The emergence of the posthuman consumer and the fusion of the virtual and the real: a critical analysis of Sony's ad for memory stick

Abstract

As the world moves closer to new cybemetic life forms (i.e. self-regulating technological entities) a fundamental question arises as to what the term "human" means. An equally important question is whether we are entering a new phase of "posthuman" Iif eworld inhabited by cyborgs compx)sed of organisms and machines. At first glance, such questions might appear to have no theoretical or practical significance. However, some recent developments in human/machine interactions suggest that this requires more than cursory attention. This paper makes a modest beginning in addressing relevant issues and examines their implications to some new ways of constmcting the consumer, or more precisely the posthuman consumer. In developing our paper, we use Sony ad for Memory StickTM as an illustration and perform a critical analysis of the ad.