"The relationship between carbon man and the silicon devices he is creating [is like] the relation between the caterpillar and the iridescent winged creature that the caterpillar unconsciously prepares to become."
What this week's reading did for me was really illustrate how natural technology is for man. In the Hayles "The Materiality of Informatics" piece, I found it telling that society operates in a highly mechanical fashion. In speaking specifically about the mention of Panopticon and Foucault's discussion of it, in relation to the concept of embodiment, society conditions the body in such a way that it simultaneously conditions the mind as well. This is a concept that theorist Robert Shusterman speaks about in an essay called, "Somaesthetics and the Body/Media Issue," in which he claims that, "as embodied creatures, we can act only through the body; hence our power of volition - the ability to act as we will to act - depends on somantic efficacy" (p.16).
The practice of society conditioning the body, in order to operate in a very specific fashion made the concerns mentioned earl in the Materiality reading about the body "disappearing" into technology both highly logical and illogical. When thinking about one of the readings from last week that discussed machines inability to be organic in operation, because they can only perform in terms of data and logic and also thinking about the concept of Panopticism, I see society and the societal individual as being mechanical and the individual being organic.
The societal "habitual memory sedimented in the body," that is discussed in the Materiality reading is wonderfully expressed in a breakdown of societal bodily discipline that I stumbled across when following up on the topic of Panopticism. The following is an excerpt from a Wikipedia entry on Foucault's ideas of Discipline and Punishment:
Discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today.
The individuality discipline constructs for the bodies it controls has four characteristics, namely it makes individuality which is:
· cellular - determining the spatial distribution of the bodies
· organic - ensuring that the activities required of the bodies are "natural" for them
· genetic - controlling the evolution over time of the activities of the bodies
· combinatory - allowing for the combination of the force of many bodies into a single massive force
This "single massive force" is the machinery of society. When Hayles speaks about gender as, "produced and maintained not only by gendered languages but also gendered bodies that serve to discipline and incorporate bodies into the complex significations and performances that constitute gender with a specific culture," these acts are essentially the data or gears moving things along in a very controlled and (limitedly) logical manner.
In understanding culture to be a well-maintained machine, I do not find the growing visibility of technology as a sign of the swallowing of humanity. The ways in which it is being used to organize people is very much so along the lines of the ways in which humanity has been already been organized through bodily and embodied conditioning.
It has been committed on in both one of the readings and one of the online sources that I came across that technology is serving like a modern day Panopticon, in that there is a prevailing sense of surveillance that comes along with technology, whether it be having your internet sites and chats monitored or mapping tools that offer surveillance of many public spaces. Also, taking a step back from Panopticism, there is also the flood of fitness, fertility and dating ads that further contribute to societal conditioning.
However, what technology offers and what is highly apparent in Rheingold readings like "Smart Mobs" or "Wireless Quilts" is that technology is becoming accessible enough that there is increasingly a more varied sense of norms being presented. Although not the most subtle example, the variation in online porn sites is really interesting in looking at widening the concept of normalcy. There is just about EVERY fetish out there that one could ever dream of and if it is not there, throw it into the pot by coming up with your own site, blog, or maybe peer-to-peer run communal site.
The reason I wanted to bring up porn is that in having read a little bit of work by Georges Bataille and Robert Shusterman, they stress that what are typically seen as taboo sexual desires harbored by people, are one of the few places where people maintain (even if they suppress it) a sense of the inner self that has not fully been renegotiated by society. Both Bataille and Shusterman read the body as a site of battle between society and self. Being able to express self, at the expense of the comfort of society, allows for one to begin the process of reclaiming one's own connection with trusting their own sense of embodied experience.
If this seems to far out, think simply of the example of the female orgasm mentioned in the reading. Because it was scientifically and psychologically analyzed and determined as being one very specific experience, many women began not to trust their own embodied experience. When trust in one's own experience is gone, then the self can easily be dictated by outside forces, such as society, whether it be to that being's benefit or detriment.
At the risk of sounding like a complete anarchist, I have to say that I completely understand the need for the societal machine, but I also see the need for a wider sense of the essence of humanity, which is something that I think can be achieved through the accessibility of technology.
However, as was brought up in the Rheingold piece "Wireless Quilts," I wonder if new technologies will be organized into the already dominant societal machine, before it has a chance to really change things around. As most know, there are already countries where access to specific sites are restricted and social network sites like YOUTUBE and FACEBOOK are continually adding new features that expand structured activities, while also limiting the free range of activities that was once available.
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