REPRESENTATIONS OF THE POST/HUMAN
– what it means to be human.
Impact of 21st century technologies – digital, cybernetic and biomedical – our understanding of what it means to be human.
-Desire, anxieties, interests fuel humanity’s continuing relationship with tools n technologies.
– relationship between technologies innovation n social change.
– technologies – called into question the immutability of boundaries between humans, animals, n machine, born n made..
Humanity intervened in the development of other living organisms.
– scientists able to intervene in so-called ‘natural’ processes with the help of technologies. (technologization of nature)
– new reproductive technologies, cloning n genetic modification – future in which boundaries between humanity, technology n nature will be more malleable (easily influenced).
– if smart machines can simulate human intelligence
Cyborgs (fusions of the organic n cybernetic) – from fantasy into reality.
-computer-assisted technologies transform assumptions about pattern of leisure as well as work.
– increasingly the major source of wealth n determinative mode of power.
– social change 0 driven by circulation n commodification of data.
– erode the distinctions between virtual n real. Taken-for-granted patterns of physical space, communication n intimacy.
– the distances of time, space n place are shrunk.
– technologies are not so much an extension n appendage to human body. Skin as a barrier is erased.
– Digitally generated virtual worlds offer ‘post-bodied’ activity. Synthesized interactive environment.
– virtual reality allow digitally generated ‘self’ into cyberspace, alternative subjectivities constructed – extensions of the body.
(ontology)
Philosopher: Technology enframe the inner essence of being. ( but) possibility of establish a relationship between humanity n technology that is not nihilistic.
Transhumanism – technology as the manifestation of human liberation
– transcending physical limitations.
POST/HUMAN
– humans are mixtures of machine n organism, nature has been modified (enculturated) by technologies.
– Featherstone n Burrows refer to the future of humanity as ‘post-bodied n post-human’.
Question: response to new technologies, enslavement or liberation? as threats to human intergrity or means of facilitating its further evolution.
– Machines transforming themselves from tools into sentient beings, questions about ‘their’ status in relation to ‘us’
– boundaries between humans n almost-humans > in the discourse of ‘monstrosity’
– Monsters serve both to mark the fault-lines but also signal the fragility of such boundaries.
‘human’, ‘nature’, ‘technology’ are being intermingled – science fiction – shock our assumptions n incited our critical faculties.
example of Frankenstein , occupy a definitive role in the reception of biological n genetic innovation > science n pop culture may regarded as representation as the world – both do not simply report reality but construct, mediate n constitute human experience.
STELARC
DONNA HARRAWAY – CYBORG WRITING
technologies making humanity into gods.
THE END OF THE ‘HUMAN’?
-humans-as-machines