Amber Case had trouble sleeping as far back as she can remember. When she was 4, she decided to do something about it. It involved thinking of her brain as a computer and manually shutting it down. This talk covers various aspects of what it is like to be a connected human, the effect of connectivity on the brain and the need for digital downtime as well as the history and future of our increasing relationship with technology.

1. Meditation and the
Modern Cyborg
Amber Case
BG Conf 2012
Boulder, CO
@caseorganic

2. we are all
cyborgs

4. cyborg:
an organism “to which
exogenous components have
been added for the purpose of
adapting to new ambient
spaces”

6. Flickr: cybertoad

7. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/
119/293670483_cbce23bdde_b.jpg
Flickr: soylentgreen23

8. Flickr: cybertoad

9. Univac 1 ~1950’s ^^
iPhone ~2000’s >>

10. traditional anthropology

11. Flickr: futurestreet
cyborg anthropology

12. ambient intimacy
Leisa Reichelt

13. Hyperlinked
Memories

14. Persistent
Paleontology

15. Nick
Rodrigues
Email Garden, 2011

16. Panic
architecture

17. Prosthetics
and their
discontents

18. Prosthetics
and their
discontents

19. Nick
Rodrigues

20. I was okay with
all of this…

21. Until
this

22. I needed to sleep.

23. I needed to sleep.
A lot.

24. And it reminded me of
something

25. Insomnia at age 4

26. Shutting down the
brain

27. Watching my dad’s
computer +
processes

28. Just like a computer
(shut down)

29. Sometimes it failed
First nightmares (order to chaos)

30. Then: disk
defragmentation

31. Disk
Defragmentation

32. Fragmentation in
Daily Life

33. Information Junk Food

34. My Brain Today

36. I became a
Skinnerian Rat

37. Intermittent
reinforcement

38. Self
Reflection

39. Loss of the ability to
mentally defragment

40. Mental
Defragmentation
Memory compression and sorting

41. Derek Zumbach
Alpha Wave
Synchrony
Feedback Machine

47. Quantified Self

48. Of all of the newest technologies
for finding friends or dating. I have
many friends, I have a wife at the
end of it all, the person I know least
about is myself.
- Jon Lebkowsky

49. Example: The SIMS

51. Example: Harvard
Happiness Project

53. Making the Invisible
Visible

54. Example:
Aaron Parecki’s
GPS Map of Portland

56. Approaching
awareness
with technology

57. Kids are totally and
completely aware

58. Calm Technology
Mark Weiser

60. • Calm technology
• Actions as buttons
• Invisible interfaces
• Trigger-based
interactions

61. Haptic
Location
Haptic Compass
http://www.sensebridge.net

62. Real-time location-based gaming
@caseorganic slideshare.net/caseorganic

63. mapattack.org
@caseorganic slideshare.net/caseorganic

64. The best technology
is invisible
It should get out of the
way and connect people.

65. No longer this.

66. This!

67. Conclusions and
Future
Making the invisible visible

68. Thank you
Amber Case
http://caseorganic.com
case@caseorganic.com
@caseorganic