Matthew Gladden | Georgetown University (original) (raw)

Research Articles by Matthew Gladden

World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 2021

Horizon: Studies in Phenomenology, 2020

From his earliest published writings to his last, Roman Ingarden displayed an interest in theoret... more From his earliest published writings to his last, Roman Ingarden displayed an interest in theoretical biology and its efforts to clarify what distinguishes living organisms from other types of entities. However , many of his explorations of such issues are easily overlooked, because they don't appear in works that are primarily ontological, metaphysical, or anthropological in nature but are "hidden" within his works on literary aesthetics, where Ingarden sought to define the nature of living organisms in order to compare literary works to such entities. This article undertakes a historical textual analysis that traces the evolution of Ingarden's thought regarding the nature of the literary work of art as an organism-like entity and uncovers its links with the simultaneous development of his systems theory and its central concept of the "relatively isolated system": for Ingarden, a literary work and an organism are each a systematically transforming, "living, " functional-structural whole that comprises a system of hierarchically arranged and partially isolated (yet interdependent) elements whose harmonious interaction allows the literary work or organism to fulfill its chief function. Having completed that historical analysis, we test Ingarden's assessment of works of art as organism-like entities in a novel context by investigating the organism-like qualities of the contemporary computer game; insofar as their AI-driven behavior displays a form of agency, such games might appear to be even more "alive" than traditional works of art. We show that Ingarden's conceptual framework provides a useful tool for understanding the "organicity" of such games as works of art, despite the fact that they differ qualitatively from those art forms with which Ingarden was directly familiar.

Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics: Volume 11, 2019

This work draws on Ingarden’s systems theory to develop a phenomenological aesthetic account of t... more This work draws on Ingarden’s systems theory to develop a phenomenological aesthetic account of the kinds of reason-defying buildings that cannot exist as physical structures in the real world but which are frequently encountered within the virtual gameworlds of computer games. Such “impossible” buildings might, for example, take the form of colossal biological entities or violate established principles of physics or geometry. First, the evolution of Ingarden’s systems theory is traced, and an account of his mature systems theory is presented: pivotal is his concept of the “relatively isolated system” whose contents are partially engaged with and partially sheltered from the external environment via the system’s complex array of semipermeable boundaries. By applying Ingarden’s thought in a novel way, a systems-theoretical phenomenological architectural aesthetics is then formulated that conceptualizes the “building” as a set of overlapping physical, informational, and psychosocial boundaries that generate interior spaces that possess rich structures and dynamics and mediate their occupants’ relationships with the world. Using this conceptual framework, it is shown how the systems-theoretical properties of real-world buildings and virtual gameworld buildings can (and often do) radically differ. Three types of “impossible” gameworld buildings are analyzed: (1) the floating castle that is a recurring element of fantasy games; (2) the shapeshifting haunted mansion that appears not infrequently in horror games; and (3) the high-tech facility that functions as the gigantic “body” of an AI, which is common in science-fiction-themed games. This aesthetic framework may be of value to game developers seeking to employ techniques of “hyperdeconstruction,” “hyperfolding,” or architectural posthumanization to design more memorable and meaningful gameworlds.

AVANT: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies, 2020

In this text it is argued that immersion in virtual reality (VR) with the aid of contemporary VR ... more In this text it is argued that immersion in virtual reality (VR) with the aid of contemporary VR equipment may offer access to novel types of virtual worlds that differ qualitatively from the “real” world and from other types of fictional worlds. The text begins by (a) distinguishing between VR systems, virtual environments, and virtual worlds; (b) showing how the virtual worlds facilitated by VR systems resemble and differ from the “virtual worlds” created in one’s mind when, for example, reading a novel or watching a film; and (c) identifying necessary and optional elements of a VR-facilitated virtual world. Employing a phenomenological approach that draws on the thought of Ingarden and Norberg-Schulz, it is shown that a visitor to a VR-facilitated virtual world can (and frequently does) shift his or her conscious attention along three different “axes”. First, one’s attention can move “horizontally” between the media that disclose the virtual world through different senses. Second, one’s attention can shift “vertically” between the virtual world’s different ontological strata, including its layers of myriad atomic stimuli; distinguishable elements that possess spatiotemporal extension; assemblages of elements that have a context and relations but lack individual meaning; glimpses that build up a lattice of meaning and contribute to one’s knowledge of the world; and the virtual world envisioned as a coherent mentally concretized whole. Third, one’s attention can shift “interspatially” between the many different overlapping constituent spaces of the virtual world, including its perceptual, concrete, natural, built, identifiable, technological, emotional, social, economic, political, cultural, ecological, and possibility spaces. This triaxial phenomenological framework can shed new light on the rich and diverse ways in which VR-facilitated virtual worlds manifest themselves as emergent wholes constituted within human consciousness; also, it suggests approaches by which visitors might more proactively mentally explore and come to inhabit such virtual worlds.

International Journal of Research Studies in Management, 2019

The growing use of advanced AI, ambient intelligence, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality... more The growing use of advanced AI, ambient intelligence, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) technologies of the sort found within the emerging cyber-physical smart workplace has been described as enabling new forms of human-computer interaction (HCI) that are “magical” in nature. This study shows that from an anthropological perspective, such a workplace environment can indeed be understood as “magical”; however, that “magicality” is a double-edged sword that can potentially both enhance and damage user experience (UX) for workers and other occupants of such environments. First, by analyzing existing social anthropological and philosophical anthropological accounts of magic, typical elements of magical practice are identified. Using Nielsen’s empirical analysis of HCI usability heuristics as a basis, a prospective heuristic evaluation is then carried out for the usability of a generic “magical” environment, in order to identify elements of magical practice that might be expected to enhance or impair user experience when they are required for interaction with the environment. A more specific heuristic usability evaluation is then performed for the “magical” aspects of HCI created by two kinds of constituent technologies that are typical for a cyber-physical smart workplace: those of (a) ambient intelligence and IoT-enabled systems and (b) AR and VR systems. It is shown that the magical aspects of HCI within the emerging cyber-physical smart workplace differ significantly in their potential UX impacts from the magicality involved with earlier forms of computing, and the implications of this fact for the management of future workplaces are identified and discussed.

ICTM 2018: Proceedings of the International Conference on ICT Management for Global Competitiveness and Economic Growth in Emerging Economies., 2018

The processes of “posthumanization” can be understood as those dynamics by which a human organiza... more The processes of “posthumanization” can be understood as those dynamics by which a human organization or society comes to include members other than “natural” biological human beings who contribute to the structure, activities, or meaning of that organization or society. In the world of business, such posthumanization is commonly identified with the growing use of social robots, autonomous AI, and joint human-computer systems to perform work that in earlier eras would have been performed by human beings acting alone. Such “technological” posthumanization is often presented as a new phenomenon occurring largely in those developed economies that are pioneering Industry 4.0 paradigms (e.g., by expanding workplace automation) and that are uniquely positioned to harness such forces to drive economic growth. Here, however, we contend that such emphasis on the novelty of technological posthumanization overlooks forms of non-technological posthumanization that have been at work in human societies for millennia. Such dynamics of non-technological posthumanization have weakened significantly in many developed economies since the mid-20th century; however, they remain relatively strong in emerging economies. In this study, a conceptual framework is developed for identifying and comparing phenomena through which processes of technological or non-technological posthumanization manifest themselves in developed and emerging economies. It is argued that the ongoing and robust experience with non-technological posthumanization possessed by many of the world’s emerging economies may offer them unique and underappreciated psychological, social, and cultural mechanisms for integrating effectively into their enterprises, organizations, and institutions those novel forms of non-human agency that are at work in key Industry 4.0 technologies, like those relating to social robotics, autonomous AI, and advanced human-computer interfaces.

The Japanese Government’s “Society 5.0” initiative aims to create a cyber-physical society in whi... more The Japanese Government’s “Society 5.0” initiative aims to create a cyber-physical society in which (among other things) citizens’ daily lives will be enhanced through increasingly close collaboration with artificially intelligent systems. However, an apparent paradox lies at the heart of efforts to create a more “human-centered” society in which human beings will live alongside a proliferating array of increasingly autonomous social robots and embodied AI. This study seeks to investigate the presumed human-centeredness of Society 5.0 by comparing its makeup with that of earlier societies. By distinguishing “technological” and “non-technological” processes of posthumanization and applying a phenomenological anthropological model, the study demonstrates: (1) how the diverse types of human and non-human members expected to participate in Society 5.0 differ qualitatively from one another; (2) how the dynamics that will shape the membership of Society 5.0 can be conceptualized; and (3) how the anticipated membership of Society 5.0 differs from that of Societies 1.0 through 4.0. The study describes six categories of prospective human and non-human members of Society 5.0 and shows that all six have analogues in earlier societies – which suggests that social scientific analysis of past societies may shed unexpected light on the nature of Society 5.0.

Urbanity and Architecture Files / Teka Komisji Urbanistyki i Architektury, 2018

Here Ingarden’s concept of the “relatively isolated system” is used to develop a phenomenology of... more Here Ingarden’s concept of the “relatively isolated system” is used to develop a phenomenology of architecture that emphasizes the way in which a structure’s boundary and openings define an “inside” and “outside” and regulate passage between them. This approach is compared with Norberg-Schulz’s. The Ingardenian approach’s strengths include its compatibility with biomimetic form-finding and its insights for future architectural practice that is expected to become increasingly “posthumanized.” / W artykule zastosowano Ingardena pojęcie „systemu względnie izolowanego,” aby sformułować fenomenologię architektury podkreślającą sposób, w jaki granica struktury i otwory w niej definiują „wnętrze” i „zewnętrze” i regulują przepływ między nimi. Podejście to porównane jest z myślą Norberga-Schulza. Zaletą podejścia ingardenowskiego są, m.in., zgodność z biomimetycznym wynajdowaniem formy i nowe spojrzenie w przyszłe praktyki architektoniczne, które będą coraz bardziej „posthumanizowane.”

In some circumstances, immersion in virtual environments with the aid of virtual reality (VR) equ... more In some circumstances, immersion in virtual environments with the aid of virtual reality (VR) equipment can create feelings of anxiety in users and be experienced as something “frightening”, “oppressive”, “alienating”, “dehumanizing”, or “dystopian”. Sometimes (e.g., in exposure therapy or VR gaming), a virtual environment is intended to have such psychological impacts on users; however, such effects can also arise unintentionally due to the environment’s poor architectural design. Designers of virtual environments may employ user-centered design (UCD) to incrementally improve a design and generate a user experience more closely resembling the type desired; however, UCD can yield suboptimal results if an initial design relied on an inappropriate architectural approach. This study developed a framework that can facilitate the purposeful selection of the most appropriate architectural approach by drawing on Norberg-Schulz’s established phenomenological account of real-world architectural modes. By considering the unique possibilities for structuring and experiencing space within virtual environments and reinterpreting Norberg-Schulz’s schemas in the context of virtual environment design, a novel framework was formulated that explicates six fundamental “architectural paradigms” available to designers of virtual environments. It was shown that the application of this framework could easily be incorporated as an additional step within the UCD process.

Kwartalnik Nauk o Przedsiębiorstwie, Nov 16, 2018

Increasingly, organizations are becoming “technologically posthumanized” through the integration ... more Increasingly, organizations are becoming “technologically posthumanized” through the integration of social robots, AI, virtual reality, and ubiquitous computing into the workplace. Here a phenomenological approach is used to anticipate architectural transformations of the workplace resulting from posthumanization’s challenge to traditional anthropocentric paradigms of the workplace as a space that exists at “human” scale, possesses a trifold boundary, and serves as a spatiotemporal filter.

Information Systems Architecture and Technology: Proceedings of 39th International Conference on Information Systems Architecture and Technology – ISAT 2018, Part III, edited by Zofia Wilimowska, Leszek Borzemski, and Jerzy Świątek, 2018

The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) provides valuable tools for aligning an organizati... more The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) provides valuable tools for aligning an organization’s business strategy and processes, IT strategy and systems, personnel structures, and organizational culture, with the goal of enhancing organizational agility, adaptability, and efficiency. However, the centralized and exhaustively detailed approach of conventional EA is susceptible to failure when employed in organizations demonstrating exceedingly great size, speed of operation and change, and IT complexity – a combination of traits that characterizes, for example, some emerging types of “technologized” oligopolistic megacorps reflecting the Industry 4.0 paradigm. This text develops the conceptual basis for a variant form of enterprise architecture that can be used to enact improved target architectures for organizations whose characteristics would otherwise render them “unmanageable” from the perspective of conventional EA. The proposed approach of “enterprise meta-architecture” (or EMA) disengages human enterprise architects from the fine-grained details of architectural analysis, design, and implementation, which are handled by artificially intelligent systems functioning as active agents rather than passive tools. The role of the human enterprise architect becomes one of determining the types of performance improvements a target architecture should ideally generate, establishing the operating parameters for an EMA system, and monitoring and optimizing its functioning. Advances in Big Data and parametric design provide models for enterprise meta-architecture, which is distinct from other new approaches like agile and adaptive EA. Deployment of EMA systems should become feasible as ongoing advances in AI result in an increasing share of organizational agency and decision-making responsibility being shifted to artificial agents.

The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2018

Here the concept of the human being as a “relatively isolated system” developed in Ingarden’s lat... more Here the concept of the human being as a “relatively isolated system” developed in Ingarden’s later phenomenology is adapted into an “aesthetics of isolation” that complements conventional environmental aesthetics. Such an aesthetics of isolation is especially relevant, given the growing “aesthetic overload” brought about by ubiquitous computing and new forms of art and aesthetic experience such as those involving virtual reality, interactive online performance art, and artificial creativity.

International Journal of Contemporary Management, 2017

Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2017

Previous works exploring the challenges of ensuring information security for neuroprosthetic devi... more Previous works exploring the challenges of ensuring information security for neuroprosthetic devices and their users have typically built on the traditional InfoSec concept of the “CIA Triad” of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. However, we argue that the CIA Triad provides an increasingly inadequate foundation for envisioning information security for neuroprostheses, insofar as it presumes that (1) any computational systems to be secured are merely instruments for expressing their human users’ agency, and (2) computing devices are conceptually and practically separable from their users. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of technology and philosophical and critical posthumanist analysis, we contend that futuristic neuroprostheses could conceivably violate these basic InfoSec presumptions, insofar as (1) they may alter or supplant their users’ biological agency rather than simply supporting it, and (2) they may structurally and functionally fuse with their users to create qualitatively novel “posthumanized” human-machine systems that cannot be secured as though they were conventional computing devices. Simultaneously, it is noted that many of the goals that have been proposed for future neuroprostheses by InfoSec researchers (e.g., relating to aesthetics, human dignity, authenticity, free will, and cultural sensitivity) fall outside the scope of InfoSec as it has historically been understood and touch on a wide range of ethical, aesthetic, physical, metaphysical, psychological, economic, and social values. We suggest that the field of axiology can provide useful frameworks for more effectively identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing such diverse types of values and goods that can (and should) be pursued through InfoSec practices for futuristic neuroprostheses.

Proceedings of the 9th Annual EuroMed Academy of Business Conference: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Digital Ecosystems (EUROMED 2016), Aug 31, 2016

Standards like the ISO 27000 series, IEC/TR 80001, NIST SP 1800, and FDA guidance on medical devi... more Standards like the ISO 27000 series, IEC/TR 80001, NIST SP 1800, and FDA guidance on medical device cybersecurity define the responsibilities that manufacturers and operators bear for ensuring the information security of implantable medical devices. In the case of implantable cognitive neuroprostheses (ICNs) that are integrated with the neural circuitry of their human hosts, there is a widespread presumption that InfoSec concerns serve only as limiting factors that can complicate, impede, or preclude the development and deployment of such devices. However, we argue that when appropriately conceptualized, InfoSec concerns may also serve as drivers that can spur the creation and adoption of such technologies. A framework is formulated that describes seven types of actors whose participation is required in order for ICNs to be adopted; namely, their 1) producers, 2) regulators, 3) funders, 4) installers, 5) human hosts, 6) operators, and 7) maintainers. By mapping onto this framework InfoSec issues raised in industry standards and other literature, it is shown that for each actor in the process, concerns about information security can either disincentivize or incentivize the actor to advance the development and deployment of ICNs for purposes of therapy or human enhancement. For example, it is shown that ICNs can strengthen the integrity, availability, and utility of information stored in the memories of persons suffering from certain neurological conditions and may enhance information security for society as a whole by providing new tools for military, law enforcement, medical, or corporate personnel who provide critical InfoSec services.

Proceedings of the 9th Annual EuroMed Academy of Business Conference: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Digital Ecosystems (EUROMED 2016), Aug 31, 2016

A growing range of brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies is being employed for purposes of ... more A growing range of brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies is being employed for purposes of therapy and human augmentation. While much thought has been given to the ethical implications of such technologies at the ‘macro’ level of social policy and ‘micro’ level of individual users, little attention has been given to the unique ethical issues that arise during the process of incorporating BCIs into eHealth ecosystems. In this text a conceptual framework is developed that enables the operators of eHealth ecosystems to manage the ethical components of such processes in a more comprehensive and systematic way than has previously been possible. The framework’s first axis defines five ethical dimensions that must be successfully addressed by eHealth ecosystems: 1) beneficence; 2) consent; 3) privacy; 4) equity; and 5) liability. The second axis describes five stages of the systems development life cycle (SDLC) process whereby new technology is incorporated into an eHealth ecosystem: 1) analysis and planning; 2) design, development, and acquisition; 3) integration and activation; 4) operation and maintenance; and 5) disposal. Known ethical issues relating to the deployment of BCIs are mapped onto this matrix in order to demonstrate how it can be employed by the managers of eHealth ecosystems as a tool for fulfilling ethical requirements established by regulatory standards or stakeholders’ expectations. Beyond its immediate application in the case of BCIs, we suggest that this framework may also be utilized beneficially when incorporating other innovative forms of information and communications technology (ICT) into eHealth ecosystems.

Digital Ecosystems: Society in the Digital Age, Apr 27, 2016

For many employees, ‘work’ is no longer something performed while sitting at a computer in an off... more For many employees, ‘work’ is no longer something performed while sitting at a computer in an office. Employees in a growing number of industries are expected to carry mobile devices and be available for work-related interactions even when beyond the workplace and outside of normal business hours. In this article it is argued that a future step will increasingly be to move work-related information and communication technology (ICT) inside the human body through the use of neuroprosthetics, to create employees who are always ‘online’ and connected to their workplace’s digital ecosystems. At present, neural implants are used primarily to restore abilities lost through injury or illness, however their use for augmentative purposes is expected to grow, resulting in populations of human beings who possess technologically altered capacities for perception, memory, imagination, and the manipulation of physical environments and virtual cyberspace. Such workers may exchange thoughts and share knowledge within posthuman cybernetic networks that are inaccessible to unaugmented human beings.

Scholars note that despite their potential benefits, such neuroprosthetic devices may create numerous problems for their users, including a sense of alienation, the threat of computer viruses and hacking, financial burdens, and legal questions surrounding ownership of intellectual property produced while using such implants. Moreover, different populations of human beings may eventually come to occupy irreconcilable digital ecosystems as some persons embrace neuroprosthetic technology, others feel coerced into augmenting their brains to compete within the economy, others might reject such technology, and still others will simply be unable to afford it.

In this text we propose a model for analyzing how particular neuroprosthetic devices will either facilitate human beings’ participation in new forms of socioeconomic interaction and digital workplace ecosystems – or undermine their mental and physical health, privacy, autonomy, and authenticity. We then show how such a model can be used to create device ontologies and typologies that help us classify and understand different kinds of advanced neuroprosthetic devices according to the impact that they will have on individual human beings.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are offering new avenues for economic empowerment to individuals ar... more Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are offering new avenues for economic empowerment to individuals around the world. However, they also provide a powerful tool that facilitates criminal activities such as human trafficking and illegal weapons sales that cause great harm to individuals and communities. Cryptocurrency advocates have argued that the ethical dimensions of cryptocurrency are not qualitatively new, insofar as money has always been understood as a passive instrument that lacks ethical values and can be used for good or ill purposes. In this paper, we challenge such a presumption that money must be "value-neutral." Building on advances in artificial intelligence, cryptography, and machine ethics, we argue that it is possible to design artificially intelligent cryptocurrencies that are not ethically neutral but which autonomously regulate their own use in a way that reflects the ethical values of particular human beings – or even entire human societies. We propose a technological framework for such cryptocurrencies and then analyze the legal, ethical, and economic implications of their use. Finally, we suggest that the development of cryptocurrencies possessing ethical as well as monetary value can provide human beings with a new economic means of positively influencing the ethos and values of their societies.

While it is possible to understand utopias and dystopias as particular kinds of sociopolitical sy... more While it is possible to understand utopias and dystopias as particular kinds of sociopolitical systems, in this text we argue that utopias and dystopias can also be understood as particular kinds of information systems in which data is received, stored, generated, processed, and transmitted by the minds of human beings that constitute the system’s ‘nodes’ and which are connected according to specific network topologies. We begin by formulating a model of cybernetic information-processing properties that characterize utopias and dystopias. It is then shown that the growing use of neuroprosthetic technologies for human enhancement is expected to radically reshape the ways in which human minds access, manipulate, and share information with one another; for example, such technologies may give rise to posthuman ‘neuropolities’ in which human minds can interact with their environment using new sensorimotor capacities, dwell within shared virtual cyberworlds, and link with one another to form new kinds of social organizations, including hive minds that utilize communal memory and decision-making. Drawing on our model, we argue that the dynamics of such neuropolities will allow (or perhaps even impel) the creation of new kinds of utopias and dystopias that were previously impossible to realize. Finally, we suggest that it is important that humanity begin thoughtfully exploring the ethical, social, and political implications of realizing such technologically enabled societies by studying neuropolities in a place where they have already been ‘pre-engineered’ and provisionally exist: in works of audiovisual science fiction such as films, television series, and role-playing games.

World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 2021

Horizon: Studies in Phenomenology, 2020

Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics: Volume 11, 2019

AVANT: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies, 2020

International Journal of Research Studies in Management, 2019

ICTM 2018: Proceedings of the International Conference on ICT Management for Global Competitiveness and Economic Growth in Emerging Economies., 2018

Urbanity and Architecture Files / Teka Komisji Urbanistyki i Architektury, 2018

Kwartalnik Nauk o Przedsiębiorstwie, Nov 16, 2018

The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2018

International Journal of Contemporary Management, 2017

Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2017

Proceedings of the 9th Annual EuroMed Academy of Business Conference: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Digital Ecosystems (EUROMED 2016), Aug 31, 2016

Digital Ecosystems: Society in the Digital Age, Apr 27, 2016

The human mind is the most powerful game engine – but it can always use some help. This book is m... more The human mind is the most powerful game engine – but it can always use some help. This book is meant for developers who want to create games that will evoke richer and more memorable “gameworlds” in the minds of their players. We don’t just enter such unforgettable gameworlds when we play first-person 3D RPGs with high-resolution graphics; even relatively simple 2D puzzle or strategy games with 8-bit-style visuals can immerse players in worlds that are beautiful, terrifying, mysterious, or moving, that are brutally realistic or delightfully whimsical.

Indeed, good video games can transport us to incredible new worlds. The process by which a particular gameworld emerges is a symbiotic collaboration between developer and player: the game system presents a carefully architected stream of polygons and pixels, which somehow leads the player’s mind to construct and explore an intricate world full of places, people, relationships, dilemmas, and quests that transcends what’s actually appearing onscreen.

Building especially on the phenomenological aesthetics and systems theory of Roman Ingarden and the architectural and environmental aesthetics of Christian Norberg-Schulz, this volume provides conceptual frameworks and concrete tools that can enhance one’s ability to design games whose iconic gameworlds encourage the types of gameplay experiences that one wants to evoke in the minds of players.

The image of the “megacorp” – the ruthless, sinister, high-tech global conglomerate that’s grown ... more The image of the “megacorp” – the ruthless, sinister, high-tech global conglomerate that’s grown so large and powerful that it has acquired the characteristics of a sovereign state – is one of the iconic elements of cyberpunk fiction. Such a megacorp maintains its own army, creates its own laws and currency, grants citizenship to employees and customers, and governs vast swaths of cyberspace and the physical world. If it allows traditional governments to survive in some vestigial form, it’s only so they can handle those mundane tasks that the megacorp doesn’t want to deal with itself. By these standards, contemporary companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, and Walmart aren’t (yet) “megacorps”; they’re the playthings that megacorps gobble up to use for spare parts.

This volume develops a comprehensive intellectual history of the megacorp. It locates forebears of the cyberpunk megacorp not only in earlier fictional works like Čapek’s R.U.R. (1921) and Von Harbou’s Metropolis (1925) but in a string of real-world organizations ranging from the 17th-Century British and Dutch East India Companies to the Pullman Palace Car Company, the Ford Motor Company, and late 20th-Century Japanese keiretsu and South Korean chaebol – as well as in the nearly indestructible oligopolistic “megacorp” described in the pioneering theory of American economist Alfred Eichner.

By investigating the nature of the cyberpunk megacorp as a political entity, commercial entity, producer and exploiter of futuristic technologies, and generator or manipulator of culture, differences are highlighted between the megacorps of “classical” cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk fiction. Classical cyberpunk megacorps – portrayed in novels like Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, films like RoboCop and Johnny Mnemonic, and games like Cyberpunk, Cyberspace, and Syndicate – are often ostentatiously malevolent and obsessed with short-term financial profits to the exclusion of all else; the over-the-top depictions of such companies serve a dramatic purpose and are not offered by their authors as serious futurological studies. On the other hand, the more nuanced and philosophically rich portrayals of megacorps in post-cyberpunk works like Shirow’s manga The Ghost in the Shell reveal companies that are less overtly evil, possess a broader and more plausible range of long-term strategic goals, and coexist alongside conventional governments in a state of (begrudging) mutual respect. Yet other works like the game Shadowrun depict companies that combine elements of both classical cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk megacorps.

Drawing on such analyses, the volume concludes by exploring how the idea of the post-cyberpunk megacorp anticipated a new type of real-world megacorp – the unfathomably large, fast, and complex “rhizocorp” – that's now being made possible through ongoing revolutions in the exploitation of robotics, AI, and the Internet of Things – and which threatens to become the dominant economic, political, and sociocultural power of our technologically posthumanized future world.

The challenge of developing sound organizational strategy is growing increasingly difficult as ac... more The challenge of developing sound organizational strategy is growing increasingly difficult as accelerating technological change transforms the world’s competitive ecosystems in ways that render many traditional approaches to strategy obsolete. What are the concrete tools and techniques that a contemporary strategic analyst can employ to understand the critical elements of an organization’s internal structure and dynamics and external competitive environment – and to predict the ways in which they may evolve in the future?

This book provides a practical step-by-step guide to using dozens of the most important tools for generating organizational insight and foresight, along with an investigation of their underlying nature and purpose. It serves as an accessible introduction for those seeking to learn the essentials of strategic analysis, as well as a comprehensive reference for the experienced organizational strategist.

The book employs the concept of the Strategic Futures Hub as a means for understanding eight domains that are key to the development of strategic foresight for any organization. These are: (1) an organization’s financial resources and realities; (2) its internal architecture and capacities; (3) its current and potential products; (4) consumers’ needs and anticipated future behaviors; (5) competitors and their expected future behaviors; (6) the current and future dynamics of the organization’s competitive ecosystem; (7) causal chains and possible, probable, and desirable organizational futures; and (8) potential organizational strategies. For each of these domains, the reader is taught when and why to choose (or avoid) specific techniques in order to answer a range of the most frequently encountered strategic questions.
The volume explains not only traditional analytical tools like market opportunity analysis, benchmarking, resource analysis, stakeholder analysis, SWOT and PESTEL analyses, and the Delphi method, but also emerging techniques like internal prediction markets for organizations, as well as longer-range diagnostic tools from the field of futures studies, such as emerging issues analysis, backcasting, morphological analysis, the futures wheel, and cross-impact analysis. The nature of each analytical technique is clearly and succinctly described, along with recommended approaches to its use and investigation of practical considerations such as the time commitment and skills required. Discussion of the techniques is enriched by a wealth of diagrams and extensive bibliographic references to the best contemporary scholarship and practice. While a few of the analytical techniques are targeted specifically at commercial enterprises, most will also be of great value to nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and other non-commercial entities that are seeking to better understand their current realities and prospective futures from a strategic perspective.

This volume serves a resource for the design and analysis of neuroprosthetic supersystems, which ... more This volume serves a resource for the design and analysis of neuroprosthetic supersystems, which can be defined as organizations – either small or large, simple or complex – whose human members have been neuroprosthetically augmented. While numerous other texts focus on the biomedical engineering of neuroprostheses as technological devices or on the biocybernetic engineering of the host-device system comprising a neuroprosthesis and its human host, this volume presents a unique investigation of the intentional creation of higher-order supersystems that allow multiple neuroprosthetically augmented human beings to interact with one another and with external information systems in order to accomplish some shared task. In essence, this can be understood as the work of designing and managing neuroprosthetically enhanced organizations.

Individual chapters present an ontology of the neuroprosthesis as a computing device; a biocybernetic ontology of the host-device system; an ontology of the neuroprosthesis as an instrument of ‘cyborgization’; motivating and inhibiting factors for the organizational deployment of posthumanizing neuroprostheses by military organizations and other early adopters; an introduction to enterprise architecture in the context of technological posthumanization; an exploration of the implications of neuroprosthetic augmentation for enterprise architecture; and considerations for the development of effective network topologies for neuroprosthetically augmented organizations. The conceptual frameworks formulated within this book offer a wide range of tools that can be of use to policymakers, ethicists, neuroprosthetic device manufacturers, organizational decision-makers, and others who must analyze or manage the complex legal, ethical, and managerial implications that result from the use of emerging neuroprosthetic technologies within an organizational context.

Key organizational decisions made by sapient AIs. The pressure to undergo neuroprosthetic augment... more Key organizational decisions made by sapient AIs. The pressure to undergo neuroprosthetic augmentation in order to compete with genetically enhanced coworkers. A corporate headquarters that exists only in cyberspace as a persistent virtual world. A project team whose members interact socially as online avatars without knowing or caring whether fellow team members are human beings or robots.
Futurologists’ visions of the dawning age of ‘posthumanized’ organizations range from the disquieting to the exhilarating. Which of these visions are compatible with our best current understanding of the capacities and the limits of human intelligence, physiology, and sociality? And what can posthumanist thought reveal about the forces of technologization that are transforming how we collaborate with one another – and with ever more sophisticated artificial agents and systems – to achieve shared goals?
This book develops new insights into the evolving nature of intelligent agency and collaboration by applying the post-anthropocentric and post-dualistic methodologies of posthumanism to the fields of organizational theory and management. Building on a comprehensive typology of posthumanism, an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ is described which makes sense of the dynamics of technological posthumanization that are reshaping the members, personnel structures, information systems, processes, physical and virtual spaces, and external environments available to organizations. Conceptual frameworks and analytical tools are formulated for use in diagnosing and guiding the ongoing convergence in the capacities of human and artificial actors that is being spurred by novel technologies relating to human augmentation, synthetic agency, and digital-physical ecosystems. As the first systematic investigation of these topics, this text will be of interest to scholars and students of posthumanism and management and to management practitioners who must grapple on a daily basis with the forces of technologization that are increasingly powerful drivers of organizational change.

What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitiv... more What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span both actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management?

This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents conceptual frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings.

Subsequent chapters investigate concrete management topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to inspire and lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible identity or physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing the managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises which evolve by competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow their human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design.

As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to the field of management, this volume will be of use to scholars and students of contemporary management and to management practitioners who must increasingly understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.

How does one ensure information security for a computer that is entangled with the structures and... more How does one ensure information security for a computer that is entangled with the structures and processes of a human brain – and for the human mind that is interconnected with such a device?

The need to provide information security for neuroprosthetic devices grows more pressing as increasing numbers of people utilize therapeutic technologies such as cochlear implants, retinal prostheses, robotic prosthetic limbs, and deep brain stimulation devices. Moreover, emerging neuroprosthetic technologies for human enhancement are expected to increasingly transform their human users’ sensory, motor, and cognitive capacities in ways that generate new ‘posthumanized’ sociotechnological realities. In this context, it is essential not only to ensure the information security of such neuroprostheses themselves but – more importantly – to ensure the psychological and physical health, autonomy, and personal identity of the human beings whose cognitive processes are inextricably linked with such devices. InfoSec practitioners must not only guard against threats to the confidentiality and integrity of data stored within a neuroprosthetic device’s internal memory; they must also guard against threats to the confidentiality and integrity of thoughts, memories, and desires existing within the mind the of the device’s human host.

This second edition of The Handbook of Information Security for Advanced Neuroprosthetics updates the previous edition’s comprehensive investigation of these issues from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It provides an introduction to the current state of neuroprosthetics and expected future trends in the field, along with an introduction to fundamental principles of information security and an analysis of how they must be re-envisioned to address the unique challenges posed by advanced neuroprosthetics. A two-dimensional cognitional security framework is presented whose security goals are designed to protect a device’s human host in his or her roles as a sapient metavolitional agent, embodied embedded organism, and social and economic actor. Practical consideration is given to information security responsibilities and roles within an organizational context and to the application of preventive, detective, and corrective or compensating security controls to neuroprosthetic devices, their host-device systems, and the larger supersystems in which they operate. Finally, it is shown that while implantable neuroprostheses create new kinds of security vulnerabilities and risks, they may also serve to enhance the information security of some types of human hosts (such as those experiencing certain neurological conditions).

The widespread application of Industry 4.0 technologies relating to social robotics, embodied AI,... more The widespread application of Industry 4.0 technologies relating to social robotics, embodied AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), ubiquitous computing, and advanced human computer interfaces is giving rise to a growing range of “cyber-physical” entities. By building on established definitions and analyses of the cyber-physical system, cyber-physical-social system, cyber-physical society, and cyber-physical-social-thinking space, this text formulates a conceptual framework for understanding the emerging “Workforce 4.0” as a specialized type of “cyber-physical-social-intentional system.” Attention is given to the heterogeneous agency, technological posthumanization, functional decentralization, and planned architectures or spontaneously self-organizing topologies manifested by Workforce 4.0. It is shown how such a workforce is situated within the context of cyber-physical space, a cyber-physical organization, cyber-physical ecosystems, a cyber-physical society, and the larger cyber-physical world.

As virtual reality technology becomes more sophisticated, there is growing recognition of the imp... more As virtual reality technology becomes more sophisticated, there is growing recognition of the importance of Ingarden’s thought for the aesthetic analysis of architecture in virtual worlds. For example, his distinction between the ‘building’ that is constituted as an intentional object and its physical ontic foundation provides a useful tool for understanding virtual buildings, whose unique character results largely from their novel ontic basis. Moreover, it has been noted that Ingarden’s envisioning of future technologies for the ‘illusory embodiment’ of buildings in “O dziele architektury” §2 foresaw immersive VR technologies that are only now becoming feasible.

Here, however, we argue that a different aspect of Ingarden’s thought – the concept of the relatively isolated system – may hold even more promise as a tool for analyzing innovations in virtual architecture. We trace Ingarden’s development of this concept over three decades, from his description of the ‘organism’ as a hierarchical structural functional system (1937) to his model of the human being as a stable core with changing outer layers (ca. 1941), his analysis of Bertalanffy’s ‘open system’ model (1943), his notion of the ‘partially isolated system’ (1945-46), his description of the ‘relatively closed system’ (1950-54), and the mature concept of the ‘relatively isolated system’ developed in Über die Verantwortung: Ihre ontischen Fundamente (1968-70).

We then investigate the concept’s significance for virtual architecture. A growing trend is the use of computer-aided ‘form-finding’ techniques in which the shape of a building’s exterior ‘skin’ is not intentionally planned by a human architect but emerges organically through posthumanized processes of evolutionary computation; the resulting forms often display ‘Deleuzian’ curvilinear shapes resembling the bodies of biological organisms. In “O dziele architektury,” Ingarden had noted that in practice, human architecture never displays the organic irregularity and curvilinearity seen in living trees or in the ‘cities’ built by insects, because (1) functional considerations render such forms suboptimal for human inhabitation, and (2) human architects have been historically conditioned to believe that every building they design is ‘supposed to’ harmoniously concretize regular geometric shapes. However, Ingarden’s reasoning can be interpreted as anticipating precisely those radically irregular organic structures that are now becoming possible, as innovative AI technologies allow the task of form-finding to be separated from the anthropic intentional processes of a human architect and entrusted to non-human agents.

Moreover, such biomimetic design can be carried even further in virtual environments, whose looser constraints allow the construction (and aesthetic experiencing) of buildings whose forms would be impractical to fabricate in the ‘real’ world; such virtual surfaces can serve as sites of sensation and response that mediate between interior and exterior domains, reflecting the form and function of a living organism’s skin. We argue that Ingarden’s concept of the relatively isolated system provides a powerful framework for analyzing such virtual structures, thanks to its grounding in theoretical biology and its rich analysis of the outer ‘membrane’ that selectively shelters an entity’s inner workings from external causality. Such architectural applications represent another way in which Ingarden’s thought continues to bear new and unexpected fruit.

As immersive, interactive virtual reality (VR) technologies grow increasingly sophisticated, cont... more As immersive, interactive virtual reality (VR) technologies grow increasingly sophisticated, contemporary philosophers like Rabanus have attempted to formulate phenomenological analyses of the experiences they offer. We would argue, though, that one of the richest phenomenological approaches for interpreting the virtual objects perceived and understood through the use of VR systems was pioneered in the 20th century by Roman Ingarden, who in “O dziele architektury” hypothesized the future development of what would now be described as “VR systems” and explored our potential cognition of virtual objects.

An Ingardenian approach can incorporate: (1) Ingarden’s analysis of the stratification of artistic products, which distinguishes different types of cognitive access afforded to the physical fundament and intentional artistic, aesthetic, and cultural objects associated with a virtual object, and (2) Ingarden’s account (grounded in systems theory) of the human being as an emergent whole comprising a physical body, sensory-emotional “soul,” and intentional «I». This framework enables us to: (1) distinguish cognition of virtual objects from that of “real” objects, dreams, hallucinations, and the fictional worlds experienced when reading novels, and (2) explain the cognitive shift that occurs when someone immersed in a virtual environment comes to “forget” that the objects encountered there are “only” virtual.

In this work we build on the ontological and aesthetic frameworks formulated by Roman Ingarden to... more In this work we build on the ontological and aesthetic frameworks formulated by Roman Ingarden to develop a phenomenological analysis of the virtual world as aesthetic object. First, ‘virtual reality technology’ is distinguished from ‘virtual environments’ and ‘virtual worlds.’ The types of immersive, interactive virtual worlds accessed through contemporary VR technologies are further distinguished from the types of ‘virtual worlds’ accessed, e.g., by reading a novel or watching a film. Essential and optional elements of virtual worlds are identified, with special attention given to the (software-enforced) ‘laws of nature’ governing the structure and dynamics of elements in a world, the pseudo-natural origins of apparently ‘natural’ elements like wild animals and geographic formations, and the unique positions of the world’s designer(s) and human visitor(s).
The potential ‘incompleteness’ of virtual architectural structures and inability to determine whether one’s social interactions are with human or artificial agents is analyzed in light of Ingarden’s interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenological model of intentionality and the perception of objects. It is shown that a virtual building, e.g., does not display all the features of a real-world building but instead possesses some characteristics found in real-world paintings. Drawing on Ingarden’s framework, the (physical) ontic basis of a virtual world is distinguished from the (purely intentional) virtual world as a work of art that is grasped through perception and the related aesthetic and cultural objects that may be constituted by a visitor who undergoes the right sort of conscious experience. The stratification of a virtual world as a work of art is also investigated.
Building on Ingarden’s critique of Husserl’s concept of the ‘lifeworld’ as the natural world that is simultaneously (a) stripped of modern scientific theory and (b) the world that we live in and manipulate, it is suggested that VR-facilitated virtual worlds (like other highly technologized forms of art) undermine the factual possibility for such a lifeworld to exist. In response, though, Patočka’s notion (influenced by Ingarden) of fictional literary worlds as ‘echoes’ of the lifeworld is noted; we thus close by raising the question of whether certain virtual worlds might potentially be employed to help restore the possibility of (perhaps temporarily) establishing a Husserlian lifeworld.

W niniejszej prezentacji przedstawione jest zastosowanie podejścia fenomenologicznego w celu prze... more W niniejszej prezentacji przedstawione jest zastosowanie podejścia fenomenologicznego w celu przestudiowania dwóch zagadnień podnoszonych przez praktyki architektoniczne obrazowane w filmach Tron (1982) i Tron: Legacy (2010). Po pierwsze, rozważamy użycie światła ucieleśnionego jako składnika budowlanego w obrazowanym w tych filmach ‘świecie elektronicznym’ (lub ‘drugim wszeczświecie’). Ludzki programista i programy komputerowe przedstawieni jako główni architekci świata elektronicznego stosują światło ucieleśnione jako kluczowy element fizyczny budynków, mostów, dróg, pojazdów, ubrań i innych przedmiotów, albo stwarzając, albo nakreślając namacalne kształty wśród ciemności poza tym niezróżnicowanej. Światło wykorzystowane jest n.p. do stworzenia platform, na których mogą stać postacie, oraz pionowych murów, które stoją na przeszkodzie innym fizycznym przedmiotom ‘zderzającym się’ z nimi. Porównujemy ten fenomen z historycznym w świecie rzeczywistym użyciem światła jako elementu architektonicznego o roli ozdobnej, przedstawiającej, dydaktycznej i funkcjonalnej oraz, w szczególności, z użyciem oświetlenia, aby symulować istnienie dużych fizycznych konstrukcji architektonicznych, które w rzeczywistości nie istnieją. Architektoniczne zastosowanie światła ucieleśnionego inspiruje pytania estetyczne i ontologiczne, które można badać przy pomocy podejścia fenomenologicznego.

Po drugie, badamy sposób, w jaki architektura w świecie elektronicznym omawianych filmów przedstawiona jest jako coś współprojektowanego przez istoty ludzkie i sztucznie inteligentne programy komputerowe przeznaczone do tej roli. W omawianych filmach, ludzki programista wybrał ogólne jakości estetyczne, które mają się przejawiać w architekturze świata elektronicznego i powierzył programom AI rolę przełożenia tych celów na konkretne konstrukcje architektoniczne, automatyzując w ten sposób proces budowania świata spełniającego dane parametry estetyczne. Tron: Legacy prezentuje szczegółowe debaty między ludzkim a AI współarchitektem dotyczące zalet wyboru jakości estetycznych takich, jak swoboda, otwartość, piękno, porządek, doskonalność, skuteczność funkcjonalna, regularność, przewidywalność i chaotyczność, jako cele i parametry dla architektury systemu. Film argumentuje za tym, że dla wspieranego przez AI architektonicznego projektowania parametrycznego wybór jakości estetycznych, które same w sobie wydają się pożądane, może jednakże powodować powstanie struktur z nieprzewidzianymi i bardzo niepożądanymi właściwościami. Wspierany przez sztuczną inteligencję proces architektoniczny, do którego już robił aluzję Tron i który wyraźniej poznany został w Tron: Legacy, może być więc interpretowany (chociaż niezamierzenie) przepowiednia i krytyka współczesnych technik projektowania generatywnego i parametrycznego oraz szczególnego ruchu Parametryzmu.

Efforts to formally define 'magic' and to identify the aspects that distinguish magical practice ... more Efforts to formally define 'magic' and to identify the aspects that distinguish magical practice from other human pursuits have been made from both a theological perspective (e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas) and, more recently, an anthropological perspective (e.g., Frazer, Mauss, Durkheim, Malinowski, and Tambiah). Frequently cited elements of magic include its use of esoteric symbols, gestures, and speech that are only understood only by a small, elite group of initiated practitioners; its use of specially prepared ritual instruments; its attempt to harness the power of invisible, intelligent, nonhuman entities (such as demons or nature deities) to produce specific physical effects; and its attempt to manipulate hidden (or 'occult') forms of causality rather than obviously explicable physical causality.

Strategic management instruments (SMIs) are tools used to analyze an organization’s strategic sit... more Strategic management instruments (SMIs) are tools used to analyze an organization’s strategic situation, formulate effective strategies, and successfully implement those strategies. While there is a substantial literature dedicated to some individual SMIs (such as the SWOT analysis, PESTEL analysis, Porter’s five forces analysis, mission statements, benchmarking, and balanced scorecard), Tassabehji and Isherwood (2014) note that there is a surprising lack of research that takes as its object the full range of SMIs as a class of tools. In particular, there is an absence of systematic research into the question of whether traditional SMIs developed for the types of organizations that have existed in the past are conceptually and practically adequate for use by emerging or anticipated types of organizations that possess novel structures and dynamics that result from processes of intensive posthumanizing technologization. One such entity is the ‘cyber-physical organization,’ which can be defined as a heterogeneous collection of intelligent embodied agents that are united in the pursuit of a common goal and that form a network in which computational mechanisms for real-time communication and control are deeply embedded in the agents, their shared tools, and their workspace. Characteristic traits of such an organization include converging phenomena of (1) roboticization of organizational agency and action; (2) cyberization and ‘cyborgization’ of the human workforce; and (3) the ubiquitization and ‘non-localization’ of computation. Research suggests that cyber-physical organizations (or ‘CPOs’) will possess the capacity to employ new approaches to competitive strategy that are not available (or not advantageous) for more conventional types of organizations; however, little attention has been given to extent to which CPOs must develop innovative new SMIs in order to unlock the innovative competitive strategies that are theoretically available to them. This work seeks to initiate systematic investigation of the way in which emerging CPOs will encounter both the opportunity and the necessity to fashion innovative new types of SMIs that are compatible with the unique traits of such organizations.

Having identified nearly 100 extant SMIs, each SMI is classified according to whether it is primarily used as a tool in the stage of (1) strategic analysis, (2) strategy formulation, or (3) strategy implementation, and for each of these three classes, the characteristic inputs, agents, processes, and outputs associated with SMIs in that class are identified. A two-dimensional conceptual framework is developed that allows anticipated impacts of roboticization, cyborgization, and the ubiquitization of computation discussed in the scientific literature to be mapped onto these elements of SMI use. Our research indicates that for each of the three strategic stages, each of the three phenomena of posthumanizing technologization has the potential to open the door to the development and use of cheaper, faster, simpler, and more powerful SMIs (i.e., enabling innovation) while simultaneously rendering other types of existing SMIs more expensive, time-consuming, and complex or otherwise less effective (i.e., requiring innovation). For example, a retail chain that replaces human sales staff with robotic kiosks can no longer use focus groups of human sales staff as an SMI for gauging customers’ in-store behaviors and attitudes toward their shopping experience; however, the kiosks may facilitate the development of new SMIs for strategy implementation by allowing the kiosk’s behavior to be quickly and radically reshaped through software reprogramming, without a need for time-consuming retraining of retail staff or the possibility of employee resistance. Such potentially conflicting impacts of technologization on SMIs mean that cyber-physical organizations will need to proactively ensure the suitability of their SMIs within their unique organizational context. This research delineates the conceptual landscape for future empirical research to investigate these emerging issues of strategic management in more depth.

Creators of cyberpunk science fiction envision a near future in which technological, political, a... more Creators of cyberpunk science fiction envision a near future in which technological, political, and economic change yield a powerful new type of organization: the megacorporation or ‘megacorp,’ which is frequently depicted as contributing to (and exploiting) the dystopian nature of its society. By analyzing such fictional works, we formulate a definition of the ‘megacorp’ along with two conceptual frameworks: (1) a model of the megacorp as cyber-physical organism; and (2) a typology that reveals the ways in which different kinds of megacorps generate dystopian or (limited) utopian dynamics within their cyber-physical ecosystems.

In developing the first framework, concepts from artificial life and management cybernetics are employed to argue that some megacorps are presented as incorporating artificial agency into their organizational architecture in such ways that they do not simply act ‘like’ living organisms but indeed constitute massive synthetic life-forms that inhabit the globalized digital-physical ecosystems of the near future.

In developing the second framework, it is noted that contemporary corporations typically pursue a narrow range of strategies for achieving financial profitability so they can purchase resources needed to adapt and grow. However, we contend that – as depicted in cyberpunk science fiction – dystopian megacorps have available to them a broader range of non-financial strategies that they exploit to subdue competitors and obtain the resources needed to survive, evolve, and grow. Such strategies may employ approaches that are legal and political (e.g., extraterritoriality; corporate courts; corporate citizenship; EULAs; ownership of individuals’ genetic code, cybernetic augmentations, and output); paramilitary (deployment of private military, police, and security forces; cyberwarfare); geospatial (construction of facilities isolated in fortified, orbital, or undersea arcologies; use of ubiquitous sensors and effectors to convert the entire Internet of Things into a corporate facility; virtualization and nonlocalization of organizational architecture; construction of new digital-physical ecosystems to dominate); biological (engineering of biomedical dependencies among employees and consumers; creation of ‘walled-garden’ commercial ecosystems requiring genetic modification for entry); psychological and sociocultural (direct neurocybernetic access to a population’s sensory, cognitive, and motor activity; cultural engineering; memetic warfare); or technological and informatic (monopolization of core global ICT infrastructure; ‘megascale’ data mining, computational simulation, and prediction; automated decision-making by AI; workforce roboticization and cyborgization). Three ‘views’ for analyzing competitive strategies of a megacorp are presented, each of which utilizes two dimensions to distinguish four types of megacorps according to their interactions with their ecosystem and resulting generation of dystopian or utopian dynamics. The framework is then applied to numerous megacorps described in cyberpunk RPGs, including Arasaka and WorldSat (from Cyberpunk 2020); Evo, NeoNET, Proteus, Renraku, Saeder-Krupp, and Shiawase (from Shadowrun); Belltower Associates, the Picus Group, Tai Yong Medical, and VersaLife (from Deus Ex); Anubis, Augustus, and Imperial (from Ex Machina); and Golden Promise (from Interface Zero).

It is hoped that such frameworks can facilitate efforts to: (1) analyze the roles that creators of cyberpunk science fiction envision for megacorps in their worlds’ ecosystems; (2) explicate how megacorps’ competitive strategies contribute to the dystopian nature of their societies; (3) anticipate new competitive strategies that may emerge if our world’s actual business ecosystems evolve to resemble those presented in cyberpunk fiction; and (4) recognize any real-world corporations that begin to acquire characteristics of (dystopian) megacorps.

Here we argue that five emerging social and technological trends are creating new possibilities f... more Here we argue that five emerging social and technological trends are creating new possibilities for the instrumentalization (or even “weaponization”) of popular culture for commercial, ideological, political, or military ends and for the development of a posthuman popular culture that is no longer solely produced by or for “humanity” as presently understood.

These five trends are the: 1) decentralization of the sources of popular culture, as reflected in the ability of ordinary users to create and upload content that “goes viral” within popular culture, as well as the use of “astroturfing” and paid “troll armies” by corporate or state actors to create the appearance of broad-based grassroots support for particular products, services, actions, or ideologies; 2) centralization of the mechanisms for accessing popular culture, as seen in the role of instruments like Google’s search engine, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Wikipedia in concentrating the distribution channels for cultural products, as well as efforts by state actors to censor social media content perceived as threatening or disruptive; 3) personalization of popular culture, as manifested in the growth of cultural products like computer games that dynamically reconfigure themselves in response to a player’s behavior, thereby creating a different product for each individual that is adapted to a user’s unique experiences, desires, and psychological characteristics; 4) automatization of the creation of products of popular culture, as seen in the automated high-speed generation of webpages, artwork, music, memes, and computer game content by AI systems that could potentially allow venues of popular culture (such as the Internet) to be flooded with content designed to influence a social group in particular ways; and 5) virtualization of the technological systems and mechanisms for creating, transmitting, and experiencing the products of popular culture, as witnessed in the development of all-purpose nodes (such as smartphones) that are capable of handling a full range of cultural products in the form of still images, video, audio, text, and interactive experiences, and the growing digitalization of cultural products that allows them to be more easily manipulated and injected into the popular culture of other states or social groups, bypassing physical and political barriers.

While these trends are expected to yield a broad range of positive and negative impacts, we focus on a particular subset of these impacts. Namely, we argue that the convergence of these five trends opens the door for the creation of popular culture that: 1) does not exist in any permanent, tangible physical artifacts but only as a collection of continuously transforming digital data that that is stored on the servers of a few powerful corporate or state actors and is subject to manipulation or degradation as a result of computer viruses, hacking, power outages, or other factors; 2) can be purposefully and effectively engineered using techniques commonly employed within IT management, electronics engineering, marketing, and other disciplines; 3) can become a new kind of weapon and battleground in struggles for military, political, ideological, and commercial superiority on the part of corporate, state, and other actors.

In order to stimulate thinking about ways in which these trends might develop, we conclude by considering two fictional near-future worlds – those depicted in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Transhuman Space: Toxic Memes - in which the further evolution of these five trends is shown as leading to the neurocybernetically facilitated manipulation of popular culture, “memetic warfare,” and related phenomena. We suggest that these fictional works represent examples of self-reflexive futurology: i.e., elements of contemporary popular culture that attempt to anticipate and explore the ways in which future popular culture could be purposefully engineered, instrumentalized, and even weaponized in the service of a diverse array of ends.

Here we present a new artificial agent, SAMOVIWA, designed to assist a human user in the real-tim... more Here we present a new artificial agent, SAMOVIWA, designed to assist a human user in the real-time management of multiple project tasks through multisensory and multimodal interaction. This agent takes advantage of the fact that human users experience different psychological effects when interacting with an artificial agent depending on whether it displays familiar or unfamiliar cultural traits. SAMOVIWA manifests culturally familiar traits to enhance the effectiveiness of routine communication when no critical or urgent tasks are present and manifests culturally unfamiliar traits to increase the user’s attentiveness when critical or urgent tasks are pending. The agent includes three main components: 1) an activity tracker that monitors tasks assigned to the human user and identifies any that are critical or urgent; 2) a continuously cycling behavior tree that uses the status of the current tasks to select one of three culturally distinct ‘personas’ (Routine, Intensified, or Emergency) for the agent to manifest; and 3) a multisensory interface that applies the selected persona’s visual, vocal, and linguistic characteristics to SAMOVIWA’s interaction with its human user. SAMOVIWA’s functioning is illustrated by the case of a human user serving as a programmer on a virtual software development team. Finally, we highlight potential applications for this technology: in addition to assisting human workers in the management of real-world professional tasks, SAMOVIWA could also serve as an effective NPC companion in computer games, assisting a human player with the juggling of an array of intense, fast-paced in-game tasks.

Roman Ingarden’s Aesthetics and Ontology, 2023

Roman Ingarden and His Times, 2020

While Roman Ingarden’s ontology and aesthetics have been widely studied, relatively little attent... more While Roman Ingarden’s ontology and aesthetics have been widely studied, relatively little attention has been paid to his philosophical anthropology – despite the central role that it plays within his thought. Here we draw on the concept of the “relatively isolated system,” developed by Ingarden over more than three decades, in order to show how his philosophical model of the human being as a three-layered emergent whole can be understood as a particular application of his more generalized systems theory. Having reconstructed Ingarden’s systems-theoretical philosophical anthropology, it is argued that it provides a uniquely valuable methodological approach and tool for investigating those emerging processes of technological posthumanization that are diversifying and transforming human societies by expanding them to incorporate new types of non-human intelligent social actors (e.g., increasingly sophisticated social robots and AI) and “otherly” human beings (e.g., individuals whose capacities have been altered through neuroprosthetic augmentation). Conventional philosophical investigations that take as their starting point the status of human beings as biological, intentional, or moral beings often focus on the ways in which contemporary social robots and AI lack such status and thereby differ radically from human beings. However, by starting from the fact that all such entities are manifestations of relatively isolated systems, an Ingardenian systems-theoretical philosophical anthropology can highlight previously unappreciated similarities shared by the “naturally” human, otherly human, and non-human intelligent social beings expected to coexist within increasingly posthumanized societies.

Rejestry Kultury, 2019

W niniejszym rozdziale przedstawiona zostanie fenomenologiczno-estetyczna analiza sposobu, w jaki... more W niniejszym rozdziale przedstawiona zostanie fenomenologiczno-estetyczna analiza sposobu, w jaki użycie namacalnego, „ucieleśnionego” światła jako budulca architektonicznego w filmie Disneya Tron z 1982 roku przyczyniło się do założenia paradygmatu konstrukcji i wizualizacji immersyjnych światów elektronicznych. Paradygmat ten (Siatka Cyberprzestrzenna) pozostaje aktualny w dzisiejszej erze rosnącej popularności technologii rzeczywistości wirtualnej. • Analiza obejmuje dwie części. Po pierwsze, rozważane będzie użycie „twardego światła” jako elementu architektonicznego w świecie elektronicznym, przedstawionym w filmie Tron. Następnie wskazane zostaną czynniki, które wpłynęły na użycie światła i ciemności przez producentów Tronu jako elementu wyjątkowego wizualnego stylu filmu. W dalszej kolejności omówiona będzie rola światła w architekturze budynków w świecie rzeczywistym, gdzie światło dodaje nowych artystycznych jakości do już istniejących struktur, ale nie może samo w sobie tworzyć nowych form fizycznych. Ta sytuacja porównana będzie z rolą światła jako budulca w świecie Tronu, stosowanego w celu stworzenia solidnych mostów, platform, murów, okien, pojazdów oraz innych konstrukcji. W celu przeanalizowania sposobu istnienia twardego światła, zastosowane zostaną modele fenomenologiczne, które pokazują naturę światła twardego Tronu jako coś ontologicznie niejasnego i problematycznego. • Druga część analizy obejmie sposób, w jaki użycie twardego światła w Tronie przyczyniło się do stworzenia jednego z podstawowych paradygmatów albo metafor konstruowania cyberprzestrzeni i wizualizacji środowisk wirtualnych, to jest, paradygmatu Siatki Cyberprzestrzennej. Fenomenolog Christian Norberg-Schulz twierdzi, że wszystkie historyczne podejścia do architektury przejawiają jeden z czterech sposobów albo mód: kosmiczną, romantyczną, klasyczną albo kompleksową. W niniejszym rozdziale utrzymuje się, że każdy z tych stylów architektury w świecie rzeczywistym może być korelowany z unikalnym paradygmatem wizualizacji architektury światów cyfrowych. Być może bardziej niż jakikolwiek inny film, dzieło literackie czy gra komputerowa, Tron wprowadził do kultury paradygmat Siatki Cyberprzestrzennej, która odpowiada kosmicznemu stylowi architektury i która charakteryzuje się regularną geometrią, bezwzględnym porządkiem, brakiem lokalnej adaptacji i ozdobnego detalu oraz totalitarną atmosferą. W końcowych częściach rozdziału sugerowane będzie, że wraz z rozwojem technologii rzeczywistości wirtualnej, wizja architektoniczna ukazana w fikcyjnym świecie elektronicznym Tronu utrzyma swoją pozycję wśród innych kluczowych paradygmatów jako jedno z podstawowych podejść do konstruowania odczuwalnej przestrzeni w środowiskach wirtualnych.

Business Models for Strategic Innovation: Cross-Functional Perspectives, May 15, 2018

Neuromarketing utilizes innovative technologies to accomplish two key tasks: 1) gathering data ab... more Neuromarketing utilizes innovative technologies to accomplish two key tasks: 1) gathering data about the ways in which human beings’ cognitive processes can be influenced by particular stimuli; and 2) creating and delivering stimuli to influence the behavior of potential consumers. In this text, we argue that rather than utilizing specialized systems such as EEG and fMRI equipment (for data gathering) and web-based microtargeting platforms (for influencing behavior), it will increasingly be possible for neuromarketing practitioners to perform both tasks by accessing and exploiting neuroprosthetic devices already possessed by members of society. We first present an overview of neuromarketing and neuroprosthetic devices. A two-dimensional conceptual framework is then developed that can be used to identify the technological and biocybernetic capacities of different types of neuroprosthetic devices for performing neuromarketing-related functions. One axis of the framework delineates the main functional types of sensory, motor, and cognitive neural implants; the other describes the key neuromarketing activities of gathering data on consumers’ cognitive activity and influencing their behavior. This framework is then utilized to identify potential neuromarketing applications for a diverse range of existing and anticipated neuroprosthetic technologies. It is hoped that this analysis of the capacities of neuroprosthetic devices to be utilized in neuromarketing-related roles can: 1) lay a foundation for subsequent analyses of whether such potential applications are desirable or inappropriate from ethical, legal, and operational perspectives; and 2) help information security professionals develop effective mechanisms for protecting neuroprosthetic devices against inappropriate or undesired neuromarketing techniques while safeguarding legitimate neuromarketing activities.

The Handbook of Information Security for Advanced Neuroprosthetics, Feb 20, 2017

This chapter explores the way in which standard corrective and compensating security controls (su... more This chapter explores the way in which standard corrective and compensating security controls (such as those described in NIST Special Publication 800-53) become more important, less relevant, or significantly altered in nature when applied to ensuring the information security of advanced neuroprosthetic devices and host-device systems. Controls are addressed using an SDLC framework whose stages are (1) supersystem planning; (2) device design and manufacture; (3) device deployment; (4) device operation; and (5) device disconnection, removal, and disposal.

Corrective and compensating controls considered include those relating to incident response procedures, mechanisms, and training; error handling capacities; failure mode capacities and procedures; and flaw remediation.

The Handbook of Information Security for Advanced Neuroprosthetics, Feb 20, 2017

This chapter explores the way in which standard detective security controls (such as those descri... more This chapter explores the way in which standard detective security controls (such as those described in NIST Special Publication 800-53) become more important, less relevant, or significantly altered in nature when applied to ensuring the information security of advanced neuroprosthetic devices and host-device systems. Controls are addressed using an SDLC framework whose stages are (1) supersystem planning; (2) device design and manufacture; (3) device deployment; (4) device operation; and (5) device disconnection, removal, and disposal.

Detective controls considered include those relating to the establishment of an integrated InfoSec security analysis team; use of all-source intelligence regarding component suppliers; integrity indicators; designing the capacity to detect medical emergencies; integrated situational awareness; establishment of account usage baselines; general monitoring and scanning; auditing of events; threat and incident detection; and proactive detection and analysis methods.

The Handbook of Information Security for Advanced Neuroprosthetics, Feb 20, 2017

This chapter explores the way in which standard preventive security controls (such as those descr... more This chapter explores the way in which standard preventive security controls (such as those described in NIST Special Publication 800-53) become more important, less relevant, or significantly altered in nature when applied to ensuring the information security of advanced neuroprosthetic devices and host-device systems. Controls are addressed using an SDLC framework whose stages are (1) supersystem planning; (2) device design and manufacture; (3) device deployment; (4) device operation; and (5) device disconnection, removal, and disposal.

Preventive controls considered include those relating to security planning; risk assessment and formulation of security requirements; personnel controls; information system architecture; device design principles; memory-related controls; cryptographic protections; device power and shutoff mechanisms; program execution protections; input controls; logical access control architecture; authentication mechanisms; session controls; wireless and remote-access protections; backup capabilities; component protections; controls on external developers and suppliers; environmental protections; contingency planning; system component inventory; selection of device recipients and authorization of access; physical and logical hardening of the host-device system and supersystem; device initialization and configuration controls; account management; security awareness training; vulnerability analysis; operations security (OPSEC); control of device connections; media protections; exfiltration protections; maintenance; security alerts; information retention; and media sanitization.

The Handbook of Information Security for Advanced Neuroprosthetics, Feb 20, 2017

This chapter describes how responsibilities for planning and implementing information security pr... more This chapter describes how responsibilities for planning and implementing information security practices and mechanisms are typically allocated among individuals filling particular roles within an organization. It then investigates the unique forms that these InfoSec roles and responsibilities can take when the focus of their activities is ensuring information security for advanced neuroprostheses and their human hosts.

The Handbook of Information Security for Advanced Neuroprosthetics, Feb 20, 2017

This text presents an introduction to neuroprosthetic devices and systems that explores both the ... more This text presents an introduction to neuroprosthetic devices and systems that explores both the state of the art of sensory, motor, and cognitive neuroprostheses that are currently in use as well as more sophisticated kinds of neuroprosthetic technologies that are being actively pursued or that are expected to be developed in the future. This overview takes us from the contemporary world of neuroprostheses that have been designed primarily for purposes of therapeutic treatment of medical disorders and the restoration of natural human abilities lost due to illness or injury to an emerging future world in which neuroprosthetic devices offer the possibility of augmenting and transforming the capacities of their users in such a way that they can perhaps best be described as ‘posthumanizing’ technologies.

Neuroprosthetic Supersystems Architecture, Jan 15, 2017

This text develops a model based on network topology that can be used to analyze or engineer the ... more This text develops a model based on network topology that can be used to analyze or engineer the structures and dynamics of an organization in which neuroprosthetic technologies are employed to enhance the abilities of human personnel. We begin by defining neuroprosthetic supersystems as organizations whose members include multiple neuroprosthetically augmented human beings. It is argued that the expanded sensory, cognitive, and motor capacities provided by ‘posthumanizing’ neuroprostheses may enable human beings possessing such technologies to collaborate using novel types of organizational structures that differ from the traditional structures that are possible for unaugmented human beings. The concept of network topology is then presented as a concrete approach to analyzing or engineering such neuroprosthetic supersystems. A number of common network topologies such as chain, linear bus, tree, ring, hub-and-spoke, partial mesh, and fully connected mesh topologies are discussed and their relative advantages and disadvantages noted.

Drawing on the notion of different architectural ‘views’ employed in enterprise architecture, we formulate a topological model that incorporates five views that are relevant for neuroprosthetic supersystems: the (1) physical and (2) logical topologies of the neuroprosthetic devices themselves; (3) the natural topology of social relations of the devices’ human hosts; (4) the topology of the virtual environments, if any, created and accessed by means of the neuroprostheses; and (5) the topology of the brain-to-brain communication, if any, facilitated by the devices. Potential uses of the model are illustrated by applying it to four hypothetical types of neuroprosthetic supersystems: (1) an emergency medical alert system incorporating body sensor networks (BSNs); (2) an array of centrally hosted virtual worlds; (3) a ‘hive mind’ administered by a central hub; and (4) a distributed hive mind lacking a central hub.

It is our hope that models such as the one formulated here will prove useful not only for engineering neuroprosthetic supersystems to meet functional requirements but also for analyzing the legal, ethical, and social aspects of potential or existing supersystems, to ensure that the organizational deployment of neuroprosthetic technologies does not undermine the wellbeing of such devices’ human users or of societies as a whole.

Neuroprosthetic Supersystems Architecture, Jan 15, 2017

When designing target architectures for organizations, the discipline of enterprise architecture ... more When designing target architectures for organizations, the discipline of enterprise architecture has historically relied a set of assumptions regarding the physical, cognitive, and social capacities of the human beings serving as organizational members. In this text we explore the fact that for those organizations that intentionally deploy posthumanizing neuroprosthetic technologies among their personnel, such traditional assumptions no longer hold true: the use of advanced neuroprostheses intensifies the ongoing structural, systemic, and procedural fusion of human personnel and electronic information systems in a way that provides workers with new capacities and limitations and transforms the roles available to them.

Such use of neuroprostheses has the potential to affect an organization’s workers in three main areas. First, the use of neuroprostheses may affect workers’ physical form, as reflected in the physical components of their bodies, the role of design in their physical form, their length of tenure as workers, the developmental cycles that they experience, their spatial extension and locality, the permanence of their physical substrates, and the nature of their personal identity. Second, neuroprostheses may affect the information processing and cognition of neurocybernetically augmented workers, as manifested in their degree of sapience, autonomy, and volitionality; their forms of knowledge acquisition; their locus of information processing and data storage; their emotionality and cognitive biases; and their fidelity of data storage, predictability of behavior, and information security vulnerabilities. Third, the deployment of neuroprostheses can affect workers’ social engagement, as reflected in their degree of sociality; relationship to organizational culture; economic relationship with their employers; and rights, responsibilities, and legal status.

While ethical, legal, economic, and functional factors will prevent most organizations from deploying advanced neuroprostheses among their personnel for the foreseeable future, a select number of specialized organizations (such as military departments) are already working to develop such technologies and implement them among their personnel. The enterprise architectures of such organizations will be forced to evolve to accommodate the new realities of human-computer integration brought about by the posthumanizing neuroprosthetic technologies described in this text.

Neuroprosthetic Supersystems Architecture, Jan 15, 2017

The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) seeks to generate alignment between an organizatio... more The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) seeks to generate alignment between an organization’s electronic information systems, human resources, business processes, workplace culture, mission and strategy, and external ecosystem in order to increase the organization’s ability to manage complexity, resolve internal conflicts, and adapt proactively to environmental change. In this text, an introduction to the definition, history, organizational role, objectives, benefits, mechanics, and popular implementations of enterprise architecture is presented. The historical shift from IT-centric to business-centric definitions of EA is reviewed, along with the difference between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches to EA. The unique organizational role of EA is highlighted by comparing it with other management disciplines and practices.

The creation of alignment is explored as the core mechanism by which EA achieves advantageous effects. Different kinds of alignment are defined, the history of EA as a generator of alignment is investigated, and EA’s relative effectiveness at creating different types of alignment is candidly assessed. Attention is given to the key dynamic by which alignment yields deeper integration of an organization’s structures, processes, and systems, which in turn grants the organization greater agility – which itself enhances the organization’s ability to implement rapid and strategically directed change. The types of tasks undertaken by enterprise architects are discussed, and a number of popular enterprise architecture frameworks are highlighted. A generic EA framework is then presented as a means of discussing elements such as architecture domains, building blocks, views, and landscapes that form the core of many EA frameworks. The role of modelling languages in documenting EA plans is also addressed.

In light of enterprise architecture’s strengths as a tool for managing the deployment of innovative forms of IT, it is suggested that by adopting EA initiatives of the sort described here, organizations may better position themselves to address the new social, economic, and operational realities presented by emerging ‘posthumanizing’ technologies such as those relating to social robotics, nanorobotics, artificial life, genetic engineering, neuroprosthetic augmentation, and virtual reality.

Neuroprosthetic Supersystems Architecture, Jan 15, 2017

This text examines the types of organizations that are already working to intentionally deploy ne... more This text examines the types of organizations that are already working to intentionally deploy neuroprosthetic technologies for human enhancement among their workforce (or are expected to do so), factors that affect their adoption of such technologies, and the organizational roles that such neurotechnologies may play.

The current state of therapeutic neuroprosthetic device use is presented, along with an overview of posthumanizing neuroprostheses and the types of enhanced capacities that they offer human workers that may be relevant to organizations. A range of factors incentivizing or discouraging the organizational deployment of posthumanizing neuroprostheses is identified and discussed. The organizational roles of therapeutic and posthumanizing neuroprostheses are then analyzed. Many organizations already unknowingly incorporate workers possessing therapeutic neuroprostheses, while two key paths for the organizational deployment of posthumanizing neuroprostheses are highlighted. First is the ‘transitional augmentation’ of human workers as a stopgap measure on the path to eventual full automation of business processes through the use of AI. The second path involves retaining human workers in particular positions because exogenous factors (such as legal, ethical, or marketing requirements) mandate that human agents fill them, while augmenting the workers so that they can perform more competitively.

It is noted that military organizations play a key role among organizations likely to be early adopters of posthumanizing neuroprostheses. Known and hypothesized military programs for neuroprosthetic enhancement are discussed, along with characteristics of military organizations that remove obstacles that render the deployment of neuroprostheses impractical for most organizations. Other types of organizations are highlighted that share some traits as potential early adopters. Finally, enterprise architecture (EA) is discussed as a preferred management tool for many organizations that are likely to be early adopters; while EA does not directly address the serious ethical and legal questions raised by posthumanizing neuroprostheses, it can facilitate the functional aspects of integrating neuroprosthetically augmented workers into an organization’s personnel structures, business processes, and IT systems.

Neuroprosthetic Supersystems Architecture, Jan 15, 2017

The incorporation of a neuroprosthetic device into one’s being at the physical, cognitive, and so... more The incorporation of a neuroprosthetic device into one’s being at the physical, cognitive, and social levels constitutes a form of ‘cyborgization’ that imposes new constraints on one’s existence while simultaneously opening a path to new forms of experience. This text explores the boundaries of this qualitatively novel form of being by formulating an ontology of the neuroprosthesis as an instrument that shapes the way in which its human host experiences and acts within emerging posthumanized digital-physical ecosystems.

The ontology addresses four main roles that a neuroprosthetic device may play in this context. First, a neuroprosthesis may serve as a means of human augmentation by altering the cognitive and physical capacities possessed by its host. Second, it may manipulate the contents of information produced or utilized by its human host. Third, a neuroprosthesis may shape the manner in which its host inhabits a digital-physical body and external environment. And finally, a neuroprosthesis may regulate the autonomous agency possessed and experienced by its host.

The development and use of such an ontology can allow researchers to better understand the psychological, social, and ethical ramifications of such technologies and can enable the architects of neuroprosthetic systems and the digital-physical ecosystems within which their human hosts operate to formulate principles of design and management that minimize the dangers and maximize benefits for the neuroprosthetically augmented inhabitants of such environments.

Neuroprosthetic Supersystems Architecture, Jan 15, 2017

In this text, we develop an ontology that envisions, captures, and describes the full range of wa... more In this text, we develop an ontology that envisions, captures, and describes the full range of ways in which a neuroprosthesis may participate in the sensory, cognitive, and motor processes of its human host. By considering anticipated future developments in neuroprosthetics and adopting a generic biocybernetic approach, the ontology is able to account for therapeutic neuroprostheses already in use as well as future types of neuroprostheses expected to be deployed for purposes of human enhancement.

The ontology encompasses three areas. First, a neuroprosthesis may participate in its host’s processes of sensation by (a) detecting stimuli such as photons, sound waves, or chemicals; (b) fabricating sense data, as in the case of virtual reality systems; (c) storing sense data; (d) transmitting sense data within a neural pathway; (e) enabling its host to experience sense data through a sensory modality such as vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, balance, heat, or pain; or (f) creating mappings of sensory routes – e.g., in order to allow sensory substitution. Second, a neuroprosthesis may participate in processes of cognition by (a) creating a basic interface between the device and the host’s conscious awareness or affecting the host’s (b) perception, (c) creativity, (d) memory and identity, or (e) reasoning and decision-making. Third, a neuroprosthesis may participate in processes of motion by (a) detecting motor instructions generated by the host’s brain; (b) fabricating motor instructions, as in the case of a medical device controlled by software algorithms rather than its host’s volitions; (c) storing motor instructions; (d) transmitting motor instructions, as within a neural pathway; (e) effectuating physical action within effectors such as natural biological muscles and glands, synthetic muscles, robotic actuators, video screens, audio speakers, or wireless transmitters; (f) allowing the expression of volitions through motor modalities such as language, paralanguage, and locomotion; or (g) creating mappings of motor routes. The use of such an ontology allows easier, more systematic, and more robust analysis of the biocybernetic role of a neuroprosthesis within its host-device system.

Posthuman Management: Creating Effective Organizations in an Age of Social Robotics, Ubiquitous AI, Human Augmentation, and Virtual Worlds (Second Edition), Jul 7, 2016

We live in an era of accelerating technological posthumanization in which the form and capacities... more We live in an era of accelerating technological posthumanization in which the form and capacities of human and artificial agents are converging in ways that might be understood as either exciting or unsettling. Ongoing developments in fields like biocybernetics, neuroprosthetics, wearable computing, virtual reality, and genetic engineering are yielding technologically augmented human beings who possess physical components and behaviors resembling those traditionally found in electronic computers. Meanwhile, developments in artificial intelligence, social robotics, artificial life, nanotechnology, and ubiquitous computing are creating synthetic entities whose structures and processes ever more closely resemble those of living organisms. Such human and nonhuman agents exist and interact within increasingly sophisticated digital-physical ecosystems in which entities shift continually be-tween actual and virtual worlds. Insofar as such agents constitute the building-blocks of contemporary organizations, the processes of technological posthumanization that are transforming them are also reshaping the theory and practice of organizational management.

Posthuman Management provides a wide-ranging and systematic investigation of these issues by collecting relevant texts recently published in academic journals along with original content prepared for this volume. This introductory chapter to Posthuman Management presents an overview of the major issues explored within the volume’s three parts and the methodologies employed. In Part I of the book, a general theoretical and practical framework for the field of posthuman management is developed. Each chapter approaches this task at a different level, moving from the more abstract sphere of a basic exploration of the nature of posthumanism to the more concrete sphere of formulating tools for posthumanized business analysis and considering the implications of posthumanization for a specific management discipline (in this case, organization development). The three chapters in Part II take a closer look at look at the ways in which organizational management will be affected by the posthumanizing augmentation of human beings through technologies such as neuroprosthetics, virtual reality, and genetic engineering. Finally, the six chapters of Part III explore in more depth the ways in which increasingly advanced technologies for robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life will impact organizational management.

Posthuman Management: Creating Effective Organizations in an Age of Social Robotics, Ubiquitous AI, Human Augmentation, and Virtual Worlds (Second Edition), Jul 7, 2016

The interdisciplinary field of information security (InfoSec) already draws significantly on the ... more The interdisciplinary field of information security (InfoSec) already draws significantly on the biological and human sciences; for example, it relies on knowledge of human physiology to design biometric authentication devices and utilizes insights from psychology to predict users’ vulnerability to social engineering techniques and develop preventative measures. The growing use of computers implanted within the human body for purposes of therapy or augmentation will compel InfoSec to develop new or deeper relationships with fields such as medicine and biomedical engineering, insofar as the practices and technologies that InfoSec implements for implantable computers must not only secure the information contained within such devices but must also avoid causing biological or psychological harm to the human beings within whose organisms the computers are embedded.

In this text we identify unique issues and challenges that implantable computers create for information security. By considering the particular scenario of the internal computer controlling a retinal implant, we demonstrate the ways in which InfoSec’s traditional concepts of the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information and the use of physical, logical, and administrative access controls become intertwined with issues of medicine and biomedical engineering. Finally, we formulate a novel cybernetic approach that provides a useful paradigm for conceptualizing the relationship of information security to medicine and biomedical engineering in the context of implantable computers.

Posthuman Management: Creating Effective Organizations in an Age of Social Robotics, Ubiquitous AI, Human Augmentation, and Virtual Worlds (Second Edition), Jul 7, 2016

In this text we argue that it is theoretically possible to create artificial life-forms that func... more In this text we argue that it is theoretically possible to create artificial life-forms that function as autonomous businesses within the real-world human economy and explore some of the implications of the development of such beings. Building on the cybernetic framework of the Viable Systems Approach (VSA), we formulate the concept of an ‘organism-enterprise’ that exists simultaneously as both a life-form and a business. The possible existence of such entities both enables and encourages us to reconceptualize the historically anthropocentric understanding of a ‘business’ in a way that allows an artificial life-form to constitute a ‘synthetic’ organism-enterprise (SOE) just as a human being acting as a sole proprietor constitutes a ‘natural’ organism-enterprise. Such SOEs would exist and operate in a sphere beyond that of current examples of artificial life, which produce goods or services within some simulated world or play a limited role as tools or assistants within a human business. Rather than competing against artificial organisms in a virtual world, SOEs could potentially survive and evolve through competition against human businesses in our real-world economy. We conclude by briefly envisioning particular examples of SOEs that elucidate some of the legal, economic, and ethical issues that arise when a single economic ecosystem is shared by competing human and artificial life. It is suggested that the theoretical model of synthetic organism-enterprises developed in this text may provide a useful conceptual foundation for computer programmers, engineers, economists, management scholars and practitioners, ethicists, policymakers, and others who will be called upon in the coming years to grapple with the realities of artificial agents that increasingly function as autonomous enterprises within our world’s complex economic ecosystem.

Posthuman Management: Creating Effective Organizations in an Age of Social Robotics, Ubiquitous AI, Human Augmentation, and Virtual Worlds (Second Edition), Jul 7, 2016

Organization Development (OD) is a management discipline whose theory and practice are firmly roo... more Organization Development (OD) is a management discipline whose theory and practice are firmly rooted in humanistic values insofar as it seeks to create effective organizations by facilitating the empowerment and growth of their human members. However, a new posthuman age is dawning in which human beings will no longer be the only intelligent actors guiding the behavior of organizations; increasingly, social robots, AI programs, and cybernetically augmented human employees are taking on roles as collaborators and decision-makers in the workplace, and this transformation is only likely to accelerate.

How should OD professionals react to the rise of these posthumanizing technologies? In this text we explore OD’s humanistic foundations and the social and organizational implications of posthuman technologies for the workplace. Several ways are suggested in which OD could act as a ‘Humanist OD for a posthuman world,’ providing an essential service to future organizations without abandoning its traditional humanist values. An alternative vision is then presented for a ‘Posthuman OD’ that reinterprets and expands its humanist vision to embrace the benefits that social robots, AI, and cyberization can potentially bring into the workplace. Finally, we discuss the extent to which OD can remain a single, unified discipline in light of the challenge to its traditional humanistic values presented by such emerging technologies.

Posthuman Management: Creating Effective Organizations in an Age of Social Robotics, Ubiquitous AI, Human Augmentation, and Virtual Worlds (Second Edition), Jul 7, 2016

As robots are developed that possess increasingly robust social and managerial capacities and whi... more As robots are developed that possess increasingly robust social and managerial capacities and which are moving into a broader range of roles within businesses, the question arises of whether a robot could ever fill the ultimate organizational role: that of CEO. Among the many functions a chief executive officer must perform is that of motivating a company’s workers and cultivating their trust in the company’s strategic direction and leadership. The creation of a robot that can successfully inspire and win the trust of an organization’s human personnel might appear implausible; however, we argue that the development of robots capable of manifesting the leadership traits needed to serve as CEO within an otherwise human organization is not only possible but – based on current trends – likely even inevitable.

Our analysis employs phenomenological and cultural posthumanist methodologies. We begin by reviewing what French and Raven refer to as ‘referent power’ and what Weber describes as ‘charismatic authority’ – two related characteristics which if possessed by a social robot could allow it to lead human personnel by motivating them and securing their loyalty and trust. By analyzing current robotic design efforts and cultural depictions of robots, we identify three ways in which human beings are striving to create charismatic robot leaders for ourselves. We then consider the manner in which particular robot leaders will acquire human trust, arguing that charismatic robot leaders for businesses and other organizations will emerge naturally from our world’s social fabric, without any rational decision on our part. Finally, we suggest that the stability of these leader-follower relations – and the extent to which charismatic social robots can remain long-term fixtures in leadership roles such as that of CEO – will hinge on a fundamental question of robotic intelligence and motivation that currently stands unresolved.

Parinsula: A Generalized Relatively Isolated System Simulator is a computer program designed to i... more Parinsula: A Generalized Relatively Isolated System Simulator is a computer program designed to illustrate elements of the systems theory developed by Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden, which has applications in such diverse fields as theoretical biology, architecture, and computer game design. In particular, the software provides a means of simulating and visualizing the behavior of several simple, generic types of relatively isolated systems. The nature of such a relatively isolated system is determined largely by the quantity and quality of the semipermeable boundaries or membranes that it possesses and the resulting partially sheltered interior spaces that they create within the system. Such boundaries regulate the passage of objects and causal influences from the external environment into the system’s interior and from the system’s interior into the external environment. In the real world, there are myriad types of partially isolating structures, mechanisms, or behaviors that a given system might include and which (depending on the nature of the system) might operate at physical, cognitive, social, or other levels. The simplified models utilized in this simulator include three generic types of components that a system might possess (“Reflectors,” “Absorbers,” and “Transmitters”), which give rise to semipermeable system boundaries possessing varying characteristics. The simulator provides models of five different relatively isolated systems. The first three illustrate the basic behaviors of Reflectors, Absorbers, and Transmitters, respectively, while the other two present systems that include a mix of all three types of components. The simulator draws its theoretical basis from works including Ingarden’s “Spór o istnienie świata,” volumes I (1947) and II (1948), “Über die Verantwortung: Ihre ontischen Fundamente” (1970), and “Über die kausale Struktur der realen Welt: Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt III” (1974).

In a number of popular video games, the player character’s (originally human) body undergoes a te... more In a number of popular video games, the player character’s (originally human) body undergoes a temporary or permanent transformation to take on a radically different physical form, such as that of an animal, mythical creature, machine, or cloud of energy. In fantasy games, such a transformation might be caused by a magical spell, ability, or item; in science fiction games, the character’s body might be transformed through cybernetic augmentation, mind uploading, or ‘jacking in’ to experience cyberspace through a virtual avatar. In the real world, researchers have found that the human brain utilizes a ‘body schema’ to control the body and interpret sense data received through it, and that the brain displays a significant ability to update its body schema to reflect bodily changes resulting from growth, illness, injury, or the addition of prosthetic devices. However, it is unknown how dramatically a human body can be transformed before the brain loses its ability to communicate with and control it. This question of whether the human mind can interact with the world without the use of a human body has occupied philosophers from the times of Aquinas and Descartes through the present day. Here we argue that video games can play a crucial role in aiding us to solve this mystery – and thus in ascertaining the extent to which the reengineering of the form and function of the human body envisioned by many transhumanist and posthumanist thinkers may or may not be possible.

We begin by suggesting that differences in how body transformation is depicted in fantasy versus science fiction games reveal game designers’ implicit insights into the limits of our brain’s ability to adapt to a changed body. We then argue that the sensorimotor feedback loop experienced while playing video games – which is not present in other media such as books or films – creates a unique opportunity to explore how greatly the human brain’s body schema can be extended or transformed to accommodate the possession of a radically non-human body. In this fashion, the designers and players of computer gamers are working at the frontiers of an emerging field of ‘body schema engineering.’ Their experiences will aid humanity to understand the extent to which it may or may not be possible to develop posthuman technologies such as xenosomatic prosthetics (which provide a human mind with the experience of possessing a body radically different from its natural human body), neosomatic prosthetics (which physically replace all of a person’s body apart from the brain with a synthetic housing that may or may not resemble a human body), and moioprosthetics (specialized neosomatic prosthetics that encase the human brain within a standardized ‘cyberbrain’ that can be easily swapped among different robotic ‘cybershells’ in the form of humanoid or animal bodies, vehicles, or buildings). Finally, we suggest that reflecting on computer gamers’ in-game experiences of possessing and utilizing non-human bodies can help us to anticipate and understand the novel psychological conditions – whether disorders or enhancements – that may result from the long-term use of body-altering neuroprosthetics. Through their exploitation of video games’ body-transforming capabilities, gamers can become pioneers and heralds of new posthuman ways of existing and interacting with reality.

A lecture presented as part of the “Arkana Fantastyki” series at the Centrum Informacji Naukowej ... more A lecture presented as part of the “Arkana Fantastyki” series at the Centrum Informacji Naukowej i Biblioteka Akademicka (CINiBA) in Katowice, Poland, May 27, 2015.

This text envisions two different "employee onboarding documents" provided to new workers joining... more This text envisions two different "employee onboarding documents" provided to new workers joining a global conglomerate in the year 2050. One neuroprosthetically augmented and genetically enhanced worker – who joins the company as a Reality Designer – is granted a drastically different welcome from the other worker, an unmodified human being, who joins the company as a Biological Service Drone. A variety of scholars have formulated two radically divergent conceptions of the future of human work: one vision imagines that the development of advanced artificial intelligence, nanorobotics, and other technologies will create a utopian society in which human beings are freed from the drudgery menial labor to focus on art, leisure, and self-fulfillment; the other vision imagines that such technologies will result in the wholesale oppression, instrumentalization, and disintegration of human beings. This text highlights the fact that these two extreme visions of the future are not necessarily incompatible – and might even be reflected within the activities of a single company.

A growing number of posthuman neuroprosthetic devices are under development that will provide the... more A growing number of posthuman neuroprosthetic devices are under development that will provide their users with sensory, motor, and cognitive capacities that radically differ from those of ‘natural’ human beings. Specialized organizations such as military agencies and departments are fashioning plans to proactively deploy such neurotechnologies among their personnel. While the use of such devices has been studied from biomedical and ethical perspectives, substantive analysis has not yet been carried out from the perspective of organizational management. In this text we investigate the implications of integrating such advanced neurotechnologies into the structures, processes, and systems of an organization through the lens of enterprise architecture (EA), a management discipline that is designed to facilitate the incorporation of innovative IT into an organization and which is a favored management approach of the kinds of large, complex, and technology-intensive organizations expected to be ‘early adopters’ of posthuman neuroprosthetics.

We identify and analyze two primary ways in which the practice of enterprise architecture will change within organizations that deploy posthuman neuroprosthetics. First, it is argued that EA will be forced to adapt as the introduction of posthuman neuroprosthetics results in: 1) blurring distinctions between human personnel and electronic information systems; 2) changes in the nature of HCI and interpersonal communication; 3) an extension of the functional scope of an organization’s IT systems into the bodies and minds of its workers; 4) legal and ethical constraints limiting an organization’s ability to impose an EA on implanted neuroprostheses; and 5) changes to the fundamental capacities of a workforce. Second, the deployment of posthuman neuroprosthetics will impact an organization’s ability to address four challenges facing contemporary EA: 1) fragmentation of the field; 2) underutilization of EA products; 3) the requirement for ‘soft’ skills in implementing EAs; and 4) the ongoing need to collect large quantities of real-time organizational data.

We further argue that EA is well-positioned to facilitate the technological aspects of integrating posthuman neuroprosthetics into an organization but ill-suited to address the non-technological aspects of that process. Finally, we suggest that EA should draw on fields such as biomedical engineering, management cybernetics, and organization development in order to more effectively design and maintain architectures that incorporate posthuman neuroprosthetics.