I thought I'd start with a long-ago and far away piece: an interview from 1996, when the Cyborg Handbook had just come out, and Chris Gray and I were speaking to interested media (film crews, editors of technology 'zines, academics, the occasional SF fan). I'm almost as curious about what I did not think to say as what I said; still, this seemed like a good jumping-off point.
Prime
Time Replay:
Steven Mentor
on Cyborg Culture
on Cyborg Culture
MsgId: *emedia(1)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:00:37 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
Good evening! It's Monday, and time for another session of "eMedia." Tonight's guest is Steven Mentor, who co-authored "The Cyborg Handbook," with Chris Hables Gray. Steven, are you online now?
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:00:37 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
Good evening! It's Monday, and time for another session of "eMedia." Tonight's guest is Steven Mentor, who co-authored "The Cyborg Handbook," with Chris Hables Gray. Steven, are you online now?
MsgId: *emedia(3)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:03:39 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Howdy! I'm "here"
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:03:39 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Howdy! I'm "here"
MsgId: *emedia(5)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:06:01 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
Steven, I'd like you to get into your experience and background in cyborg life. What made you interested in cybernetic organic culture?
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:06:01 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
Steven, I'd like you to get into your experience and background in cyborg life. What made you interested in cybernetic organic culture?
MsgId: *emedia(6)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:06:54 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Paulette - my human self wants to know how to get quickly around again - is it controlhome? Or some other set of keys?
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:06:54 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Paulette - my human self wants to know how to get quickly around again - is it controlhome? Or some other set of keys?
MsgId: *emedia(7)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:08:03 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
Got it. It's Control-home to get to the top of your screen, and control-end to get to the bottom. Also, if you have it, change "20" to how many messages you want to see on your screen. I suggest "5" or "10", to make it easier.
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:08:03 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
Got it. It's Control-home to get to the top of your screen, and control-end to get to the bottom. Also, if you have it, change "20" to how many messages you want to see on your screen. I suggest "5" or "10", to make it easier.
MsgId: *emedia(8)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:08:54 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
I initially got interested in cybernetics after reading Donna Haraway as a grad student at UCSC in the early 80s, but I think behind that lies 10 years of activism around nuclear weapons and energy. I wanted to understand how technological systems worked, but more importantly, how they were changing human beings as political animals. But once I'd read Donna, I started to see cyborgs everywhere - not only in sci fi but in literary Modernism, in the hospitals my wife works in, and of course everywhere on television. And so this figure - only one way to understand technology and humans, to be sure - became productive for me, and I ran with it.
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:08:54 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
I initially got interested in cybernetics after reading Donna Haraway as a grad student at UCSC in the early 80s, but I think behind that lies 10 years of activism around nuclear weapons and energy. I wanted to understand how technological systems worked, but more importantly, how they were changing human beings as political animals. But once I'd read Donna, I started to see cyborgs everywhere - not only in sci fi but in literary Modernism, in the hospitals my wife works in, and of course everywhere on television. And so this figure - only one way to understand technology and humans, to be sure - became productive for me, and I ran with it.
MsgId: *emedia(9)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:11:05 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
How did you meet with Chris Hables Gray? (Gray was the 1993-1994 NASA Fellow in History, and is currently an Einsenhower Fellow to Czechoslavakia.)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:11:05 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
How did you meet with Chris Hables Gray? (Gray was the 1993-1994 NASA Fellow in History, and is currently an Einsenhower Fellow to Czechoslavakia.)
MsgId: *emedia(11)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:15:59 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Chris is one of my oldest friends, and in many ways my political mentor. I met Chris at Stanford; I was a grad student in English, and he was helping launch the anti-apartheid movement on campus. Since then we've been political partners in organizing, have lived together in collective households for many years, and spent a lot of parties raving in the kitchen with whoever wanted to theorize and drink beer. Our biggest campaign together was the anti-Diablo nuclear plant direct action campaign, and he's always felt sort of like a war buddy to me after that.
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:15:59 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Chris is one of my oldest friends, and in many ways my political mentor. I met Chris at Stanford; I was a grad student in English, and he was helping launch the anti-apartheid movement on campus. Since then we've been political partners in organizing, have lived together in collective households for many years, and spent a lot of parties raving in the kitchen with whoever wanted to theorize and drink beer. Our biggest campaign together was the anti-Diablo nuclear plant direct action campaign, and he's always felt sort of like a war buddy to me after that.
I suppose I ought to
mention dates! We met in 1976.
MsgId: *emedia(14)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:19:45 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
I'll agree with seeing cyborgs everywhere. After reading the essay collection in "Cyborg Handbook," it puts a new perspective on what I'd consider cyborg and otherwise. But I also noticed that the book's slant is decidedly feminist. Is this because of Haraway, or is it because cyborg culture seems female?
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:19:45 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
I'll agree with seeing cyborgs everywhere. After reading the essay collection in "Cyborg Handbook," it puts a new perspective on what I'd consider cyborg and otherwise. But I also noticed that the book's slant is decidedly feminist. Is this because of Haraway, or is it because cyborg culture seems female?
MsgId: *emedia(15)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:24:00 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Well, to use Donna's language, the knowledge that Chris and I bring to cyborgs is situated; we always felt that feminism was one of THE crucial discourses of social change, and worked hard to explore how men could embrace feminist ideas and political practices. Of course we had a lot of help from many of the women in political groups!! But I do think that Donna's spin on cyborgs as transgressive, as compatible with certain kinds of feminist visions, certainly influenced me. Her notion of cyborg is a far cry from, say, Van Damme's or some of the other hypermasculine cyborgs in popular culture.
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:24:00 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Well, to use Donna's language, the knowledge that Chris and I bring to cyborgs is situated; we always felt that feminism was one of THE crucial discourses of social change, and worked hard to explore how men could embrace feminist ideas and political practices. Of course we had a lot of help from many of the women in political groups!! But I do think that Donna's spin on cyborgs as transgressive, as compatible with certain kinds of feminist visions, certainly influenced me. Her notion of cyborg is a far cry from, say, Van Damme's or some of the other hypermasculine cyborgs in popular culture.
MsgId: *emedia(18)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:28:38 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
That's something else I wanted to ask about, too. How do you feel about films like "Terminator I & II" and "Universal Soldier," where we're presented with ultra-male representatives of technology? Although I have to say I think James Cameron favors extraordinarily strong women....
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:28:38 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
That's something else I wanted to ask about, too. How do you feel about films like "Terminator I & II" and "Universal Soldier," where we're presented with ultra-male representatives of technology? Although I have to say I think James Cameron favors extraordinarily strong women....
MsgId: *emedia(23)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:41:55 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
To respond to your question about Terminator - I loved it, independent of any camp or ironic position I might also have. I think Jonathan Goldberg's piece in our Cyborg Handbook - "Recalling Totalities" - does a fantastic job of exploring the connection of masculinity and cyborgs. I tend to see both anxiety about masculinity AND an interesting use of machinery to promote the "organic" in the bodybuilding movment, which is of course always present in a film with Arnie.
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:41:55 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
To respond to your question about Terminator - I loved it, independent of any camp or ironic position I might also have. I think Jonathan Goldberg's piece in our Cyborg Handbook - "Recalling Totalities" - does a fantastic job of exploring the connection of masculinity and cyborgs. I tend to see both anxiety about masculinity AND an interesting use of machinery to promote the "organic" in the bodybuilding movment, which is of course always present in a film with Arnie.
While I'm waiting for
cyberspace to send your words winging - I'd like to explain anxiety and
cyborgs. The technology for shapig our bodies is both enabling and disabling -
just like technologies for more serious cyborg morphing, such as genetic
engineering. On the one hand we can engage with machines to literally shape our
organic bodies. On the other hand, much of this shaping is driven by anxieties
brought on by machines themselves, or rather, by the society we live in. That
cyborg society clearly replaces many human functions with machines; many
traditional masculine activities are no longer very relevant to suburbanculture,
for example, and so we get pathetic versions - dad with a bar b que fork as The
Hunter. So we use cyborg tech to reachieve a masculinity we can
"see."
MsgId: *emedia(25)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:45:45 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Where can we see cyborg products working in real space, as opposed to what's presented on film?
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:45:45 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Where can we see cyborg products working in real space, as opposed to what's presented on film?
MsgId: *emedia(28)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:51:52 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Well, "real space" certainly is contested these days! But one thing that I find fascinating about the cyborg figure - you can find so many of them outside of sci fi films! A pedestrian example - or rather,a nonpedestrian example - we are all driving huge prosthetic metal bodies around. Soon we begin to configure time and space as if we were a car. Cyborgs experience new kinds of time and space due to their intractions with machines, and their new human/machine sensoria. Other places I've been interested in: military, medicine, work, and politics. Oh and certainly in aging.
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:51:52 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Well, "real space" certainly is contested these days! But one thing that I find fascinating about the cyborg figure - you can find so many of them outside of sci fi films! A pedestrian example - or rather,a nonpedestrian example - we are all driving huge prosthetic metal bodies around. Soon we begin to configure time and space as if we were a car. Cyborgs experience new kinds of time and space due to their intractions with machines, and their new human/machine sensoria. Other places I've been interested in: military, medicine, work, and politics. Oh and certainly in aging.
MsgId: *emedia(30)
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:57:25 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
The car is a very good example, and one I thought of reading through the "Genesis" chapters of "Cyborg Handbook." The most interesting chapter in this section is about Africa as the origin of cybernetic organic culture. But is something which apparently seems Northern-oriented being used to assist African societies? Or is cyborg studies exclusive to the First World?
Date: Mon Oct 14 21:57:25 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.9
The car is a very good example, and one I thought of reading through the "Genesis" chapters of "Cyborg Handbook." The most interesting chapter in this section is about Africa as the origin of cybernetic organic culture. But is something which apparently seems Northern-oriented being used to assist African societies? Or is cyborg studies exclusive to the First World?
MsgId: *emedia(32)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:00:44 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Here's another cyborg space - the complex notion of cyberspace, which includes both what is "behind the screen" and also the material spaces of logging in. I await your reply; in some ways I am much blinder as a cyborg here than I would be if we were IRL. My material "real" is something you can't know, and often feels completely irrelevant when I'm surfing the Net or chatting with friends in a MOO or MUD. This disconnection of my virtual self from my material self is a truism in cyberpunditry. But again, the agency involved is complex.
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:00:44 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Here's another cyborg space - the complex notion of cyberspace, which includes both what is "behind the screen" and also the material spaces of logging in. I await your reply; in some ways I am much blinder as a cyborg here than I would be if we were IRL. My material "real" is something you can't know, and often feels completely irrelevant when I'm surfing the Net or chatting with friends in a MOO or MUD. This disconnection of my virtual self from my material self is a truism in cyberpunditry. But again, the agency involved is complex.
Yes - Ron Eglash's work on
African material culture and cybernetics is wonderful - his slide show includes
many more images than we were able to print in Cyborg Handbook. But I think
this question of whether cyborg = North in a North/South divide gets at a key
element of cyborg politics: the extent to which the tech which makes us all
cyborgs - communications nets that enable transnational corporations as well as
nongovernmental organizatins - are both undermining and enabling certain kinds
of liberatory visions.
Example: someone can
mobilize worldwide support for Tien an Mien by sending images via the Net, or
can update people on Bosnia or Somalia or even places closer to home like East
Palo Alto - underdeveloped, to use the euphemism. But while the new tech
enables new players, it also strengthens the hands of many
"old"players who are in a position to morph themselves into global
cyborg bodies. Here, transnational corporations are much faster than say
governments, and so a true map of the world would look at nets of wealth and
communication rather than simply at lines which say "nation-state."
MsgId: *emedia(36)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:11:54 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Eglash's essay is very much like the foundation for modern art: how Picasso and Miro took imagery from African art and rearranged it in such a way that it seemed radical to Western culture. Yet African art and imagery is very organic. How would cyborgian culture interact with the Third World? But to follow up on what you just said: it goes against the way most films present cyborg culture--as something controlled by the gov't, when in fact, it seems to usurp gov'tal control. Would cyborg politics be considered chaotic?
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:11:54 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Eglash's essay is very much like the foundation for modern art: how Picasso and Miro took imagery from African art and rearranged it in such a way that it seemed radical to Western culture. Yet African art and imagery is very organic. How would cyborgian culture interact with the Third World? But to follow up on what you just said: it goes against the way most films present cyborg culture--as something controlled by the gov't, when in fact, it seems to usurp gov'tal control. Would cyborg politics be considered chaotic?
MsgId: *emedia(38)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:16:50 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Well of course one way it interacts is precisely the way Picasso and Braque operated: appropriation! If commodity culture drives the economies that drive cyborg societies, than the thirst for the new will always circle round from domestic to exotic. But I want to pick up on another element of your question: the element of Picasso and collage. Picasso used those masks to do something to his own art culture: to defy painting. And collage, which is so crucial to 20th c art, is a big part of how I see cyborgs. Picasso used collage to fragment and augment the human body, the figure, in time and space. AND he used a collision of painterly techniques and "real" objects to fragment theillusin of 3D space. This is the world that cyborgs live in; and it is a world which ironically expands the role of the imagination, myth, projection, etc., in the otherwise apparently austere and routinized world of engineering and Taylorized labor and buy or die consuemrism.
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:16:50 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Well of course one way it interacts is precisely the way Picasso and Braque operated: appropriation! If commodity culture drives the economies that drive cyborg societies, than the thirst for the new will always circle round from domestic to exotic. But I want to pick up on another element of your question: the element of Picasso and collage. Picasso used those masks to do something to his own art culture: to defy painting. And collage, which is so crucial to 20th c art, is a big part of how I see cyborgs. Picasso used collage to fragment and augment the human body, the figure, in time and space. AND he used a collision of painterly techniques and "real" objects to fragment theillusin of 3D space. This is the world that cyborgs live in; and it is a world which ironically expands the role of the imagination, myth, projection, etc., in the otherwise apparently austere and routinized world of engineering and Taylorized labor and buy or die consuemrism.
As to your question about
chaos and whether cyborg tech is a state conspiracy - in a way, the notion of
the State controlling everthing is a 50s cold war nostalgia. The X-files is a
perfect example: all the loose ends of our questions tie up in a shadowy room,
figures smoking, coherent bad guys with coherent and unified aims. Yeah, right.
I think a better way to plot cyborg politics is to look back over those classic
political texts, called Star Trek. The first Star Trek theorized the Cold War:
boy, those evil empire Klingons/Russians sure seem outdated compard to our
snazzy corporate outfits! Then Star Trek Next Generation theorized the post
Cold War world: the Russians are our allies, sort of, and yet there are new
enemies on the horizon, and some small fractures in our alliances. Now if you
live in a country that was targeted by the CIA like Guatemala was, this view of
things might feel a bit off! But then we go to the real Chaos of post cold war
world: Deep Space Nine, where the chaos is at home at the space station, and
where our lives are lived next to a worm hole, and both sides contain confusing
choices of allies and enemies: more the world of "terrorists"
(whether state or nonstate) than the comfy world of Federation Peace. More and
more non-Northern perspectives work their way into the First World.
=MsgId: *emedia(44)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:35:05 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Star Trek! Now I understand its appeal from a more scientific point of view. I also enjoy the way cyborgs on the programs aren't necessarily sinister; that they're not programmed to "complete a mission," as T2's terminators are. But it also brings to mind that many people are using cybernetic organic tech now, in the form of pacemakers and artifical, mechanical limbs. Are organ transplants part of cyborg science, or does cyborg science deal only with the relationship between humanity and the machines they create? Is the brain a cybernetic organism?
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:35:05 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Star Trek! Now I understand its appeal from a more scientific point of view. I also enjoy the way cyborgs on the programs aren't necessarily sinister; that they're not programmed to "complete a mission," as T2's terminators are. But it also brings to mind that many people are using cybernetic organic tech now, in the form of pacemakers and artifical, mechanical limbs. Are organ transplants part of cyborg science, or does cyborg science deal only with the relationship between humanity and the machines they create? Is the brain a cybernetic organism?
MsgId: *emedia(45)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:41:23 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Yes, of course organ transplants are cyborg tech. I've always been struck by how the origins of cyborgs - at NASA, and later by writers like Halacy in Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman, all make medicine central. If we go back to that collage idea again: instead of an inviolate organic body, we imagine a space of functions, and varius solutions to those functions.If a heart wears out, we can replace it with another organic heart, or a machine, or some hybrid - or perhaps even find ways to eliminate tht function altogether, as the original Cyborg astronaut article suggested! Eliminate everything, from lungs that breathe air (can't do that in space) to elimination itself! Many of the extremes of cyborg engineering can be seen in domesticated versions in medicine involving aging, reproduction, prosthetics, etc.
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:41:23 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Yes, of course organ transplants are cyborg tech. I've always been struck by how the origins of cyborgs - at NASA, and later by writers like Halacy in Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman, all make medicine central. If we go back to that collage idea again: instead of an inviolate organic body, we imagine a space of functions, and varius solutions to those functions.If a heart wears out, we can replace it with another organic heart, or a machine, or some hybrid - or perhaps even find ways to eliminate tht function altogether, as the original Cyborg astronaut article suggested! Eliminate everything, from lungs that breathe air (can't do that in space) to elimination itself! Many of the extremes of cyborg engineering can be seen in domesticated versions in medicine involving aging, reproduction, prosthetics, etc.
Now, the brain as a
cybernetic organism - there's a knotty question! Heidi Figueroa-Sarriera writes
on masculine fantasies of total escape from the body (the meat) into Mind - the
ultimte Cartesian wet dream! And I think many cyber-enthusiasts embrace one or
another fantasy of total trascendence of the body and mortality. Me, I like my
body a whole lot - I agree with Katherie Hayles' critique of all this
bodilessness among (mostly) male theorists. But having said that: of course the
brain is a cybernetic organ! Norbert Wiener, founding "father" (in
many senses of that term) of cybernetics, often made the comparison between
thinking machines, learning machines, and the original learning machine - homo
sapiens. Beyond the reductive language of Artificial Intelligence, the mind -
the embodied mind - is still the coolest thing in My world.
MsgId: *emedia(47)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:47:33 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Are diseases cybernetic as well? It seems that as our medical technology progresses, so does the strength of certain viruses.
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:47:33 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.33
Are diseases cybernetic as well? It seems that as our medical technology progresses, so does the strength of certain viruses.
MsgId: *emedia(48)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:53:09 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
You want to read two incredible stories about this? Blood Music by Greg Bear - the whole novel is the answer "yes" to your question. And Bruce Sterling's short story Our Neural Chernobyl - whose title alone gives you the sense of it. But technomedicine also pushes our sense of what is alive - are viruses alive? Yes and no. What if we were to consider ourselves made up of a multitude of living systems, each with compatible but also competing aims. Now that is a collage cyborg! A cybernetic organic collage of systems. To descend to (or rise to) this view would mean an end to the figure of human, in some ways.
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:53:09 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
You want to read two incredible stories about this? Blood Music by Greg Bear - the whole novel is the answer "yes" to your question. And Bruce Sterling's short story Our Neural Chernobyl - whose title alone gives you the sense of it. But technomedicine also pushes our sense of what is alive - are viruses alive? Yes and no. What if we were to consider ourselves made up of a multitude of living systems, each with compatible but also competing aims. Now that is a collage cyborg! A cybernetic organic collage of systems. To descend to (or rise to) this view would mean an end to the figure of human, in some ways.
I think we are seeing many
cases of positive feedback in our world - not just the feedback between
diseases, antibiotics, and evolved diseases that evade or conquer these
"cures", followed by new cures etc etc - but also bad positive
feedback between many systems of life: the soil and oil-based agriculture, for
example. Or the feedback system of logging and destruction of salmon runs in
the Northwest. In fact, the original cyberneticists - the Macy Group, which
included Wiener, Margaret Mead, von Neumann, Greg Bateson, many others -
imagined a way to solve complex human/political/ecological problems by looking
at ALL the systems involved, not simply one. The hubris of engineering meets
the desire of post World War 2 humans to find some way back/forward from the
various Holocausts of this century.
MsgId: *emedia(49)
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:55:20 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
Two final questions (or one, if you haven't seen the program): Does "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest" (new) display a comprehensive study of cybernetic technology and culture? And, if humanity is still capable of evolving, will we become more mechanical, or organic?
Date: Mon Oct 14 22:55:20 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
Two final questions (or one, if you haven't seen the program): Does "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest" (new) display a comprehensive study of cybernetic technology and culture? And, if humanity is still capable of evolving, will we become more mechanical, or organic?
MsgId: *emedia(51)
Date: Mon Oct 14 23:03:52 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Sadly, I haven't seen the new Jonny Quest - no excuse for that! To answer the second question: in some ways evolution is like weather - we can affect it, but it happens independently of conscious human agency. That wasn't meant as a New Age statement either! But (holding a card to my head, eyes closed, reading the future) I believe that humans (if they survive the coming collapses - oil, other ecological hard landings, also collapse of various social systems based on older tech and values) - if we survive, we will experiment with our sensory organs, and with various plug-ins to the CNS. All the stuff from cyberpunk will be normal: porn in Sensurround, children growing up surrounded by Data and its servo mechanisms. The very notion of Human as a coherent figure will come into question with these add ons, these prosthetics - with their attendant amputations and losses.
Date: Mon Oct 14 23:03:52 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
Sadly, I haven't seen the new Jonny Quest - no excuse for that! To answer the second question: in some ways evolution is like weather - we can affect it, but it happens independently of conscious human agency. That wasn't meant as a New Age statement either! But (holding a card to my head, eyes closed, reading the future) I believe that humans (if they survive the coming collapses - oil, other ecological hard landings, also collapse of various social systems based on older tech and values) - if we survive, we will experiment with our sensory organs, and with various plug-ins to the CNS. All the stuff from cyberpunk will be normal: porn in Sensurround, children growing up surrounded by Data and its servo mechanisms. The very notion of Human as a coherent figure will come into question with these add ons, these prosthetics - with their attendant amputations and losses.
But I think a true
coevolution is possible because we can imagine it, and perhaps some places on
earth - and not necessarily First World ones alone - will support those kinds
of experiments, and resist teh worst excesses of cyborg culture as a militry
and ecological nightmare. I have a son by IVF and he is my version of
coevolution - I liketo think he will have more tools than I did for making
difficult choices about technologies and our fragile social and ecological
systems. Make it so!
MsgId: *emedia(52)
Date: Mon Oct 14 23:06:01 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
Thanks, Steven, for a very good online interview tonight! We're out of time. Those seeking more info on cyber-culture should check out Steven's website athttp://www.converger.cyberhutch.com. Next week, Michael Sanchez from Do Something and Litespeed Media discuss "Webstock96," an interactive, four-day lovefest on behalf of the Do Something foundation.
Date: Mon Oct 14 23:06:01 EDT 1996
From: Paulette At: 152.163.233.17
Thanks, Steven, for a very good online interview tonight! We're out of time. Those seeking more info on cyber-culture should check out Steven's website athttp://www.converger.cyberhutch.com. Next week, Michael Sanchez from Do Something and Litespeed Media discuss "Webstock96," an interactive, four-day lovefest on behalf of the Do Something foundation.
MsgId: *emedia(54)
Date: Mon Oct 14 23:07:41 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
It's been lovely - thanks! over and out, steven
Date: Mon Oct 14 23:07:41 EDT 1996
From: cybunny At: 199.182.129.232
It's been lovely - thanks! over and out, steven
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