Technologies of the New Real

Book excerpt: With astonishing speed, we have been projected into a new reality where interactions with drones, robotic bodies, and high-level surveillance are increasingly mainstream. In this age of groundbreaking developments in robotic technologies, synthetic biology is merging with artificial intelligence, forming a newly blended reality of machines, bodies, and affect. Technologies of the New Real draws from critical intersections of technology and society – including drones, surveillance, DIY bodies, and innovations in robotic technology – to explore what these advances can tell us about our present reality, or what authors Arthur and Marilouise Kroker deem the "new real" of digital culture in the twenty-first century. Technologies of the New Real explores the many technologies of our present reality as they infiltrate the social, political, and economic static of our everyday lives, seemingly eroding traditionally conceived boundaries between humans and machines, and rendering fully ambivalent borders between the human mind and simulated data.