Social embodiment of technical devices: Eyeglasses through the centuries, according to their uses

This paper is an attempt to prepare the ground for the analysis and theorization of the connection between the body and technical devices emerging from miniaturized wearable technologies. From the case of a secular and common 'body object', namely eyeglasses, its social history and use schemata analysis, it shows the constant dynamic play of deconfiguration / reconfiguration of the distributed socio-technical networks of action in which simple optical systems take place; far away from a sole physical incorporation of the device. The unstable balance between the artefact's projection onto the surrounding space and its attachment to the physical body is analysed through the heterogeneousness of bodies coming into play in the social embodiment processes of techniques. The tangle of corporal frame, physical, distributed, social bodies pushes forward a notion of 'bodies object' that includes the artefactual and social environment, and whose plurality could be of great relevance for R&D teams to diversify their representation of the user, as an agent acting in a variety of networks with a variety of bodies