This week I made more time to comment on my classmates posts. My peers’ lifestreams brought me in new directions of thought around the themes for this block, and it good to remind myslef that I’m not alone, see post on cyborg feminism here.
Readings; Donna Haraway’s “A cyborg manifesto” -my understanding is that she speaks about the blurring and transgression of boundaries – as an opportunity. The cyborg stands on the verge of those boundaries, it is neither male or female, human or animal, it is not politically aligned, no insecurities, no prejudices. Despite the fact that the cyborg is the offspring of militarism and a masculinist culture (Haraway calls it a white capitalist patriarchy), they can help us find a world where there is no boundaries between minds and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism, – “the cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed”. (Haraway 2007).
Cyborg feminism comes with its own set of phrases. I’ve to add ‘partial connections’, informatics of domination’,‘actor network theory’, ‘encounter value’ and ‘the origin myth’ to my terminology table. I like the idea of the metaphor of partial connections. We have many loyalties and relationships and many arenas of power, but there is no pure state, we should get comfortable with being always partial and always multiple. I think this reflects true life and true networks. The cyborg is comfortable with partial identity and contradictory standpoints and can help us cooperate in a way that ”witches, engineers, elders, perverts, Christians mothers and Leninists” can hold together “long enough to disarm the state”. (Haraway 2007)
In Jonathan Sterne’s ‘Histiography of Cyberculture’ he points out that while visual design is very much at the center of cyberculture studies, the auditory dimension is almost always left out. I wrote about that in my post here. I wonder if we could apply binaural or 3D audio to a geography class to allow students to hear the natural sounds that would accompany pictures of the space being learnt about.
After attending the google hangouts tutorial on Wednesday I was told about the Chrome pocket extension and the RSS feeds. The pocket extension means that I don’t have to route all of my web browsing through Twitter which will add a little diversity to the blog.
To end the week three and the Cyber cultures block, I added my visual artefact here; another learning curve on a new audio visual tool but worth it.
Sterne J, The Historiography of Cyberculture in Silver, D., & Massanari, A. (Eds.). (2006). Critical cyberculture studies. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com Created from ed on 2020-01-13 02:09:03.
Haraway, Donna, (2007) “A cyborg manifesto” from Bell, David; Kennedy, Barbara M (eds), The cybercultures reader pp.34-65, London: Routledge
By contrast it is the propensity of modern day culture to view content and chat about it, via personal devices that are completely individualised, which can be physically isolating. The sheer volume of content viewed means less in depth thinking and pondering. Content depends on our demographic, our preferences, and our click history. Youtubers that are incredibly famous across the world are unknown by our friends within the same social circle. Individuals from any background can post something for free on Youtube, TikTok or a myriad of outlets and so there is a low barrier for entry to access our devices.