Portland, Oregon, Hosts First-Ever Cyborg Camp

Portland, Oregon -- On Saturday, Dec. 6, Portland, Oregon's thriving tech community hosted a brand-new one day conference: CyborgCamp, held at CubeSpace in southeast Portland.. The idea of CyborgCamp was born on micro-blogging site Twitter, which many people in the Portland tech community use on a daily basis. Cyborg anthropologist Amber Case was one of those who came up with the idea and spearheaded the planning. A cyborg, says Case, is "symbiotic fusion of human and machine." Since technology has already become so integrated with human life today, Case (like UC Santa Cruz professor Donna Haraway) considers us all cyborgs.

As a writer who spends a great deal of time attached to her computer, I decided to attend CyborgCamp to find out more about the relationship between humans and technology.

But why was this called CyborgCamp? "Camp" has recently become the term used for a mini-conference, often only one day. The term comes from the popular tech conferences known as BarCamps. These are user-generated conferences, also known as un-conferences. They are typically free or cheap for attendees (CyborgCamp cost $10 to register), relying on sponsorship to cover costs. There is often no set agenda; participants can come up with their own session topics, and anyone can lead or facilitate a session during the camp.

CyborgCamp 2008 did include three planned keynote sessions. The first was a talk by Bill DeRouchey on how technology influences culture: "Is Machine Language Expanding Human Language?" Participants could choose to attend this session or to participate in un-conference sessions on "What Do Cyborgs Eat?" and "Immersive Environments."

The second keynote was by Lia Hollander. Hollander has an insulin pump connected to her body to manage her Type I diabetes. She discussed how technology keeps her alive and gives her a much better quality of life than she had before she started using the pump.