Cyborgs and Us
Robocop
People with pacemakers?
Terminator and Robocop?
Liger
Universal Robots
Metropolis
Six Million Dollar Man
Borg
Dick
Adaptations
Original ending
Scott explains the second cut
Voight-Kampff
Baty and Tyrell
Humanity?
The Cyborg Manifesto
Wired Article about cyborgs and Haraway by Hari Kunzru.
Excerpt:
In a way, modems are at the center of cyborg politics. Being a cyborg isn't just about the freedom to construct yourself. It's about networks. Ever since Descartes announced, "I think, therefore I am," the Western world has had an unhealthy obsession with selfhood. From the individual consumer to the misunderstood loner, modern citizens are taught to think of themselves as beings who exist inside their heads and only secondarily come into contact with everything else. Draw a circle. Inside: me. Outside: the world. Philosophers agonize about whether the reality outside that circle even exists. They have a technical term for their neuroses - skepticism - and perform intellectual acrobatics to make it go away. In a world of doubt, getting across that boundary, let alone to other people, becomes a real problem.
Unless, that is, you're a collection of networks, constantly feeding information back and forth across the line to the millions of networks that make up your "world." A cyborg perspective seems rather sensible, compared with the weirdness of the doubting Cartesian world. As Haraway puts it, "Human beings are always already immersed in the world, in producing what it means to be human in relationships with each other and with objects." Human beings in the '90s show a surprising willingness to understand themselves as creatures networked together. "If you start talking to people about how they cook their dinner or what kind of language they use to describe trouble in a marriage, you're very likely to get notions of tape loops, communication breakdown, noise and signal - amazing stuff." Even while we mistake ourselves for humans, the way we talk shows that we know we're really cyborgs.
Warwick
People with pacemakers?
Terminator and Robocop?
Liger
Universal Robots
Metropolis
Six Million Dollar Man
Borg
Dick
Adaptations
Original ending
Scott explains the second cut
Voight-Kampff
Baty and Tyrell
Humanity?
The Cyborg Manifesto
Wired Article about cyborgs and Haraway by Hari Kunzru.
Excerpt:
In a way, modems are at the center of cyborg politics. Being a cyborg isn't just about the freedom to construct yourself. It's about networks. Ever since Descartes announced, "I think, therefore I am," the Western world has had an unhealthy obsession with selfhood. From the individual consumer to the misunderstood loner, modern citizens are taught to think of themselves as beings who exist inside their heads and only secondarily come into contact with everything else. Draw a circle. Inside: me. Outside: the world. Philosophers agonize about whether the reality outside that circle even exists. They have a technical term for their neuroses - skepticism - and perform intellectual acrobatics to make it go away. In a world of doubt, getting across that boundary, let alone to other people, becomes a real problem.
Unless, that is, you're a collection of networks, constantly feeding information back and forth across the line to the millions of networks that make up your "world." A cyborg perspective seems rather sensible, compared with the weirdness of the doubting Cartesian world. As Haraway puts it, "Human beings are always already immersed in the world, in producing what it means to be human in relationships with each other and with objects." Human beings in the '90s show a surprising willingness to understand themselves as creatures networked together. "If you start talking to people about how they cook their dinner or what kind of language they use to describe trouble in a marriage, you're very likely to get notions of tape loops, communication breakdown, noise and signal - amazing stuff." Even while we mistake ourselves for humans, the way we talk shows that we know we're really cyborgs.
Warwick
posted by Christine at 11:55 AM
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