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COMS 465:Computer Mediated Communication
Plan
Posthumans & Cyborgs
Artificial Intelligence
Preview
Review
Posthumans & Cyborg Amber Case – We are All Cyborgs Now (Ted Talk)
D. Gunkel – Resistance is Futile (reading)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7KFfbjg3Iw
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Best of Both Worlds (1990)
Review
Locutus of Borg is Correct• Life as we have known it is over.
• Resistance is futile; We are Cyborg
• And this is a good thing!
Review
Review Terminology
CyberneticsThe Science of control and communication in the
animal and the machine.
“We have decided to call the entire field of
control and communication theory, whether in
the machine or in the animal, by the name
Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek
Kybernetes or steersman.” (Norbert Wiener)
Cyborg = Cybernetic + Organism
Review Terminology
“From a cybernetics viewpoint, the boundaries
between humans and machines become almost
inconsequential. Self imposed human subject
boundaries are seen as being nothing more
than historical and philosophical dinosaurs that
arise from evolved human mental states. The
human and machine together become an
integrated system, a Cyborg, part human part
machine.” (Warrick, 2003, p. 131)
Review Terminology
Manfred Clynes & Nathan Kline“Cyborgs and Space” Astronautics 1962
Review Terminology
“Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the
requirements of extraterrestrial environments
would be more logical than providing an
earthly environment for him in space.”
“For the exogenously extended
organizational complex functioning as
an integrated homeostatic system...we
propose the term cyborg.”
Review
1) Literal/Technical Cyborgs“There are many actual cyborgs among us in
society. Anyone with an artificial organ, limb
or supplement (like a pacemaker), anyone
programmed to resist disease (immunized)
or drugged to think/behave/feel better
(psychopharmacology) is technically a cyborg.”
Gray et al, Cyborg Handbook
(New York: Routledge, 1995)
Review
N. Katherine Hayles,
“The Life Cycle of Cyborgs” (1995)
2) Metaphorical Cyborgs“A much higher percentage participate in
occupations that make them into metaphoric
cyborgs, including the computer keyboarder
joined in a cybernetic circuit with the screen,
the neurosurgeon guided by fiber optic
microscopy during an operation, and the teen
gameplayer in the local video game arcade.”
Review
Amber CaseCyborg Anthropologist
We are All Cyborgs NowTechnology is evolving us as we become a
screen-staring, button-clicking new version of
homo sapiens. We now rely on "external brains"
(cell phones & computers) to communicate,
remember, even live out secondary lives.
http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html
Review
Donna Haraway“A Cyborg Manifesto”
3) Ontological CyborgsThe Cyborg is the product of two crucial boundary
breakdowns that occur in the late 20th century:
• Breakdown of the boundary between animals
(or other organisms) and human beings
• Breakdown of the boundary dividing self-
controlled, self-governing machines and
organisms especially humans
#1 “By the late twentieth century in United States, scientific
culture, the boundaries between human and animal is
thoroughly breached. The last beachheads of uniqueness have
been polluted if not turned into amusement parks—language,
tool use, social behavior, mental events. Nothing really
convincingly settles the separation of human and animal”
#2 “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”
Review
Review Boundary Breakdown #1
Review Boundary Breakdown #2
DNA Common feature of human and animal life
CodeDNA is code; our bodies are information processing machines
Review
1) Dehumanization“From one perspective, a cyborg world is
about the final imposition of a grid of control
on the planet, about the final abstraction
embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged
in the name of defense.” (Donna Haraway)
Review
2) Transhumanism“Machines are not taking over. They are
helping us to be more human, helping us
to connect to each other.” (Amber Case)
Review
http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-declaration/
Review
3) Posthumanism“The posthuman does not really mean the end of
humanity. It signals instead the end of a certain
conception of the human, a conception that may
have applied, at best, to that fraction of humanity
who had the wealth, power, and leisure to
conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings
exercising their will through individual agency and
choice” (N. Katherine Hayles)
Review
Review
Review
Dehumanization Transhumanism(Negative Concept) (Positive Concept)
- +
Posthuman
Human
Today
Artificial IntelligenceSlavin - How Algorithms Shape Our World (video)
Gunkel - Mind the Gap
Preview
Robots- Darling - Ethical Issues in Human-Robot Interaction
- Gunkel - The Other Question
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