This
paper focuses on the ways in which the introduction of technologies
in modern medicine is changing collective notions of the body.
In particular, it describes two popular and imaginative conceptualizations
of the body that have been inspired by progresses made by medical
technologies during last century: the cyborg, and the cyberbody.
Although these two models stem from the same post-modern philosophical
"post-body", "post-biological," or "post-human"
visions, they are characterized by a fundamental distinction.
While the cyborg, at least in its original conception, is linked
to the "wild wired world", the world of cells, neurons,
blood and biological processes, the cyberbody can be defined as
a wireless, inorganic entity, made of pure bits of information.
However, both definitions assume that people no longer has a direct
"sense of body", but a mediated sense of body. Further
steps in this direction may be determined by the emerging technological
paradigm of Ambient Intelligence. In this vision, people will
be surrounded by intelligent and intuitive interfaces embedded
in everyday objects around us and an environment recognizing and
responding to the presence of individuals in an invisible way
by year 2010. Although the Ambient Intelligence scenario is still
in an early phase of development, it is somehow predictable that
technological innovations that this paradigm will bring into medicine
are likely to foster the production of a new collective notion
of the body based on the "digital me": a virtual reality
representation of the patient as a virtual person, integrating
all the diagnostic and clinical information of the patient into
a single record continuous across time. In addition to explore
this perspective from a theoretical viewpoint, implications for
medical practice are discussed.
