Hello and Welcome!

This post has been a long time coming and I’m glad to finally be able to write it.

The Cyborg Institute is this crazy idea I got during the dark winter of 2008/09. I’d been blogging for some time my personal blog about really technical topics, about the interactions between culture and technology, about using technology more effectively, and about working “better.” And I was getting the feeling that a lot of readers (and friends) were getting a little tired of hearing me blather about these somewhat esoteric topics.

I took this as a sign, and this is the first inspiration for the site you see before you. Thus the Cyborg Institute is a platform to explore these ideas in greater depth, and provide a context for people to record their thoughts and learn more about these issues.

The second kernel of inspiration was a growing–and at the time, somewhat disorganized–consulting practice that I was surprised to find myself in the center of. Working with technology and cyberculture is nearly reflexive for me, and never thought “I think I should do consulting work,” nevertheless, there I was. As it turns out, I find working with amazing people to help them achieve their goals more effectively to be an amazingly rewarding and educational experience.

In this vein the Cyborg Institute is an attempt to make this consulting practice more concrete and make it possible to collaborate with other awesome people who have supplementary and complementary skills and specialties.

The final piece of this puzzle is about communities:

Since I started ”doing this website thing,” many years ago, when I was embarrassingly young, my projects have mostly been about coordinating efforts with other like-minded souls, collaborating with awesome people, and building infrastructure to promote communities. A significant portion of what I hope this site will become originated when I said, “wouldn’t it be cool, this happened,” or “hey, we should do this,” and so via the Cyborg Institute, I’m stepping up to bat and doing these things.

One of these “wouldn’t it be cool, if” things is this blog, which I hope to update a couple times a week with cool links, meditations, suggestions, and reflections on “cyborg stuff.” Another is the wiki which I hope will become a collection of knowledge, forum for discussion, and platform for the development of grounded theory. Others still in their infancy include a white-paper series, git-hosting, discussion listservs, and regular group-chats. Time will tell. If there’s a project that you’d like to contribute to, or if you’d like to join our team, do be in touch.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!