The Flesh and Silicon Mesh: A New Materialist Conception of Advanced Digital Machines.

Digital machines, including artificial intelligence (AI), have long been held as potential agents of social change. From their binary role in cultural productions to the real-world implementation of such, digital machines have typically been considered within the Heideggerian "readiness-to-hand" category of Being. This paper seeks to alter conceptually this dynamic through the use of new materialism and Morton's concept of the "mesh" to provide a new understanding of the social and pragmatic roles advanced digital machines play in ecologies in which they dwell and continue to emerge. Through briefly tracing the complex intermingling of advanced digital machines in the realms of cardiovascular health, sexual desire, companionship, and creativity, the intermingling of flesh and code speaks to monumental future potentialities for enhanced forms of dwelling. This paper proposes that in the near future the necessity to view advanced digital machine technologies as co-agents dwelling together will alter the established paradigm and allow for emergent ecologies. (JN) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]