“Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only by its absence, not its presence. Computers as we know them today will a) be boring, and b) disappear into things that are first and foremost something else: smart nails, self-cleaning shirts, driverless cars, therapeutic Barbie dolls. Computers will be a sweeping yet invisible part of our everyday lives: We’ll live in them, wear them, even eat them.” (Nicholas Negroponte, “Beyond Digital,” 1998)

The digital is not virtual reality, it is not a sphere separated in some way by a matrix from everyday life and culture, but rather a constitutive actor and integral part of our daily life. The digitalization of communication and control systems allows a well camouflaged form of influence in which users are manipulated according to the aims and interests of commercial and/or political organizations. Control and censorship are integrated into our activities through our own efforts, because we use hardware and software largely without criticism. The Internet is a technological as well as social constellation that simulates freedom of movement and no longer allows any outside.

Cyborg Synthesis demonstrates the increasing links between public space and digital networks, focusing attention on the cultural, economic, and social changes caused by digital technology, with the aim of discovering to what extent we still notice their comprehensive integration into our everyday lives, and whether we have any say in determining them.