Presentation on “Cyberstalking: Gender and computer ethics” (by Alison Adam, in Virtual Gender, pp. 209-224)

This text by Alison Adam introduces the newly-emerged phenomenon of online harassment and cyberstalking. Without wanting to give too much of a summary here I just want to point out the fact that, to me, the way the topic was addressed here was unique and very interesting – probably because I never saw it in connection to feminist ethics before. The whole idea of the fact that there are “major inequalities running throughout the whole of computing” really triggered some kind of re-thinking in my attitude towards the whole subject. Now, I should point out that I am a woman who is very much involved with computers and especially with what you would probably call cyberspace and the ‘online world’. So in that sense, to me the question of gender or a gendered surrounding never really came up since I never saw myself in an unequal position or found myself in a male-dominated community online (or at least I never noticed it in a negative way). I guess this is what made Alison’s text and insights so interesting to me.

Sexual harassment and stalking have always been gendered issues in the ‘real world’, with generally a lot more women being victimized and more men being the perpetrators. So it comes as no surprise that these phenomena, when taken to a ‘virtual’ basis (which in the end is really not so virtual anymore), show the same characteristics. I found it quite interesting that the presented case study about a man being a victim seemed to actually prove that to him it was more a question of winning a fight against the Internet Service Provider than anything else, whereas the stalked women had to fear about their (sexual) integrity and were very much put in an inferior position. While researching the topic online I came across a very interesting website[1], especially designed for helping victims of online harassment and cyberstalking. I especially want to point out the statistics about cases and victims, because they show and confirm very well that this phenomenon is clearly a gendered one.

I would now like to raise some central points of this text for discussion in the following, mainly ideas or concepts that I felt were worth thinking about more thoroughly. Firstly, there is the idea about liberal traditions as introduced by Adam: liberals usually vouch for a clear separation between the private and the public sphere and since the womens’ role has traditionally been more located in the private sphere, intervention or even simple recognition of a violation of the womens’ rights has naturally been a difficult matter. I would like to pose the question whether you think that this is the core of the matter? Since Adam claims that we need to know the reasons for women becoming victims and men perpetrators, could we maybe deduct that it is simply just too easy for men to violate womens’ rights without having to fear any consequences? Is this fact even made worse by the anonymity of cyberspace? Alison concludes that feminist ethics could be helpful to find a solution for that problem. Do you agree, and if yes in what way exactly?

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[1] Htichcock, Jane (1996-2008). 'WHOA. Working to Halt Online Abuse'. http://www.haltabuse.org/resources/stats/index.shtml (accessed 25 August 2008)

Webliography - Question 1

The Visible Human Project (VHP) made the human body accessible to the whole world in a unique and revolutionary way. Nevertheless, the dissection and public (online) display of the body/ies used for the project are also a controversial matter and inevitably raise the question of ethics, responsibility and rights of science and scientists. This visualization was the main focus of my research.

In that respect, the New York Times’ article on Felice Frankel[1], a photographer of what she calls “the beauty of science”, was of great relevance and a good starting point for inquiries on visuality and science. Frankel seems to be very aware of the connection between images and the meaning they convey. In order to attract potential viewers’ attentions she sometimes alters her photographs of scientific phenomena in order for them to make a bigger impact and she does not seem to find anything wrong with that. In the contrary, she thinks that “this should be part of every scientist’s education, the manipulation and enhancement of images”. To me, this article was so relevant because I feel that if every scientist had such an attitude towards their work, then the ethics of research and distribution of knowledge would become more than questionable. Images can be altered on the computer within seconds. If entertainment and attention becomes more important than the truth, then science is on a very dangerous way. Keeping in mind the fact that the VHP has been used for Hollywood movie animations and funny videos to be watched on youtube it can be asked whether science is still on the right path after all.

In connection to that, Donna Haraway’s idea of “the god-trick” becomes very important. I felt I had to include this source I found in my webliography, even though it is an abstract of one of her own works. However, it should not be disregarded as it addresses the aforementioned question of objectivity[2] in science in a unique way, giving insight to and explanation of this question also in regard to gender and politics. More importantly, Haraway states that the increasing visualized world today has even already transcended the god-trick in some way, saying that “[v]ision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all perspective gives way to infinitely mobile vision, which no longer seems just mythically about the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into ordinary practice.” In relation to the VHP, this dimension of visuality as something common and habitual is certainly worth thinking about.

However, and this is what is probably so new and revolutionary about the VHP, it even goes beyond the idea of visuality as an ordinary practice in real life. A man died, his body literally dissolved in the real world until it vanished – and now the matter that disappeared in real life can be found reconstructed in cyberspace. This fact introduces the question of virtuality and visuality online that this article on The Digital Self [3] addresses in a very interesting way, arguing that “[t]he digital self in cyberspace challenges traditional notions of the self and calls for redefinition of the self when extended into cyberspace”. I found this source very helpful and crucial, since the question of visuality and constructing the self in cyberspace yields yet a different perspective on the VHP, namely, how the space is constructed that the Visible Humans find themselves in now and how the people that have access to the data sets may understand themselves.

The question of visualization is also addressed in this draft[4] I could find, examining the relation between technology and the body and stressing the thesis that

the significance of the VHP considered as a biopolitical object arises from its lending a mode of visualisation to the conceit. Its limitless capacity to decompose and recompose the virtual corpse lend it to biomedical fantasising about human life and Life in general as an informational economy which can be animated, reproduced, written and rewritten, through biomedical management. […] It is a field of visual fantasisation which plays out certain forms of mastery over a completely compliant, imaginary body, whose morphology has no integrity of its own, but is completely at the disposal of the master.

I found this a very valid and also interesting idea. Especially introducing the concept of the ‘master’ over the visualized body was a notion I thought to be highly significant to the topic.

It can hence be deduced that the VHP per se is first and foremost a visualization of a body – and this body, in the first instant of the project – was required to be male and as normal as possible. In connection to this requirement, what must be asked is what exactly makes a body appear to be normal and whether the definitions of normality and gender are even relevant in cyberspace today. Is science, a rather male-dominated field, still gendered in cyberspace and what happens to gender in cyberspace in general? Exactly these question are answered by the following very interesting online source[5] which is unconventional in many ways, taking the idea of visualization to a further level. It plays with our understanding of cyberspace through giving us various links to follow, and thus fragments our perception of the information given in the same way that visualization is fragmented online. The source argues that online gender is a question of choice and that mind and body are separated in cyberspace. Since the VHP clearly divided the body’s mind from its physical matter I found these ideas and the ways they were conveyed very interesting in many respects, even though the question of visuality was only addressed peripherally. Nevertheless I thought it to be a valid source for the guiding question to be researched.

All in all the sources to be found on this topic are manifold, very different and open a broad field for analysis and further reading – the topic seems to be as broad as cyberspace, visuality and virtuality itself.

Bibliogrpahy

Dean, Cornelia (2007) ‘She Calls It ‘Phenomena.’ Everyone Else Calls It Art.’

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/science/12frankel.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&ore

=slogin&oref=slogin (accessed 22 August 2008)

Haraway, Donna J. (1991) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the

Privilege of Partial Perspective.’ http://science.consumercide.com/haraway_sit

knowl.html (accessed 22 August 2008)

Karge, Martha (1999) ‘The Digital Self in Cyberspace.’

http://www.uwm.edu/Course/com813/karge2.htm (accessed 22 August 2008)

McAdams, Melinda J. (1996) ‘Gender Without Bodies.’

http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/mar/mcadams.html (accessed 22 August

2008)

Waldby, Catherine (1996) ‘The Visible Human Project: Data into Flesh, Flesh into Data.’

http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/VID/wildbiol1.html (accessed 22

August 2008)

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[1] Dean, Cornelia (2007) ‘She Calls It ‘Phenomena.’ Everyone Else Calls It Art.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/science/12frankel.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin (accessed 22 August 2008)

[2] Haraway, Donna J. (1991) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.’ http://science.consumercide.com/haraway_sit-knowl.html (accessed 22 August 2008)

[3] Karge, Martha (1999) ‘The Digital Self in Cyberspace.’ http://www.uwm.edu/Course/com813/karge2.htm (accessed 22 August 2008)

[4] Waldby, Catherine (1996) ‘The Visible Human Project: Data into Flesh, Flesh into Data.’ http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/VID/wildbiol1.html (accessed 22 August 2008)

[5] McAdams, Melinda J. (1996) ‘Gender Without Bodies.’ http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/mar/mcadams.html (accessed 22 August 2008)

Webilography - Question 2

2. “From Frankenstein to the Visible Human Project, the body is continually
reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human.” Discuss critically.

The human life span and its unique identity have been constantly challenged with today’s fast paced technological inventions in the scientific and medical community. As we progress further into the twenty-first Century the idea of the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human. Nowadays, it is certain that some humans are no longer ‘natural’ beings. Scientists and medical researchers have developed greater insights as to how the body functions. Most of us are truly amazed by the impossibilities of modern technologies.

Catherine Waldby wrote a paper with concern to the Visible Human Project (VHP), and discusses the fact that a technology such as new biotechnologies exists. It can transform fleshly body form from real space into a digital body in the virtual space. Virtual space is still considered as a new technocultural product. The possibilities of the project are still being further explored and developed. Waldby highlights the fact that the human body then becomes the ‘object of terror and fascination’ as the body has been prosthetically enhanced ‘at the expense of their invasion and technical reorganization, and their vulnerability to medicine's often violent epistemophilia.’ She concludes that human frailty has now been reduced to a mechanical existence, one which can be mapped and manipulated in a virtual space through modern day technologies. Therefore, Waldby’s article reinforces the idea that the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human. Waldby’s article has a detailed discussion of the Visible Human Project; her works are both credible and reliable.

G Gillett’s article ‘Cyborg and moral identity’, discusses how neuroscience and technological medicine have created an increasing concern for humans to face unavoidable existence of cyborgs. A cyborg articulates partly human and partly machine composites. Further discussions state that humans living a cybernetic life would have supplemented their own abilities with the use of common artificial devices. Human’s cognitive capacities have been routinely enhanced by the use of technological advances. G Gillett explores several seniors where the ‘balance between human and humanoid machine shifts’. It involves an individual’s moral status in deciding how far one would allow them to be integrated with technological advances in perfecting their health. To certain extend, this article has underline the fact that humans are partly cyborgs and they are living cybernetic lives.

James A. Marcum’s article discussed that most of us have mechanized bodies and it is due to a rise in modern technology. Through technology it has created a machine world, ‘a world of interconnected machines in which the patient’s body is but another anonymous and exchanged component.’ The machine-worlds consist of the heart-lung machines, the dialysis machines and the positron emission tomography. These machines have assisted physicians in defining the patient’s body in terms of mechanization. He also states that the mechanized body is a joint of two hybrid forms of the human body: the molecular body and the cyborg body. With the aid of machines, it is easier for physicians to diagnose patient’s illness, through that it aims to improve patient’s health and ultimately from dying. James A. Marcum brings another view point of embodied person creating their individual life-worlds. The life-world is described by an individual’s daily activities and routines, instead of the physical universe that science illustrates. An embodied person’s body is not defined as a possessed object; rather it is a combined unity of the mind and body. The article concludes the definition of illness in individuals within two separate worlds. In term of a mechanized body, medical professions provide a comprehension of illness from the patient’s diseased part. While for the embodied person, the patient provides the understanding of sickness in terms of a dysfunction life-world. This article has been useful in discussing several aspects of integrating modern medicine and technology with the human body.

Kevin Warwick’s article discusses the question on what or who around us isn’t a cyborg. Citing from Donna Haraway’s works, he states the definition of a cyborg contravenes the human and machine distinction. When there is a connection between technology and human nervous systems, an ethical dilemma is form. Not only does it affect the nature of an individual it also raises the question of what it means to be “I” and “self”. In other words, are they considered as part human part machine? Dissimilar from human intelligence, he states that machines have become more intelligent over the years. Machines have greater advantages over humans; they have capable abilities to sense the world in hundreds of dimensions through infrared, ultra violet and etc. Therefore, through the distinguish advantages of machine’s intelligence; one is able to become a cyborg. By linking the human brain to a computer brain, an individual is able to excel in work performance. For example, humans will have the ability to use the computer for rapid math’s equations and understand the world in multi dimensionality. This article has highlighted several ethical questions on whether humans should be upgraded into cyborgs which includes the benefits of all the enhanced capabilities. Moreover, would cyborg values, morals and ethics be similar to human’s values, morals and ethics?

Evert Hoogendoorn’s article on ‘Cyberbodies’ had an interesting introduction that describes himself as a game character being defeated in a war zone stimulation game in cyberspace. This paper seeks to research on what happens to our bodies when people enter cyberspace. Cyberspace is defined by two separate places, distance from each other, being connected trough telegraph and then become part of the same space. Through this, information can be sent and received outside this space. This is commonly known as the internet. He further describes the space in cyberspace as not real but virtual. He analyses the terminology of cyberbodies and states that, part of our lives is lived in cyberspace; in which our bodies cannot enter thus leaving them behind in the concrete world. Cyberspace users’ identities are then immediately represented by other forms. Such as a game character and an IP address. Due to this, cyberspace users do not make a switch of a different body to represent themselves; instead they extend the physical body to a cyber body. In other words, they become a cyborg. He cited Donna Haraway’s work in ‘Cyborg Manifesto’, describing a Cyborg as a composite of machine and organism. He concludes that there is often a wrong perception of an individual’s body that is presented in Cyberspace is being defined from the representation of the true self existence in the actual world. This article has given a different point of view on how humans have a different representation of themselves with a cyberbody.

In conclusion, all these articles have given me a better understanding of how technology has integrated with human existence in creating cyborgs. Thus, the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human.

Bibliography:

Catherine Waldby ‘Revenants: The Visible Human Project and the Digital Uncanny’
http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/VID/Uncanny.html#Heading5 (Accessed 1 October 2008)

Evert Hoogendoorn (2003) ‘Cyberbodies’ Technobodies in Cyberspace’
http://everthoogendoorn.nl/I%20just%20got%20killed.pdf (Accessed 1 October 2008)

G Gillett (2006) ‘Cyborgs and moral identity’ Journal of Medical Ethics 32:79-83
http://www.jme.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/32/2/79 (Accessed 29 September 2008)

James A.Marcum ‘Mechanized Bodies or Embodied Persons?’ Alternative Models of the Patient’s Body in Modern Medicine’
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/mso/hid/hid2/hid03pap/Marcum-paper.pdf (Accessed 1 October 2008)

KevinWarwick (2003) ‘Cyborg morals, cyborg values, cyborg ethics’ Ethics and Information Technology 5: 131-137, http://aarquitecturadopecado.files.wordpress.com/2006/03/fulltext.pdf (Accessed 30 September 2008)

Greetings

Hi all, my name is Rachel Tan. I'm an international student from Singapore and I've been loving ever moment spent in Perth. Here's something interesting about myself. I used to study Multimedia Info-communication Technology and I used to design websites. I certainly have to admit that this field of IT profession is indeed challenging and eventually lost interest in it. All the codings and programming was really hard to handle. Unfortunately, I do not have any existing websites on the World Wide Web to show you guys.

However, I do have a personal blog that is regularly updated. My blog is used as form of communication with my family and friends back home. And the best part of using a blog is anyone at any part of the world can access it with internet. Thus communication and staying in touch with each other is so convenient and accessible.

I'm really excited to learn more from you guys and share my thoughts and opinions too. :)

Critical Annotated Webliography : Qn. 3.

According to Katie Mondloch’s article, Reloading Cyberfeminism, “cyber” is a Greek term and originally means to steer or govern.[1] Norbert Wiener was the first person to characterize the term, “cybernetics”, which means scientific investigation on automatic control processes in biology, technical and social systems. In 1962, he had also used “cyborg” which was the combination of cybernetic organism to refer the lifestyle in which human being linked frequently to mechanical devices and had got involved into a vital world.[2] Donna Haraway then raised the ideas of “cyberfeminism” or “cyborg feminism” by her writing, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the late Twentieth Century.[3] As she started from a socialist feminist’s point of view toward the rising of cyber related concepts. Judy Wajcman had made an argument about Haraway’s figure of “cyborg” developed a life of its own in different areas, and in this article, the ideal of “cyborg’s” life in the popular culture and academic writing will be discussed, as well as the basic concept of human nature and culture.

Firstly, the ideas from or linked with “cyborgs” transformed academic writing, especially for feminism scholars, in term of counting science and technology. There were two questions had always interested academic and activist feminists, that is, what we might mean to the term “objectivity”?[4] Also, how it could subversive feminists’ theories? If science means to know the world effectively by scientific practices, then it is a manufactured routine of knowledge in which the very objective power can be formed. Indeed, science is concerned as male-dominant, and women have always been excluded as others. Furthermore, there is evidence showing the existence of bias in the science from the old Feminists. For instance, many feminists had no interest on self-help practice, like repairing own cars or other machines, as they had the attitude that “they are just text, so let the boys have them back.”[5] This indicated that traditionally, most women assumed science-related tasks were belonged to men. Indeed, I have always behaved the same way as those old feminists, since I am usually out of motivation to follow the instruction booklets for any electronic devices, like computer and digital camera, so I simply give them to my brother or male friends to figure them out! Moreover, Haraway had claimed that feminist should find how to simultaneously on knowledge claims and knowing subjects, so that a critical practice for recognition of feminist own “semiotic technology” would be developed, and the nonsense scientific commitment becomes meaningful to women.[6]

Before going into the discussion of popular culture in related to “cyborg feminism”, it is necessary to understand that nature and culture are the basic elements of human being, and traditionally human tends to feminize the realm of nature, and masculinize the realm of culture. Therefore, women are identified as symbols of culture devalues and as the lower order of existence in most social practice. However, Haraway argued that nature is always acculturated or fictionalized, so there is no real nature, but the sense of nature that is accepted by majority of people in the society is actually informed by the naturalized culture through the processes of societies’ materials.[7]Within the context of science, culture has been separated from the nature by scientific investigation; and nature, on the other hand, has been redeveloped, and a range of possible materializations of nature has been built up. This is also known as the "myth of science"[8] and it means technology has taken places between human nature and materials in which the technology has become culture alone. This can also be called as the "nature-culture dichotomy"[9] and it allows interactions between the nature and culture.

Secondly, based on the changing of nature and culture relationship, popular culture in response to “cybory” is a critical factor. Science fiction, has become significantly famous within popular culture at contemporary time, can be seen as an important vehicle for transporting the myth of science. Star Trek’s film, First Contact, will be focused as the main example, to see how popular culture shifting the nature and culture figurations in concern of the hierarchies of gender. In First Contact, there were several issues can be raised for the discussion of transforming the human nature. One of the issues is about the human organic bodies had been combined with machines, and appeared in the form of “cyborgs”, like the Borg Queen, the main female character in the film, had shown a physically melded consciousness to the audience. Throughout all human history, there are always struggling of human race, such as continual fear and danger of violent death, indicate how fragile the human body is to be. Therefore, if the body can be transformed into mechanic with the control of technology, then we can overcome all the limitations of the organic body and no longer struggling on painful and disaster. However, the film also indicated the frightening of breaking the boundary of human nature, that is, the potential of “cyborgodness”[10] from which the human nature would mostly be destructed by technology, as the function of reproduction would probably not be organic based. As the Borg Queen had said, “I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many.”[11] The Borg Queen had then been labeled as a “she-devil” cyborg. Also, when compared to the other main character, Captain Picard, who contained the myth of masculine gods from the traditional cultural practice. It means male as the warrior leader and guide whose mission is to save the world. More importantly, the film arranged the Borg Queen as the leader of the central authority in the virtual world based on the story of the film, and it had then given the audience the freedom to illustrate women as the more empowerment in technological world, and this can also be recognized as the cinematic construction. Therefore, the myth of imagining a new social order had been created and it contrasted to most societies’ cultural practice of male as the base of the central power.

In conclusion, feminism takes on the account of the cyber world is identified, especially in the areas of academic writing in which many specific terms has been created in order to make sense with the combination of technology and human nature. Feminism ideas pushed the transformation of human nature and culture relationship, and with the effects of popular culture, particularly the science fiction, many science mythological ideas have been raised to and questioned the definitions of nature and culture of human race. I agree with Judy Wajcman’s argument on Donna Haraway’s figure of “cyborg”, and I believe that “cyborg” is not only living in the imagination of science fiction, but it has also influenced our lives in a very special way.





Reference
Balinisteanu, Tudor. (2007) ‘The Cyborg Goddess: Social Myths of Women as Goddesses of Technologized Otherworlds.’ Feminist Studies. (33), http://content.epnet.com/ContentServer.asp?T=P& P=AN& K=27452636& EbscoContent=dGJyMNXb4kSeqLU4v%2BvlOLCmrlCeprZSsq24SLaWxWXS& ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGpsU22rbdOuePfgeyx%2BEu3q64A& D=aph (accessed 24 August 2008).
Haraway, Donna. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledge’s: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.’ Feminist Studies. (14), http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066 (accessed 24 August 2008).
Mondloch, Katie. (2002) ‘Reloading Cyberfeminism’ Afterimage. (30), http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=6&sid=d2d66dc0-26e9-4707-9632-422c1d678851%40SRCSM2&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f5h&AN=7035867 (accessed 24 August 2008).
The Internet Movie Database (2005) Amazon.com. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0117731/ (accessed 24 August 2008).
Wajcman, Judy. (2000) ‘Reflections on Gender and Technology Studies. In What State is the Art?’ Social Studies of Science. (30), http://www.jstor.org/stable/285810 (accessed 24 August 2008).
[1] Katie Mondloch, (2002) ‘Reloading Cyberfeminism’ Afterimage. (30), http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=6&sid=d2d66dc0-26e9-4707-9632-422c1d678851%40SRCSM2&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f5h&AN=7035867 (accessed 24 August 2008), p.19.

[2] Mondloch, 2002, p.19.
[3] Mondloch, 2002, p.19.
[4] Donna Haraway, (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.’ Feminist Studies. (14), http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066 (accessed 24 August 2008), p. 575.
[5] Haraway, 1988, p.578.
[6] Haraway, 1988, p.579.
[7] Tudor Balinisteanu, (2007) ‘The Cyborg Goddess: Social Myths of Women as Goddesses of Technologized
Otherworlds.’ Feminist Studies. (33), http://content.epnet.com/ContentServer.asp?T=P& P=AN&
K=27452636& EbscoContent=dGJyMNXb4kSeqLU4v%2BvlOLCmrlCeprZSsq24SLaWxWXS&
ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGpsU22rbdOuePfgeyx%2BEu3q64A& D=aph (accessed 24 August 2008),
p.395.
[8] Balinisteanu, 2007.
[9] Balinisteanu, 2007.
[10] Balinisteanu, 2007.
[11] Balinisteanu, 2007.

Alice's Webliography

“From Frankenstein to the Visible Human Project, the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human.” Discuss Critically.

In seeking online resources to answer the guiding question, I endeavoured to find sources that explored readings of the body, using analyses of Catherine Waldby’s explanations of the Visible Human Project (VHP) and thoughts about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a starting point. Through my research I realised that the question was more complicated than it first appeared, as with recent technological and biomedical inventions, it can be difficult to conceive of where the body begins and ends. The figure of the cyborg, the merging of the human body with prostheses and parts from other bodies, and human identity mediated through CMC are all important to this topic. These issues highlight how although the body is constantly figured as the limit to what it means to be human, the body itself must be constantly reinterpreted, as lines between biological and technological blur.

The Visible Human Project
The VHP used two human cadavers to create a “virtual” male and female; arguably it uses ‘human’, and ‘human body’ to represent one in the same. Stuart Murray’s critical analysis of Catherine Waldby’s book on the project is useful here. Murray praises Waldby for questioning how new technologies potentially reconstruct what is human – as she reasons that the corpses have been recreated, “reanimated” and brought back to life virtually. Murray links the virtual bodies created by the project to Frankenstein’s man-like monster, arguing both are “caught between life and death.” Murray reasons that “bodily integrity” may be something that we consider so fundamental to being human that in merging the body with the “technological” and replacing the former by the latter, then the humanness is lost. Murray explores Waldby’s notion that the VHP is complicating the distinction between technology and the body. This is useful here because in problematising what is meant by the body, that which is often considered the limit of being human, is challenged.
Eugene Thacker traces the study of anatomy from the Enlightenment and asserts that for anatomists in this period, an understanding one’s self was achieved through knowledge of the body, which could be understood as part of a “universal, humanist, corporeal condition.” Thacker re-interprets the data set of the VHP as a “hyper-texted body” – using Alex Kroeker and Michael Weinstein’s theory of a combination of the living body and the “wired body of sci-fi.” Thacker also investigates other representations and re-productions of bodies on the internet, noting that we have departed from the sci-fi representation of the “transfixed hacker’s body” and can view the transmission of live bodies by video conferencing software. He argues that although these bodies may be constructed as “real,” they are reconfigured through the technology representing them. Thacker has some interesting ideas that are useful in a discussion of the body in relation to the VHP, but theorising on more recent developments in this area would also be helpful.

Cyborgs and Embodiment
In considering the body as the constantly reinstated limit to being human, particularly when related to Frankenstein, it is interesting to consider, as Slivia Vegetti Finzi does, what happens when there is a fusion of parts from one human body with that of another. Finzi explores how organ transplant complicates identity, and ponders why we would unquestioningly regard a transplant patient to be the same person as before, after receiving an organ, or even a hand, from someone else. Finzi references Donna Haraway’s cyborg; in her analysis of the cyborg she imagines a “chimera” that seems comparable to Frankenstein’s monster. She alludes to the threat of a cyborgian future, where separations between animals, humans, and machines become blurred, yet she does not fully explore these consequences. Although the body is reinstated as important to what it means to be human, the human body becomes less coherent as a cyborg, complicating a division between what it means to be human, and what is not human.
In her prologue, N. Katherine Hayle’s examines Alan Turing’s 1950 test, in which a subject must decode two computer mediated interactions and decide which respondent is human and which is a machine. Hayles argues that the human/machine test aimed to prove that machines could be designed to “think” like humans, which she called “the erasure of embodiment”. Her analysis of Hans Moravec’s more recent theory is useful in challenging a representation of the body as the limit to being human. Moravec proposed that being human could be understood as “an informational pattern” as opposed to “an embodied enaction,” essentially opening up the notion of human thought being downloaded to and undertaken within a computer. Moravec’s argument is that essentially what is human could be something apart from the body: “that machines can, for all practical purposes, become human beings.” Hayles prologue is invaluable for the way the ideas about embodiment explored in Turing and Moravec’s theories. More of Hayles own ideas and critiques of the theorists would have been helpful to include in the prologue.

Biomedicine
Biomedical breakthroughs can challenge the interpretation of the body as the limit of what it is to be human as seen in an article from Nature. This article discusses the development of “neuroprostheses” which are able to read thought commands and translate them into actions by robotic arms and computer cursors, potentially for use by paralysed people. Although the source lacks depth, it is interesting for its discussion of the technology. The attempt to differentiate between “science fiction” and science in the “real world” is also worth noting, as the editorial suggests that they are separate, rather than interacting with and informing each other as other writers would suggest. The notion of a machine, fused to the brain and body, that is able to read and interpret thoughts, challenges notions of bodily integrity, and potentially extends the limit of what it is to be human to the cyborg-esque “bionic man.”

Through my analysis of the above sources, I would conclude that although what it means to be human may be constantly reinterpreted as limited by the body, the meaning of the body is contested as we fuse with technology and essentially become cyborgs. The potential for humans to exist outside of the body is examined through the fantasies of some theorists, including Moravec as Hayles explores, but at the moment, it is the cyborgian body, the merging of biology and technology, that is largely figured as the limit to what it means to be human.

Bibliography

Finzi, Silvia Vegetti. “The Body Machine and Feminine Subjectivity,” Psychomedia 10-11
(2000). http://www.psychomedia.it/jep/number10-11/vegetti.htm (accessed 26/08/08).

Hayles, N. Katherine. “How We Became Posthuman, prologue,” The Univ. Chicago Press (1999). http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/321460.html (accessed 27/08/08).

Murray, Stuart J. “Catherine Waldby's The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine,” Reconstruction (2000). http://reconstruction.eserver.org/021/revVisibleHP.htm (accessed 25/08/08).

Nature Publishing Group, “Is this the bionic man?” Nature 442.7099 (July 2006). http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7099/full/442109a.html (accessed 24/08/08).

Thacker, Eugene. “.../visible_human.html/digital anatomy and the hyper-texted body,” ctheory (June 1998). http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=103 (accessed 26/08/08).

all new

hello tute group,
I was laughing to myself this morning when I realised am now a CYBORG!!!!!! Yes that's right. I ruptured ligaments in my ankle last week and now have to hobble around on crutches (very mechanical).
So, i have never seen a blog before this unit and i look forward to being comfortable surrounded by technology.
Goodluck to everyone!
Serena