The Tablet Stroker, Redux

TY - CHAP

T1 - The Tablet Stroker, Redux

AU - Aicardi, Christine

PY - 2023/12/22

Y1 - 2023/12/22

N2 - As a Science and Technology Studies scholar embedded for several years in the European “big brain” project (the Human Brain Project), Christine Aicardi has been faced with the ethical and moral conundrum of keeping her critical distance and researcher's integrity while not antagonising and losing the trust of scientific colleagues. Developing collaborations with science fiction writers pushed her to experiment with the formats of flash and short fiction to express her frustrated criticism of the way in which the Human Brain Project approached the human mind. The result was a story entitled “The Tablet Stroker,” read in public and published in a near-future fiction anthology. This chapter discusses the different strands of personal and scholarly thinking that went into the writing of the story – reflections on scientific labour and the future of work in late capitalism, on the “unexpected” in scientific research at a time when researchers are increasingly required to predict years in advance what they will find and deliver, and on what many believe to be necessary for the development of a healthy mental life and for its understanding: affect, embodiment, physical contact.

AB - As a Science and Technology Studies scholar embedded for several years in the European “big brain” project (the Human Brain Project), Christine Aicardi has been faced with the ethical and moral conundrum of keeping her critical distance and researcher's integrity while not antagonising and losing the trust of scientific colleagues. Developing collaborations with science fiction writers pushed her to experiment with the formats of flash and short fiction to express her frustrated criticism of the way in which the Human Brain Project approached the human mind. The result was a story entitled “The Tablet Stroker,” read in public and published in a near-future fiction anthology. This chapter discusses the different strands of personal and scholarly thinking that went into the writing of the story – reflections on scientific labour and the future of work in late capitalism, on the “unexpected” in scientific research at a time when researchers are increasingly required to predict years in advance what they will find and deliver, and on what many believe to be necessary for the development of a healthy mental life and for its understanding: affect, embodiment, physical contact.

UR - https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003322603

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781032334615

T3 - Perspectives on the non-human in literature and culture

BT - Mapping the Posthuman

A2 - Hamilton, Grant

A2 - Lau, Carolyn

PB - Routledge

CY - New York

ER -