How might the new media world have looked different had women, and particularly feminist women writers, been more prominent in theorizing the future during the decades of the 70s, 80s, and 90s?
Plant's essay uses Freud's thoughts on the contribution of women & weaving to society to reach her own conclusions on female import in technological advancement, "Freud pulls aside the veils, the webs of deception, the shrouds of mystery, and finds nothing there, only 'the horror of nothing to be seen.'" (Plant 256). Though I find diminishing a women's capability of changing the world into a simple contribution of weaving, Plant takes this argument in an interesting direction when she writes that the act of weaving, as well as the machine itself, initiated much technological change. Not only does weaving actually produce a useful and necessary product, she expounds on the social effects of this act, "Thus, a piece of cloth is saturated with the thoughts of the people who produced it, each of whom can see it and be transported to the state of mind in which they worked" (258). From Plant's work alone, I have difficulty answering the first prompt which asks how new media might have looked if women held a more prominent role in theorizing the future. She certainly suggests that women are capable of contributing to the technological world and that they have, in fact, led to many advances we have today. I'm not sure if Plant thinks the new media world would be different, her writing does suggest a social aspect of technological advancement absent in the male writers we've read thus far.
Haraway's work, "Simians, Cyborgs, and Women" begins with an introduction about cyborgs, "The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation" (150). I admit that I had difficulty understanding aspects of this piece, she seemed to focus quite a lot on boundaries and how new media might help to break or destroy these perhaps not inherent differences between machines, people, males, females, etc, "Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert" (152). Though this statement sounds rather cryptic and frightening, her piece does not exactly condemn the breaking of these boundaries. In fact, she goes on a bit about how women and feminists are forced into categories based on value and contributions and certainly does not seem content to blindly accept the roles that women have inhabited, even if these roles are as radical feminists. She writes,
"to be feminized means to be made extremely vulnerable; able to be disassembled, reassembled, exploited as a reserve labour force; seen less as workers than as servers..." (166). However, Haraway also doesn't seem to think the direction of new media is that favorable, maybe because the media and technology we have today are not changing any of these preconceived roles of feminism and women?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Hayles & Turner
In the first chapter of How We Became Posthuman, Hayles focuses greatly on the idea that information can be separated from any physical entity where it might be housed. Since this book was written quite recently, I think that when she talks about contemporary ideas or beliefs, the ideas she refers to are probably not obsolete or unknown to us. She writes, "...a defining characteristic of the present cultural moment is the belief that information can circulate unchanged among different material substrates" (1). This, I believe, is an assertion that many would agree is accurate, especially when mediums like the internet and the television have gained such a prominent role in people's lives. Of course, our class has discussed at length whether information really can be introduced and shared through new media without undergoing some slight (or significant) change in meaning or impact. Hayles probably doesn't think that information gets passed along without any change, but sees information as something that doesn't rely on a specific material in order to have meaning.
Regardless, Hayles goes beyond this seemingly benign statement that information can pass through different mediums into something perhaps more complex and difficult to reconcile when she writes, "...a conception of information as a (disembodied) entity that can flow between carbon-baed organic components and silicon-based electronic components to make protein and silicon operate as a single system. When information loses its body, equating humans and computers is especially easy, for the materiality in which the thinking mind is instantiated appears incidental to its essential nature" (2).
Perhaps on of Hayles' points is that technology is reaching a point where the human being (as a physical structure) is no longer essential for sharing information. Indeed, it seems that if there were a way to separate (as she writes at the start of this book) the mind from the body, the development of ideas and innovation might not suffer too great a loss, "...information is increasingly perceived as interpenetrating material forms...From here it is a small step to perceiving information as more mobile, more important, more essential than material forms. When this impression becomes part of your cultural mindset, you have entered the condition of virtuality" (19).
In response to the blogging prompt for this week, I would say that although Hayles does, of course, respond to social and technological changes, she also helps to create this new world. Hayles observed the treatment of information and technology and began to identify this idea of being 'posthuman' to the way that she (and others) were starting to think, "...an 'I' transformed into the 'we' of autonomous agents operating together to make a self" (6).
Turner writes in From Counterculture to Cyberculture, that Stewart Brand initially fears nuclear threats because"...an invasion might prevent his achieving personal independence and on how it would force him to become a member of a gray, uninspired, Orwellian mass" (42). Turner goes on to describe human culture and interaction as an information system, one that seems capable of being regulated and maintained. It seems difficult to understand the nature of culture, which Turner brings up, when it becomes something necessary in order to preserve society instead of a natural and, perhaps, organic process. He writes, "At a moment when humans threatened to destroy themselves with nuclear weapons, concrete expressions of culture offered a way to help them move forward and escape annihilation" (44). If human interaction can be understood as an information system, then these 'concrete' demonstrations of culture appear to be something quite manufactured. However, unlike Hayles, Turner also seems to stress the importance of the individual and he summarizes the views of Ruesch and Bateson when he writes that they "...viewed social life as a system of communication and the individual as both a key element within that system and a system in his or her own right" (53). Whether or not the individual's capacity to share information is important and whether this ability is linked to a physical structure is not explored, but it is interesting to think about. If Turner takes Hayles' ideas that information can pass from one material to another without change and it can also be separated from human beings, then perhaps it is not the individual that is a key element of the system, but rather the information they can contribute.
Regardless, Hayles goes beyond this seemingly benign statement that information can pass through different mediums into something perhaps more complex and difficult to reconcile when she writes, "...a conception of information as a (disembodied) entity that can flow between carbon-baed organic components and silicon-based electronic components to make protein and silicon operate as a single system. When information loses its body, equating humans and computers is especially easy, for the materiality in which the thinking mind is instantiated appears incidental to its essential nature" (2).
Perhaps on of Hayles' points is that technology is reaching a point where the human being (as a physical structure) is no longer essential for sharing information. Indeed, it seems that if there were a way to separate (as she writes at the start of this book) the mind from the body, the development of ideas and innovation might not suffer too great a loss, "...information is increasingly perceived as interpenetrating material forms...From here it is a small step to perceiving information as more mobile, more important, more essential than material forms. When this impression becomes part of your cultural mindset, you have entered the condition of virtuality" (19).
In response to the blogging prompt for this week, I would say that although Hayles does, of course, respond to social and technological changes, she also helps to create this new world. Hayles observed the treatment of information and technology and began to identify this idea of being 'posthuman' to the way that she (and others) were starting to think, "...an 'I' transformed into the 'we' of autonomous agents operating together to make a self" (6).
Turner writes in From Counterculture to Cyberculture, that Stewart Brand initially fears nuclear threats because"...an invasion might prevent his achieving personal independence and on how it would force him to become a member of a gray, uninspired, Orwellian mass" (42). Turner goes on to describe human culture and interaction as an information system, one that seems capable of being regulated and maintained. It seems difficult to understand the nature of culture, which Turner brings up, when it becomes something necessary in order to preserve society instead of a natural and, perhaps, organic process. He writes, "At a moment when humans threatened to destroy themselves with nuclear weapons, concrete expressions of culture offered a way to help them move forward and escape annihilation" (44). If human interaction can be understood as an information system, then these 'concrete' demonstrations of culture appear to be something quite manufactured. However, unlike Hayles, Turner also seems to stress the importance of the individual and he summarizes the views of Ruesch and Bateson when he writes that they "...viewed social life as a system of communication and the individual as both a key element within that system and a system in his or her own right" (53). Whether or not the individual's capacity to share information is important and whether this ability is linked to a physical structure is not explored, but it is interesting to think about. If Turner takes Hayles' ideas that information can pass from one material to another without change and it can also be separated from human beings, then perhaps it is not the individual that is a key element of the system, but rather the information they can contribute.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Hayek
Much of Hayek's essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society, focuses on problems of power and authority. At the beginning of this piece, he identifies the first problem of making an effective economic order as the random and chaotic dispersion of knowledge and information in society, "...the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess" (H3). This complicates another important aspect of the economic order in establishing the leaders of such a society. Whether there should be one centralized plan or competition among many different planning groups is problematic, Hayek writes that the most effective plan will be the one "under which...we can expect that fuller use will made of the existing knowledge" (H7). I found his argument about the differing types of knowledge to be very observant, he differentiates scientific knowledge (which many think of as the only type of knowledge) from the knowledge of 'time and place' (H8). There is definitely some apprehension or lack of respect for knowledge that individuals might gain just from being very familiar with their circumstances or situation in life; instead there is definitely a focus on formal education and 'scientific' (and therefore, valid or legitimate) knowledge.
Hayek uses the distinction between different types of knowledge to address how specific economic problems might be addressed. First of all, he states that economic problems "arise always and only in consequence of change" (H12). As change is essentially inevitable, it seems safe to say that there will probably always be economic problems of some kind or another. What is not as easy to determine is who who will have the knowledge to correct or face the challenges of such problems - will it be a man of scientific knowledge or someone who has a great knowledge of 'time and place'? Hayek writes, "If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them" (H17).
At last, I see some reference to the media, when Hayek highlights the problem of how an individual (or even a group) might communicate with others to get information they need in order to best deal with specific circumstances. I found it odd, but true, that a person doesn't actually need to know what happens in order for the information to reach him or why certain events are taking place - instead, "all that is significant for him is how much more or less difficult to procure they have become compared with other things with which he is also concerned..." (H19). A system of communication in the economic system is the price system, which conveys information to a large group without giving specific reasons for why prices might be high or low. Indeed, this information is basically irrelevant. I definitely appreciated Hayek's unique perspective on mass communication as an economist. I found it much easier to understand than some of our previous theorists and I also found it, perhaps incorrectly, to be more grounded in fact and more accessible to a contemporary economic system and audience.
Hayek uses the distinction between different types of knowledge to address how specific economic problems might be addressed. First of all, he states that economic problems "arise always and only in consequence of change" (H12). As change is essentially inevitable, it seems safe to say that there will probably always be economic problems of some kind or another. What is not as easy to determine is who who will have the knowledge to correct or face the challenges of such problems - will it be a man of scientific knowledge or someone who has a great knowledge of 'time and place'? Hayek writes, "If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them" (H17).
At last, I see some reference to the media, when Hayek highlights the problem of how an individual (or even a group) might communicate with others to get information they need in order to best deal with specific circumstances. I found it odd, but true, that a person doesn't actually need to know what happens in order for the information to reach him or why certain events are taking place - instead, "all that is significant for him is how much more or less difficult to procure they have become compared with other things with which he is also concerned..." (H19). A system of communication in the economic system is the price system, which conveys information to a large group without giving specific reasons for why prices might be high or low. Indeed, this information is basically irrelevant. I definitely appreciated Hayek's unique perspective on mass communication as an economist. I found it much easier to understand than some of our previous theorists and I also found it, perhaps incorrectly, to be more grounded in fact and more accessible to a contemporary economic system and audience.
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