Section 4
The Extensions of Ourselves: WE ARE CYBORG; Embracing Our Past, Celebrating Our Future
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Leanne C. Boyd |
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Section 4 · (RE)DISCOVERING
My research turned up many opinions that sometimes writers in
the Feminist world use language that isn't immediately understandable.
In the course of this study, I have found this to be true -- it
being almost a case of Feminist minds attempting to beat "the
good ol' boys" at their game. I soon began to discover that
perhaps it was the subject matter that leads to this way of discourse
with the reader. In any given arena, one must peruse the topic
in the language of the topic, or the intent is rendered meaningless.
Because, as females, we have been conditioned to "other-think"
technology, science, medicine, and other "manly" topics,
it is small wonder that we shy away from readings that utilize
the terminology of these sciences. Bearing that in mind, I began
in earnest to derive exact meaning from the readings:
(top of page) What Haraway just described was that new computer technology has rid us of abstracted topics; computers give us the opportunity to see things in very black- and-white terms. The "blurring" of the boundaries between the human and the machine in modern technology creates an intimacy that just was not there before, even in the terms of the Industrialized age. The "cyborgness" of human/machine gives us a chance for tremendous changes in industry, by showing us exactly what part the "machine" plays and what part the human plays. The first example of robotics and word processing, therefore, shows the division between the machine's participation (robotics), and the human's participation (it takes human intelligence to write/ develop/word process). It is the dividing line between automatic, coded action, and the thought/decision processes. But exactly how does technology do all of this work? How far has it penetrated our thick skins? We may find the answers in Sonoma County, California, where, away from the main highway is a beautiful redwood valley. In her small wooden house, lives someone who claims to know what's really happening with bodies and machines -- Donna Haraway has proclaimed herself a cyborg, a "quintessential technological body." And academics and sociologists from every corner of the world have taken her lead and have concluded the same about themselves. "In terms of the general shift from thinking of individuals as isolated from the 'world' to thinking of them as nodes on networks, the 1990s may well be remembered as the beginning of the cyborg era (Kunzru 1997, http://wwww.wired.com/ wired/5.02/features/ffharaway.html)." THIS, then, is the impact Donna Haraway has had on our world!
"If this sounds complicated, that's because it is. Haraway's world is one of tangled networks -- part human, part machine; complex hybrids of meat and metal that relegate old-fashioned concepts like natural and artificial to the archives. These hybrid networks are the cyborgs, and they don't just surround us -- they incorporate us. An automated production line in a factory, an office computer network, a club's dancers, lights, and sound systems -- all are cyborg constructions of people and machines (Kunzru 1997, http://wwww. wired.com/wired/5.02/features/ffharaway.html)."
(top of page) Finally, in (re)introducing Donna Haraway, her latest work must be perused. "Her book, Modest_Witness @Second_Millenium.FemaleMan.©Meets OncoMouse(TM), explores the roles of "stories, figures, dreams, theories, facts, delusions, advertising, institutions, economic arrangements, publishing practices, scientific advances and politics in twentieth-century technoscience (Haraway 1996, http://www.thomson.com/routledge/science/ a/a001.html)." The book's title is an e-mail address! The reader is immersed in a sprawling net of alliances more outlying than the Internet. The address is not a cozy place to be. The book's main figure, FemaleMan, encounters DuPont's malevolent laboratory rat, OncoMouse (and how can we miss the association of onco, as in oncology, the science surrounding cancer?) The world of technoscience is now a drama, with information sciences and life sciences at the center. "Beginning with the Modest Witness, the key figure in the Science Revolution, Haraway shows us the trouble lurking in race and gender-marked practices for attesting to matters of fact (Haraway 1996, http:// www.thomson.com/routledge/science/a/ a001.html)."
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HTML, page design, mapping, graphics and artwork by Leanne C. Boyd, Metropolitan State College of Denver. ( See Resume ) |
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