Chronohacking: Between a thought experiment and deviations of digital solutions

Abstract

The article deals with the phenomenon of chronohacking, hacking of time in different modes of digital temporality. The author considers chronohacking as a result of the expansion of biohacking practices of civil science into neuroscience. Methodological basis of the study is the STS paradigm, the working approach is the Laturnian actor-network theory, which allows to fi x a variety of networks of actors formed due to various ways of measuring time. Digital temporality is considered as a set of digital chronopolitics, time management modes of various activities in environments formed by digital resources. The epistemic and praxeological possibility of chronohacking, according to the author, is set by two poles, theoretical and technological. The theoretical pole is a thought experiment as a simulation of impossible or unlikely situations. Within the framework of a thought experiment, ideas are accumulated about how social reality changes in the conditions of changes in the basic objective characteristics of time, to what social consequences the diff erence in the course and direction of time will lead. The technological pole is the development of specifi c digital resources of the brain training industry used to calibrate the perception of time, somatic training of immersion in a specifi c temporal context. As a case study of the brain training industry, which includes neurohacking developments, the computer game EndeavorRX is used – a medicinal agent for children with attention defi cit hyperactivity disorder. The development of this industry itself increases the number of disagreements and new compromises between science, civil science and consumers, an important role in this process is played by “anecdotal evidence” about deviations in the use of neurotechnologies, the epistemic status of which is close to the thought experiment in terms of non-verifi ability.

Keywords

• sts
• chronopolitics
• digital temporality
• civil science
• biohacking
• neurohacking
• chronohacking