It’s amazing to be standing here, looking over this awesome site we have here, and be in a place where I feel comfortable enough with where we are to be able to welcome you to the site and introduce you to the project.

Welcome!

The Cyborg Institute is born out of the idea that there are other people in the world, on the Internet, who are as fascinated with how other people use computers as I am. I was talking to Joe about file systems and file organizations a few months back (what do you do for fun?) and I said, “dude, wouldn’t it be awesome if we started some project to figure out these questions and help participate in the solutions.” Or some variant therein.

And then a lot happened. I was looking for more serious employment in this area, but I was working on a number of fairly disjointed projects, and then I upended myself for six weeks for a family thing, and then I was looking for consulting work in cyborg-related areas, and then got a job, and moved across the country, but I’ve been hacking away on this site, on the content, on the systems all the while, and my project list has dwindled down to almost nothing.

That’s a lie.

My project list has dwindled down to the point where I can’t fathom holding anything back on the account of the remaining to-do list. I’ve been doing this website thing for a long, long time and if there’s one thing that’s true, it’s that they’re never really all the way “done.”

Epically this one. With a wiki, a blog planet, and a blog like this one, “constant evolution and development” is the nature of the beast. So I’m going to keep working on things, and I’d be very appreciative of your contributions, comments, feedback, or even simple attention.

I feel as if I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a few key influences on this project. First to Amber Case for reintroducing me to Donna Harroway’s essay, and expanding my mind about the possibilities of Cyborg Anthropology and scholarship (and also for being generally awesome). Secondly, to Sacha Chua for keeping a really amazing blog that has really helped to advance my thinking in a number of ways.

And of course, thanks to you for reading this and to everyone who I’ve bounced ideas off of during the development process for this site. I’ll be posting things a couple of times a week, so please subscribe and I look forward to hearing from you soon.