IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2017 - 38

reaches beyond film. They also appear as Halloween
costumes, in learn-to-read books, and in television
commercia ls. They have become recognizable
through the everyday texts that celebrate and profit
from their depiction.
The July 2014 cover story of Popular Science features exoskeletons [1]. Staring out on the magazine
cover is the exoskeleton-clad soldier played by actor
Tom Cruise in the film Edge of Tomorrow (2014) [2],
who seems decidedly fierce with every limb laden with
robotic parts. More weapon than human, he epitomizes
certain themes: a dystopian future, a militarized technosociety, and a portrait of humans threatened by a (usually alien) vanquisher.
Over and above celebrity adoration, the July 2014
Popular Science issue assumes the role of "science
accommodator" [3] by explaining to a non-expert audience how real science, military innovation, and invention can be understood through techno-fantastical
scenarios in Edge of Tomorrow and other similar films.
In other words, Popular Science elucidates for readers
how real-world inventors and scientists are transforming
fiction into reality. However, as it educates audiences,
the magazine article also popularizes values like militarization, while it conveys information about new inventions. The societal consequence reaches beyond the
specific magazine story, and exoskeletons begin to
accrue cultural meaning making them seem normal and
commonplace. Most people will never see an exoskeleton.Society learns about military invention through a
lens that is largely fictional.
In this article we study how exoskeletons are
construed through three dominant but interrelated
presentations: 1) popular science journalism, 2) advertisements of military innovation, and 3) blockbuster
science fiction film. We address how these media function to alter attitudes about the future. The attitudinal
framing of the exoskeleton asks that people aspire to
transhumanism, and that they "imagine the possibilities in the near future of dramatically enhance[ed]
human mental and physical capacities" [4]. In this
case, they are being encouraged to visualize a militarized future. More so, the rhetorical proposition calls
upon people to identify personally with the technology.
The rhetoric conveys a militarized identity through celebration, anticipation, and to an extent, panic. It unites
excitement and fear through entertainment, but it also
succeeds in distorting the conversation of what exoskeleton technology would actually mean in a nonfictional, socio-political, or military context. Michael,
Fusco, and Michael [5] identify the "socio-ethics" concerning emerging inventions, as "the moral principles
which govern a particular society at large." We seek in
our work to disclose some of the socio-ethical cultural

manipulation conveyed through popular channels concerning exoskeletons.
We have collected representative texts, (i.e., written
magazine stories, advertising videos, and film clips),
from each discourse to form a corpus. Drawing on previous work on posthumanism and transhumanism by N.
Katherine Hayles [6]-[8] Gregory Hansell and William
Grassie [4], and Rosi Braidotti [9], we propose four
themes to serve as a model to analyze texts.
Transhumanist rhetoric is constituted by: 1) legitimately-recognized science; 2) shifts in depictions of
determined human agency, 3) speculative justification
through superheroism, and finally 4) abstracted conceptualizations of vulnerability. The final theme that
humans are in a precarious position and must react to
fear with a militarized solution, albeit an abstract, distorted, or impoverished notion of that solution, is the
most reticent them. Exoskeletons become an imaginary
technofix and a means to contextualize the self within a
militarized, post-9/11 future that "seems" safer. We
investigate propositions and justifications through popular channels under these themes, using discourse analysis to illuminate the ways they are persuasive.

Previous Scholarship
Studies on the ethics involved with the emergence of
technology have recently made important strides to
incorporate the impact of cultural spheres. Abbas,
Michael, and Michael [10] propose a socio-ethical conceptual framework to address how the notion of trust
surrounding the adoption of technology is vital. They
argue that people's concerns, expectations, culture, and
value assessments inform trust and must be contextualized within an ethical framework.
Previous work deals with how popular cultural participation in discourse can manipulate ethical beliefs
concerning science and technology [3], [11]-[15].
Sarah Tinker Perrault calls for heightened critical
attention to popular science journalism to counter
science "boosterism" in public spheres [12]. She contends that popular, public science and technology
texts "divorce science from material and political contexts and imply a one-way, rather than reciprocal,
benefit to society" [16]. Others have published work
on how popular discourses become realized through
multimodal participation that changes attitudes about
contemporary war.
Drawing on the social semiotic theory of modality
[17], [18], Machin and Van Leeuwen [11] explore American produced war toys, both their marketing schemes
and children's play practices, to understand how "early
on children are recruited not just into the war on terror
but also the values of corporate capitalism" [11]. They
view these toys as influencing children in "systems of

IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE

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march 2017

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