Bryannn   My blog!

1. What is a cyborg, or rather why is thinking about cyborgs useful for exploring identity? Is identity single? Dualistic? Paradoxical? What roll does gender play in cyborg identity vs conventional cultural identity?

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2. Give two examples of cyborgs in books, comics, games, or films you have seen. Describe the cyborg, explain its role in the work, and then explain what new perspectives it brings to identity.

   – In the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, people live in a world where almost everyone is augmented with this human/machine symbiosis. The augmentations can do everything from everyday little things (like increased eyesight) to large medical and government uses, like whole prosthetics or military upgrades (increased stability when shooting, body armor under their skin, etc). It addresses the issue of who you really are. If you don’t like who you are, you can get an augmentation to change yourself. Is that the right thing to do, since you weren’t born that way, you’re willingly changing yourself.

3. What does Haraway mean when she writes “the production of a universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake”? How does the metaphor of the cyborg undermine the totalizing theories or dualisms that Haraway feels are damaging to our society?

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4. How does her cyborg challenge the white, male, heterosexual bias of our culture? (This bias, for example discourages or punishes white males when acting feminine, or wild or gay; or is it rewards women who act like men or like heterosexuals; it is not necessarily good for white male heterosexuals, as it boxes them into this role too) How does the “monstrous” liberate us? How is this like code art “perversion”?

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5. What is liberating, and what is dangerous about a human/machine symbiosis?

   – You can do things you might not have ever been able to do. With a computer, you can talk to people around the world, meet people online, gather information about things that you might not be able to get out of a book in a library. The dangerous thing about a human/machine symbiosis is that just like people who can use the technology for good, people can also use it for bad. Information gathering for crimes, and once it gets to this point, people using augmentations for things like increased physical strength, could be used in bad ways (like in every game featuring human augmentation).

6. Would you consider yourself a cyborg? Explain how you are or are not a cyborg. Would you like to be a cyborg (sometimes, never, only in play, only when serious)?

   – I don’t consider myself a cyborg in the traditional sense. Yes, I use technology like the computer every day and in pretty much everything that I do for play as well as school, but I’m not a cyborg in the sense that the technology is literally a part of my body. That’s what I think of when I think of the word “cyborg”, but having my laptop everywhere I go and using it for everything I do is about as close as you can get until you actually get augmentations on your body.

The idea of a cyborg is interesting. A hundred years ago, which is a blink of an eye relative to the rest of civilization, nobody would have believed that it was possible that a person could be part computer. People didn’t even know what computers were, since they hadn’t even been invented yet. But now, just a few decades later, it’s not just feasible, but entirely possible that it will become the norm very soon. Already some people have robotic parts in them – pacemakers, prosthetics – and it’s only a matter of time before the technology will move from necessity (to stay alive or function correctly) to luxury or convenience.

We watch movies every day where there are people with robotic implants that give them special powers or something along that line. In video games like Deus Ex, it’s actually the main focus point. People live in a future where there are doctors offices where you can buy new implants that give you new powers. Some parts act as computers, some act as weapons, some are simply to replace old living tissue in order to extend the life of the person. I don’t think we’re far off from that future that only a few years ago, nobody would have believed could be possible.