The third speaker in this session at the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore is Giulia Frascaria, whose interest is in human augmentation technologies. These have been in the news recently, with new developments like ‘mind-reading chips’ being used in human trials. Such cyborgisation is part of broader digitalisation trends, and the industries exploring it are growing. It is likely to influence broader communication processes too.
In Switzerland, for instance, there is moderate interest in such technologies, but most respondents are also very aware of the risks inherent in them; fewer than 9% of respondents are interested in using such non-medical augmentation technologies themselves. This project explored this by undertaking a structured literature review of the field, to understand the innovation-decision process of individuals as they evaluate these technologies.
Empirical research in the field has been rapidly increasing, and growing more interdisciplinary; it is mostly behavioural, drawing on technology acceptance models, and to a smaller extent exploratory. There is a distinction between current and prospective users, and antecedent factors affecting adoption include a distinction between religious and transhumanist beliefs, as well as age and gender factors (young men are consistently most accepting of augmentation technologies).
There are also concerns about whether the use of these technologies is fair and ethical (as they might enhance people beyond normal capabilities), as well as about the social stigma that might result from such augmentation. Groups being investigated in studies are usually either the general public, or identified supporters of transhumanist technologies, in developed western countries. All of this combines into a unified view of the adoption process, and can also be understood through the technology adoption curve. But how different factors interconnect with each other must still be explored in much more detail.
