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Join us this January at Gray Area's Cybernetics Book Club as we discuss Barbara Brown's "New Mind New Body" (1974), a bestseller that helped popularize biofeedback. In her book, Brown, who pioneered the field of biofeedback research, lays out ways we can learn to control our brain waves, heart rate, and other bodily processes by accessing real-time information about them, in other words, receiving feedback. The idea of self-regulation facilitated by information and technology came decades before the neurotechnology boom. In the times of unprecedented hype around brain-computer interfaces and their commercial uses ranging from life-changing prosthetic devices to biohacking fantasies, we are going to do the important intellectual work of looking into the long history of human-computer interfacing and self-augmentation.

A short film called "Biofeedback: Listening to Your Head" (1970) featuring the author will be shown as part of the book club meeting.

Reading:
Brown, B. B. (1974). New mind, new body: Bio-feedback: New directions for the mind. Harper & Row.

Access: https://archive.org/details/newmindnewbody0000barb/mode/1up

Time: 12-2 PM

Location: 2665 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
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