Question: "Auto-ethnography" is a form of anthropological writing where the author explores their own life and personal experiences, analytically connecting these experiences to wider cultural practices and meanings. You must use your anthropological imagination and analysis to frame and explain to your reader how your personal experience fits into broader material and social infrastructures, cultural processes, identity communities, and symbolic meanings. The goal of auto-ethnography is both to communicate in writing something of what the experience feels like from the "native point of view," andto interpret and explain the significance of this experience and its connection to broader social dynamicsusing anthropological analysis. Both of these components must be well-developed in your short paper.
PROMPT: After watching Amber Case's short TED talk about cyborg anthropology (shown in class on March 6, but easily searchable online), think about the ways you interact with your primary digital device or devices (phone, tablet, laptop, etc.). In a short paper (2-3 pages, double spaced, standard font) explore the entanglement of technological extensions with your identity and personhood.
You are not required to incorporate answers to all the questions below (that would be impossible in a short paper)-they are offered here just to spur your ideas.
• How is the device part of your everyday practice?
• In what ways does it connect you to your social communities?
• How does it help you construct a sense of self?
• What factors help to expand your capacity and reach as a human being?
• Are there any ways you feel trapped or hindered by your technology?
• Overall, how is it being a cyborg-human in the early 21st century?
• How do you imagine tech saturation has made your experience as a human different from past generations?
• In what ways are you doing just what earlier humans did, but on different platforms?"