the technology in questiondoes to users and what it allows them to do is never raised. Children, teachers,computer game designers and users, fiction writers, architec ts, community activistsand others (without even mentioning cross-cultural design) all have different needsand approaches regarding these basic questions. An interface anthropology thataddresses this lack would focus on user/context intersec tions, finding informants toguide the critica l (not merely utilitarian) exploration of diverse users and contexts.Studies ofpopular culture ofscience and technology, including the effect of scienceand technology on the popular imaginary (the set of basic elements that structure agiven discourse and the relations among them) and popular practices. What happenswhen technologies such as computers and virtual reality enter the mainstream? Therise of a technobabblej2 is only the tip of the iceberg with regard to the changes thatare taking place at this level. For the Argentinean cultural critic Beatriz Sarlo,j3 theprincipa l need in this regard is to examine the aesthetic and prac tical incorporationof technology into daily life. At the level of popular sectors, the technologicalimaginary elicits a reorganization of popular knowledges and the development ofsymbolic contents that, while undeniably modern, differ significantly from thoseintended by scientists. This has to be taken into account in the study of technoliterateprac tices that enable people to relate ac tively to new technologies.34The growth and qual i tat ive development of human comp uter-mediatedcommunicat ion, particularly from the perspec tive of the relationship betweenlanguage, communication, social structures and cultural identity. Whilecomputer-mediated communication shares many features with other forms ofmediated communication well studied by linguists and linguistic anthropologists,such as telephone and answering machine messages, it also differs in importantrespects. Human interac tion through computers must be studied not only from theperspective of the transcuItural/trans-situationa l principles and discoursestrategiesj5 governing any type of human interac tion, but also in terms of thespec ificity of the communicative and linguistic practices that arise from the nature ofthe media involved. Three dimensions of the process of construction ofcomputer-mediated communicative communities are particularly relevant in thisregard:3h (a) the relationship between machines and soc ial subjects as producers ofdiscourse at the threshold of the birth of an international c yberliterate soc iety; (b)the question of the creation and distribution of and access to the authorized or

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legitimate computer-mediated communication codes and languages whosemastery and manipulation grants particular groups of practitioners symbolicauthority and control over the circulation of cyberculture; (c) the role ofcomputer-mediated communication in establishing links between, giving cohesionto, and creating continuities in the interactional history of group members, side byside with telephone conversations, regular mail, and face-to-face interaction. Thismight include research on talk, interaction and technology in work and leisurecontexts, and on the shaping and reshaping of social and cultural boundaries bothbetween a given computer-mediated community and other communities and withinsuch communities.The p ol it ic a l ec on om y of c ybe rc ulture. Anthropologists have paid close attention inrecent decades to the analysis of communities in historical and global contexts.Cyberculture presents new challenges for the continued articulation of ananthropological political economy. What has been variously called the siliconorder, microchip capitalism, and the information economy entails deep changesin capital accumulation, social relations and divisions of labour at many levels.

What is the relationship between information and capital? Is it appropriate topostulate, as some do, j8 the existence of a mode of information akin to a mode ofproduction? How can we theorize the articulation between information, markets andcultural orders? The shift to new information technologies marked the appearance ofmore flexible, decentralized labour processes highly stratified by gender, ethnic,class and geographic factors. This post-Fordist regime j9 elicits novel articulations ofglobal capital with local cultures; we are witnessing the production of culturaldifference within a structured system of global political economy.40 In what specificways are these global processes mediated and constituted locally? What happens tolocal notions of development and modernity as new mechanisms of local-globalinteraction take shape? The appearance of a society of control4 and ofcyberocracy, or rule by way of information,4 calls for institutional ethnographiesconducted from the perspective of the political economy of information. What arethe major institutional sites within which and from which key informationalcategories and flows are created and put into circulation? What perspectives of theworld do these categories represent, and how do they enact mechanisms of rulingthat depend on certain groups relation to the mode of production of information?These ethnographies would move from computer-mediated production ofinformation to its reception and use, investigating at each level the cultural dynamicsand politics that information sets into motion.

As is information, science and technology have become crucial to capitalism inthat the creation of value today depends largely on scientific and technologicaldevelopments. The concrete forms of the scientific appropriation of life and labourby capital exhibits novel features such as the ever tighter imbrication of academy andindustry in the biotechnological field.13 These new forces are bringing about abiorevolution in the Third World: New technical forms . will significantlychange the context within which technological change in the Third World isconceptualized and planned. We suggest that the cluster of emergent techniquesgenerically called as biotechnology will be to the Green Revolution what theGreen Revolution was to traditional plant varieties and practices. Plant genetics,industrial tissue culture, and the use of genetically manipulated microorganismsrepresent unprecedented interventions in the context of Third World development.Corporations are already in the lead with regard to R&D. A\ the analysis of corporate

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behaviour by these researchers show, the prospects for the Third World are ominous,because corporations simply do not care about Third World interests.

Finally, the restructuring of the macroeconomic and political relations betweenrich and poor countries in the wake of cyberculture must be considered. As someargue, high technology is resulting in a new dependency of technology-poorcountries on the leaders in the innovation of computer, information and biologicaltechnologies. 45 Third World countries, according to these authors, must negotiatethis dependency through aggressive technological modernization coupled withsoc ial reforms. From an anthropological perspective, this suggestion is problematic;it amounts to the continuation of the post-World-War-11 policies of developmentwhich have had for the most part deleterious effects on the economies and culturesof the Third World.46 Like development, technologies are not culturally neutral.

Are there different possibilities for Third World societies-other ways ofparticipating in the technocultural conversations and processes that are reshapingthe world? How can soc ial movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America articulatepolicies that allow them to participate in cybercultures without fully submitting to therules of the game? Will most soc ial groups in the Third World be in the position evento know the possibilities afforded by new technologies? A more general question iswhether Third World governments would be interested in constructing thetechnological imaginaries that will be required for access to the new technologiesfrom the perspective of more autonomous design:47 there will not be a genuinesoc ial transformation without transforming the relation between soc iety and thetechnologies it incorporates.48 To start paying attention to Third Worldtechnological innovation is a first step towards ga ining technological self-esteem. Amore general question is whether the new technologies can be conceptualized inways that do not reduce them to their role in economic development, and another iswhat cybercultures mean from different Third World perspec tives.

Of spec ial importance in discussing these issues in the Third World is the role ofwomen in the electronics industry worldwide. The development of cyberculturerests, in many ways, on the labour of young women in North American, J apaneseand European electronic enc laves in South-east Asia, Central America and otherparts of the Third World.49 There is every reason to believe that electronics willcontinue to be favoured in industrial schemes in the Third World, under the aegis ofmultinational corporations, and there is also every reason to believe that youngwomen will continue to be seen as the idea l labour force by these industries. Theeffects of this process on the dynamics of gender and culture are enormous, as thefew studies of maquiladoras and sweatshops conducted to date have shown.Feminist anthropology and political economy have a great deal to contribute to thisfundamental aspect of the construction of cyberculture.

The anthropology of the future must contribute to in-depth studies of the class,gender and race aspects of the making of cyberculture and challenges to it, includinganalyses of technoscientific elites, on the one hand, and of the potential ofindividuals, groups and soc ial movements to articulate parallel or alternativetechnologies, ways of knowing, and soc ial relations of science and technology.Anthropological studies of cybercultures can help us to imagine contexts in whichpossibilities for relating to technoculture that do not exacerbate the powerimbalances in soc iety might emerge.Technology, utopia and the futureTechnological innovations and dominant worldviews generally transform each other

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so as to legitimize and naturalize the technologies of the time, Nature and soc ietycome to be explained in ways that reinforce the technological imperatives of the day,making them appear the most rational and efficient form of soc ial prac tice. in themodern age, this mutual reinforcement has resulted in the universalization of theEuropean technoscientific imaginary. For some, the visualization of apost-technoscientific soc iety would depend on the ability to set limits to thistechnological imperative; it would be a matter of studying closely the reach oftechnoscience, deciding which domains should be defended from it, anddemarcating appropriate technical domains and styles of competence.50 Whether ornot this position is viable or even useful, new languages are needed that allowdifferent groups of people (experts, soc ial movements, citizens groups) to reorientthe dominant understanding of technology. Some of these languages are beingcrafted within science itself (ecology, feminist science, non-Western scientifictraditions, the science of complexity). Some are being imagined from philosophyand other fields, and I would like to conc lude by referring to two authors who haveattempted to give us a view of the future that technology is likely to bring on us.

For Felix Guattari, the new technologies are fac ilitating a new look into life. Inthe visionary pages written shortly before his death, he acknowledged thatinformation, computer and biological technologies still reinforce for the most partthe alienating and retrograde system of capitalist modernity; yet he also adumbratedthe possibility that they might provide grounds for new creative, self-referentialsubjectives. This, for Guattari, is a historical possibility that has to be fought for; tobecome real, it requires the actualization of rights to singularity and alterity, newtypes of North-South relations, and a radical democratization of gender relations.What he called ecosophical practices include profound transformations ofeconomics, urban and rural ecologies, science, and ways of thinking-a questionnot of simple-minded self-management and autonomy but ofa soc ial complexity thatundermines the hegemony of techno-capitalist valorization. Here may lie yetanother way of being welcome to cyberculture.

J acques Attali52 sees in the millenniums end the dawn of a new mutation. Themarket form has been generalized and the world tends to become structured aroundtwo dominant geographical spaces-the European space, including East and West,and the Pacific space, including the USA-with a large periphery under theinfluence of either of the dominant spaces. More interestingly, the world economywill be fuelled, according to Attali, by the production of /nomad ob;ects, portableobjects capable of supporting most life activities without the need for ties to plac e orsoc ial group. Nomad objects will become essential not only in information andcommunications but in most domains of daily life, including health, food, educationand surveillance. These objects will be increasingly intelligent, allowing usersunprecedented independence. This is the order we see in the making: people, asmuch as objects, will be nomads, without stable home or family; they will carry withthem, on them, everything that constitutes their social \ ,alue.53 Prostheses andartificial organs, genetic engineering, instruments of self-diagnosis and self-learningwill create life as object. Everything-genes, life-forms-will be patentable. Peoplewill be produced as commodities.

Drugs will be the only form of nomadism available to the millions excludedfrom the market of objects. The world will be increasingly divided between luxurynomads, in the dominant countries, and nomads of misery, mostly in theperiphery, who will try to migrate to the dominant spaccas. This division will bereproduced in the periphery. New walls will be erected between North and South,


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between rich and poor: Many countries in the dominant spaces will try to stop themovements of people [from the periphery]; they will try to defend their identity . . .A new dictatorship is upon us, the refusal to acknowledge and welcome the Other.The rich will shelter themselves in their riches and will justify exclusion as an excessof mobility. To be a citizen of these countries will again require the justification of aracial order.54

We only need to recall Somalia and Rwanda to realize how c lose we are to thisorder. Attali, however, sees reasons for hope. It is possible that the same economicsystem will produce a peace economy. This will require unprecedented c reativity inall domains of economic and soc ial life. This creativity will have to face the crucialproblems of the age-malnutrition, pollution, genetic engineering, the arms raceand drugs. The dominant countries will have to learn how to welcome change, howto facilitate the access to nomad objects to all in all corners of the globe--the accessto health, knowledge and culture, to human dignity. Only in this way can they hopeto defend the nomad object par excellence, the Earth. The young will invent theirways of nomadism in freedom. An overall project, however, will be needed in orderto give meaning to the nomad age and reconc ile modernity with spirituality. Only anew set of planetary institutions, democratically elected, might succeed in steeringthe species towards a globality and worldliness that opposes creativity to violenceand to the senseless piling up of nomad objec ts.

Utopian? Certainly. But let us keep in mind that it is with utopia that philosophybecomes political, taking to its extreme the critique of its era . . . utopia designatesthe conjunction of philosophy with the present.55 Utopias of soc iety andtechnology? Perhaps. Is anthropology prepared for the task?

Anthropology without primitives?Anthropology, it continues to be said, 56 is still enframed within the overall order ofthe modern and the savage, the civilized self and the uncivilized other. If it is toreenter the real world and work in the present r,57 it will h;ve to deal with thesteady march of cyberculture. Cyberculture, moreover, offers a change foranthropology to renew itself without aga in reaching, as in the anthropology of thiscentury, premature closure around the figures of the other and the same. Thesequestions, and cyberculture generally, concern what anthropology is about--thestory of life as it has been lived and is being lived today at this very moment. What ishappening to life in the late 20th century? What is coming in the next?

Notes and referencesFrom an etymologica l perspec tive, the terms cyberculture, cyberspace, cyberocracy, and thelike are misnomers. In coining the term cybernetics, Norbert Wiener had in mind the Creek wordfor Pilot or steersman (kibernetes); in other words, there is no Greek root for cyber. G iven thewide acceptance of the prefix cyber, I use cyberculture here as an element of analysis.lt is not apparent why computer and information technologies both fall under the rubric of artificialintelligence. To the extent that computers can be thought of as todays dominant intellectualtechnologies, it is valid to propose that a ll informatics may be thought of as artificial intelligence.(P Levy, La oralidad primaria,pages 4- 16). la escritura, y la informdtica . David y Goliath , 58, 1991,Allucquere Rosanne Stone, Virtual Systems: The Architecture of Elsewhere, unpub lished paper,Group or the Study of Virtual Systems, Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, SantaCruz, 1991.Paul Rabinow, Artificiality and enlightenment: from soc iobiology to biosociality, in j Crary andS Kwinter, editors, /ncorpora!ions (New York, Zone Books, 1992), pages 234-252.

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The first step was taken at the 1992 annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies ot Science,where a group of American anthropologists (Michael Fischer, Sharon Traweek, Rayna Rapp, DavidHess, Lisa Handwerker, Shirley Coresntein, and David Hakken) met to discuss strategies iorestablishing a Committee on Science and Technology within the AAA. This process is detailed in the1992 edition of the Soc ia l /Cul tura l Anthropolog y of Sc ienc e and Tec hnolog y Newsletter , edited byDavid Hess.Panels at the 1992 meetings included cyborg anthropology, cultural perspectives on computing,cultural barriers to technological innovation, virtual communities, consequences of interactiveinformation technology on culture and education, and cyborgs and women (in honour of DonnaHaraway).For a directory and bibliography of anthropological science and technology studies, see D Hess,editor, The Social/CulturalAn th r opo l ogy ofSc ienc e and Tec hno logy , Social/Cultural Anthropologyof Science and Technology Newsletter, 1992; D Hess and L Layne, editors, Know/ edg e andSoc - ie ty ,Vol9, The Anthropolog y of Sc ienc e and Tec hnolog y (Greenwich, JAI Press, 1992); B Pfaffenberger,The social anthropology of technology, Annua l Review o f Anthropolog y, 21, 1992, pages491- 516; D Hakken, n.d., Has there been a computer revolution! An anthropological approach,Journal of Com put ing and Soc iety, 1(l ), pages 11-28; S Traweek, An introduction to culture,gender, and social studies of science and technology, / ourna/ of Cul ture, Me dic ine, and Psyc hiat ry ,17 , 1993, pages 3-25; D Hess, If you are thinking of living in STS: a guide to the perplexed,in Cyb orgs and Ci tad els: Anthrop olog ical intervent ions into Tec hnoc -ul tures (Santa Fe, NM, Schoolof American Research, in press).Lila Abu-Lughod, The romance of resistance, Amer ican Ethnologist , 17(l ),1995, pages 401- 455;Gudrun Dahl and Annika Rabo, editors, Kam-a p or Tak e-o f f: Loc al Not ions of Develop m ent(Stockholm, Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology); Nestor Garc-ia Canclini, Culturas hibnd~h:estrategias pa ra entrar y sal ir de / a mo dernidad (Mexico, Grijalbo, 1990) .The case of the Kayapo in the Amazon rainforest, who have become adept at using video cameras,aeroplanes, and revenues from gold mining in their struggle for cultural autonomy, is alreadybecoming legendary.David Hess, kienc e and Tec hnolog y in a Mul t ic u l tura l World (in press).Arjun Appadurai, Global ethnoscapes, in Richard Fox, editor, Recaptur ingAnthropology: Work,ngin the Pre5ent (Santa Fe, NM, School of American Research, 1991). pages 191-210.D. Hess, Science and Tec hnolog y in a Mul t icu l tura l World (New York, Columbia Untversity Press,1995) ; Arturo Escobar, Enc ounter ing Develop m ent : Thp Ma king a nd Unm aking of the Third World(Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Pres\, 1994).Among the best known studies is Godeliers (1971) work on the effect of the introduction of steelaxes on Australian aborigines and the Baruya of Papua New Guinea. M Codelier, Salt currencyand the circulation of commodities among the Baruya of New Guinea, in Studie * in Ec on om !cAnthropo logy , edited by George Dalton (Washington, DC, American Anthropological A%oc.iatlon,1971). For an excellent discussion of earlier studies, see Hess (1995).Bryan Pfaffenberger, The social anthropology of technology, Annu,r / Review ofAnthrop olog y, _?I,1992, page 513.Mead was an active participant in the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (M Mead, H L Tauber andHeinz von Foerster, editors, Cybernet ic-s (5 volumes) (New York, Josiah Macy Jr Foundation,1950-1956) as well as a central figure at the founding of the American Society for Cybernetics(M Mead, Cybernetics of Cybernetics, in Purposive Systems, edited by Heinz von Forrster (NewYork, Spartan Books, 1968), pages 1~ 14. The life of this illustrious cybernetics group, whit hincluded besides Mead, Gregory Bateson, Heinz von Foerster, Norbert Wiener and Kurt Lrwin,among others, is chronicled in a recent book (S Heims, The C, be rnetjc s Group (CambrIdge,MIT Press, 1991) . I t hould be pointed out that the Macy conferences took place in the context otthe Cold War, the first wave of computer technology, and the development of general \vstem\theory. Todays historical and epistemological context is quite different.The term c-yberspace, first coined by W Gibson, Neuromanref (New York, Bantam Books,1984) and introduced to intellectual, artistic, and academic c irclcs in the collection by M Benedikt,editor, Cy be rspa c e: The First Step s (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991), refers to the growingnetworks and systems of computer-mediated environments. For introductions to the concept ofc yberspace, see H Rheingold, Virtual Reali ty [New York, Simon and hchuster, 1991) and A R Stone.Virtual systems: the architecture ofelsewhere',Manuscript, Group for the Study of Virtual Sy\trnrs,University of California, Santa Cruz, 1991; A R Stone, Virtual svstcms, in I nc -o rpora t ionc , c~t1lti.dbv JCrary and S Kwinter (New York, Zone Books, 19921, pages 6011-62.5.David Thomas, Old ntuals for new space: rite, of passage and Willi.~m Gibsons cultural model r)icyberspace, in Benedikt, editor, op ti t, reference 16. page 3 I.This destript lon is based on the paper presented at the panel Cvborg anthropology I: on tht,production of humanity and its boundaries, by Garv Lee Downey, Joseph Dumit and SarahWilliams. Cyhorg Anthropology, Co/rur,~/ Anthropo / qq \ ~ , I~uL) , 19' 15,pages 264&L(~).


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Manual de Landa, War in the Ag e of inte l l ige nt Ma ch ines (New York, Zone Books, 1991); LisaCartwright and Brian Goldfarb, Radiography, cinematography, and the decline of the lens, in Craryand Kwinter, editors, op ti t, reference 4, pages 190-201; Barbara Duden, The Woman Beneath theSkin (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1990).Benedikt, editor, op ti t , reference 16; Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New York, Simon andSchuster, 1991).Chris Hables Gray and Mark Driscoll, Whats real about virtual reality? Anthropology of, and in,cyberspace, Visual Anthropolog y Review , 8(2), 1992, page 39.Donna Haraway, Sym ians, Cyb orgs, an d Wom en: The Reinv entio n of Na ture (New York,Routledge, 1991)./ b i d ; Rabinow, op ti t , reference 4.Ib id.Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar, Lab oratory Life: The Soc ial Co nstruction of Sc ienti f ic Fac ts(Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1979); Emily Martin, The Woma n in the Bod y (Boston,MA, Beacon Press, 1987); Shiv Visvanathan, Organiz ing for Sc ienc e (Delhi, Oxford UniversityPress, 1985); Bruno Latour, The Pa steuriza tion of Franc e (Cambridge, MA, Harvard UniversityPress, 1988); Sharon Traweek, Bea m times an d Lifet ime s: 7he World of High -e nerg y Physicists(Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1988); Dorin Kondo, Craft ing Selves (Chicago, IL, TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1990).David Hakken, Has there been a computer revolution? An anthropological approach, Journal ofCom put ing and Soc ie ty , 7 I), nd, pages 11-28; Pfaffenberger, op ti t, reference 14; David Hess andLinda Layne, editors, The anthropology of science and technology, Know / edge and Soc i e t y ,Volume 9 (Greenwich, CT, JAI Press,l992); Hess, op ti t, reference 10.Haraway, op ti t , reference 22; Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth, editors,Bod y/ po l it ic s: Wome n a nd the Disco urses of Sc ienc e (New York, Routledge, 1990); Judy Wajcman,feminism Confronts Technology (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991);Evelyn fox Keller, Sec rets of Life, Sec rets of Dea th: Essay s on Lan gua ge , Ge nd er an d Sc ienc e (Ne wYork, Routledge, 1992).Sherry Turkle, The Sec on d Self: Com pu ters an d the Huma n Spir i t (Ne w York, Simon and Schuster,1984).Sherry Turkle, Living in the MUDS: multiplicity and identity in virtual reality, presented at thepanel Cyborg Anthropology II, 9lst Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association,San Francisco, 2-6 December, 1992.Brenda Laurel, editor, The Arf of Human- Com puter Inter fac e Design (Reading, MA, AddisonWesley, 1990), page 93./ b i d , pages 91-93.John Barry, Tec hnoba bb le (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991).Beatriz Sarlo, La ima ginac idn fPcn ica : suerios mo de rnos de / a cu l tura Argent ina (Buenos Aires,Ediciones Nueva Visibn, 1992).Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, editors, Tec hnoc ul ture (Minneapolis, MN, University ofMinnesota Press, 1991); John Fiske, Understan ding Pop ular Culture (Boston, MA, Unwin Hyman,1989); Paul Willis, Common Cul tu re (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1990).John Cumperz, Disc ourse Strateg ies (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1983).Celso Alvarez, personal communication, 1992.Eric Wolf, Europ e and the Peo ple Without History (New York and Berkeley, CA, University ofCalifornia Press, 1982); William Roseberry, Anthrop olog ies an d Histories: Essay s in Culture,History, and Poli t ic al Ec ono m y (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1992).Mark Poster, The Mod e of Informa t ion: Pos&tructura/ ism and Soc ia l Co ntext (Chicago, IL, TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1990).David Harvey, The Cond it ion of Postmo de rnity (Oxford, Basic Blackwell, 1989).Alan Pred and Michael Watts, Rew orking Mod ernity : Cap i ta l ism and Sym bo l ic Disc ontent (NewBrunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1992), page 18.Gilles Deleuze, Control y devenir: entrevista con Toni Negri, translated by Edgar Garavito ElEspe c tado r , Ma ga zin Dominica / (Bogoti), No 5 11, 7 February 1993, pages 14- 18.David Ronfeldt, Cyb eroc racy , Cyb erspa ce , a nd Cyb erology: Pol i tica l Ef fec ts of the Informa t ionRevolut ion (Santa Monica, CA, The Rand Corporation, 1991).Paul Rabinow Severing the ties: fragmentation and dignity in late modernity, in David Hess andLinda Layen, editors, Knowledg e and Soc ie ty : The Anthropo logy o f Sc ienc e and Tec hno logy ,Volume 9 (Greenwich, JAI Press, 1992), pages 169-187.Frederick Buttle, Martin Kenney and Jack Kloppenburg, From green revolution to biorevolution:some observations on the changing technological bases of economic transformation in the thirdworld, Eco nom ic Deve lopme nt and Cu l tu ra l Change , 34, 1985, page 32 .Manuel Castells and Roberto Laserna, The new dependency: technological change andsocioeconomic restructuring in Latin America, Soc io/ og ica / Forum, 4(4), 1989, pages 535-560;

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