Ana completed her PhD at the University of Toronto and in February 2005 began her position as Research Associate, Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Cornell NanoScale Facility at Cornell University.
Profile
[KMDiary 2003 Issue #5]:
Neither, answers Ana Viseu, KMDIs most recent Graduate Fellow, when asked to decide between utopian and distopian visions, a choice she considers specious. Gain always comes in the context of loss. You cant improve one faculty without diminishing another. So when human experienceand, in profound ways, humanity itselfis digitally enhanced, a trade-off is inevitable. The point is understanding the terms of that trade. Ana's level-headedness is indispensable given her focus on bodynets, or wearable personal computers, a science-fiction theme capable of exciting extremes of response, including outright disbelief. Listening to this professional young scholar discuss the topic, however, leaves little doubt of its relevancy, which in part explains the momentum her dissertation is gathering, including prestigious funding from the Bell University Labs.
In a networked age of ubiquitous computing, bodynets bring the distributed phenomenon of the Internet about as close to home as you can get. Ana defines a bodynet as a human being networked for (potentially) continuous communication with the environment (humans and non-humans) through at least one wearable device--a computer worn on the body that is always on, ready and accessible. Bodynets are socio-technical artifacts, but they are hardly inert. They mediate between and (re)connect the individual and the environment. In doing so they transform, and are transformed by, all the elements in the interaction, giving rise to new social and cognitive dynamics.
Ana is working out the implications in a study supervised by Michel Ferrari and Keith Oatley at OISE. She begins with an investigation into the motivations, negotiations, problems and solutions experienced by the different actors involved in developing and implementing bodynets, and follows with an examination of a real-life implementation of wearable computers, a case study provided by Bell Canadas experiment with wiring field technicians. Here the consequences come to light, as her work forges ever tighter links between technology, psychology, and sociology. The spin-offs from her core research are varied, with two areas in particular occupying further reflection: the broader implications of a mutual adaptation between individuals and technology (a topic on which she has published in the Journal of Ethics), and the ways technologies such as wearable computers and the virtual space of the Internet are transforming our conception of self and body.
Ana comes to this futuristic world with training in communication sciences (interactive media, multimedia and telecommunications), an academic career that looks like an itinerary of leading European universities, and a history of hands-on experience in corporate and governmental technologic innovation. In Spain, where she completed her MA, Ana met and began collaborating with Derrick de Kerckhove, head of U of Ts McLuhan Program. Having translated his Connected Intelligence into Portuguese, and having relocated in Toronto, she researched another book with de Kerckhove, before carrying out research at the Faculty of Information Science (FIS) with Andrew Clement on digital identity construction and on the SSHRC-funded
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