As we looked at in week 6 lecture (Van Luyn, 2015) and (tutorial Goldfinch, 2015), cyborgs can come in different forms and in different spaces and places. Wether its terminator or ironman, Neil Harbisson or those evil robots out of iRobot we are looking at classic examples of cyborgs. As Donna Haraway explains “The cyborg is a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction”. Now what if I told you that we are seeing an emergence of another form of cyborg. What if I told you that just like Tony Starks relines on his suit, we are beginning to see the same neediness when it comes to humans for social media.
Most hypothetical cyborgs that I can think of would come under great amounts of distress or uncomforted if their mechanical elements were removed. Is this the same result we would find if we were to take elements of social media off some people?
I think the results would be quite saddening. Most would see just how interconnected and dependent we are on these structured walls of social media. I guess by first being able to see the dependence and the power struggle wether thats online or the physical world, there is clearly an issue that needs to addressed by each and everyone of us; Are we the new form of cyborg?
“Subjects emerge from these interfaces of selves and software?”
Also have a look at this video.” The worlds first cyborg”
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cyborg+on+social+media
Reference:
Van Luyn, A. (2015). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and making of place, Lecture 6: Networked Narratives: Intertextuality. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Haraway, D. (1983). A Cyborg Manifesto. New York, United States Of America: The Berkeley Socialist Review Collective.
McNeill, L. (2012). There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly. 35(1), 65.
Unknown. (Unknown) Image retrieved from https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/6/005/094/22f/01a3a73.jpg
I agree with you in some points you presenting in this blog post. Particularly, your point of view where you demonstrate that cyborg can come in different forms and in different spaces and places. Basically, as Van said in the last lecture " Identity is a central issue in postmodernism" and it is noted by Haraway that many theorists and artists have argued that identity is infinitely mutable rather than being based on some essential nature. (Van, 2015)
ReplyDeleteAccording to Haraway uses the term Cyborgs because it means a being which is part human and technological construct. He mentioned that Cyborgs are though to be using the intelligence of humans by including human biology to a machine, or adding man made material to the human body as part of its natural function. Although, Haraway sees techno-sciences as a positive, he argued that the development of techno-sciences has facilitated dangerous diseases rather than aid humanity and therefore union with technology must be approached with cynicism regarding its intentions. ( Harraway,2001)
REFERENCE
Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborg: Science Technology and Socialist Feminism
in the 1980s in Vincent Leitch(ed) et al, The Norton Anthrology of Theory and
Criticism, London: WW Norton & Company, (2001), pp.2269-2299. p.2284