Speculating Cybernetic Cities in a Posthuman Era: Design of Internet of Bodies (IoB)

Abstract

This paper incorporates a quantum design approach to design possibility through the lens of Techno-humanism (interchangeably used with transhuman) and Internet of Bodies (IoB). Functionally, depending on how the present is characterized, both past and future possibilities are defined simultaneously is the basis of a quantum design approach. Please keep in mind that ‘past’, present’, and ‘future’ are utilized here in a literal sense of lived temporality. Techno-humanism is seeking to utilize and upgrade the human mind to enable access to hitherto unknown experiences and unfamiliar states of consciousness. (Harari, Y.: Homo Deus—A Brief History of Tomorrow. Penguin Random House (2016)) At the same time, with humankind incorporating a posthuman phase and largely expected to extend to a transhuman one, supporters of trans-humanism argue that we have arrived in a post-Darwinian era in which we can shape our own evolution (Shanks in Speculative Design and the Posthuman Body, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2013) and the inevitability of Internet of Bodies (IoB). A classic example of IoB application is the Matrix universe in The Matrix Trilogy films. The present harbours IoB through the Internet of things (IoT) portfolio, through its data centric lens of monitoring and optimization of networked infrastructural processes (as part of the human body) which seems as the cornerstone towards a new techno-social era. The aim of the paper is to add to the crucial emerging body of ‘Internet of Bodies (IoB)’ (Matwyshyn, A.: The Internet of Bodies, 61 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 77 (2019). https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol61/iss1/3) literature in HCI design by leveraging a speculative design outlook to the future of urbanism in a more integrated and connected era. Additionally, through an experimental study about the future of a connected IoB future, the paper shall expound ways of enabling, creating, and presenting the probable design architecture routes to help the conceptualizing and imagining of future possibilities in a connected IoB smart city. Alongside, we will illustrate the results of the experiment through the lens of probable outcomes as a result of co-opting and co-designing the homogeneous evolution of HCI, IoT, and IoB in future smart cities.