My research concerns the history and sociology of science and technology and, more specifically, since 1990, the history and sociology of cyberculture. I began by conducting in-depth research into the origins of personal informatics, by describing the evolution of Douglas Engelbart’s laboratory at the Stanford Research Institute and how his ideas and creations (the mouse, the proto graphic interface, hypertext) migrated to Xerox PARC and Apple. Since 2001 I have been extending this work with research into the other fundamental evolution of cybernetic synthesis, i.e. molecular biology, by reconstructing its recent history from its lesser-known side, the “non-coding” part of DNA, which American researchers dubbed “junk DNA.” This research was published in 2011 by the University of Minnesota Press, as Junkware. Since 2008 I have been concentrating on combining my analyses of these two cybernetic evolutions, informatics and molecular biology, for a study of the issue of post-humanity, or more generally the engineering of the post-human (but also post-animal and post-machine) creature.

I am currently completing a research program funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, entitled “Post-animaux : ce que les animaux technologiquement modifiés peuvent nous révéler du futur (post)humain.” My goal is to make a “detour via animals” to develop an ethnographic view of bio-engineering without analyzing the essentially discursive practices of bioethics and science fiction.

I'm an Associate Professor in media studies, media arts, and research-creation. I work primarily at the intersection of media aesthetics, material and visual cultures, and history and philosophy of science and technology. I’m particularly interested in my current research in print and paper histories, technologies, and practices.

I’m currently working on a book called High-Tech Paper: Security Printing and the Aesthetics of Trust, a historical and theoretical study of security printing and document aesthetics that investigates the material protocols of identification, authentication, and recognition.

I’m also co-directing a collaborative project on sleep. The Sociability of Sleep is an interdisciplinary research-creation project exploring the epistemologies and equities of sleep. We are interested in both the everyday and the exceptional experiences of sleep and its disturbances. Our approach is rooted in art-science experimentation, collaboration, prototyping, and various forms of “critical making” that integrate and engage with qualitative or quantitative research data. We aim for interventions into sleep in art, design, media, and performance to generate novel sleep situations that can enrich knowledge, understanding, and normative treatment of sleep conditions, as well as the collective care of all sleepers.