The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 February 28, 1994 Volume 2 Issue 1 YEAMAN V2N1 CYBORGS ARE US Andrew R. J. Yeaman Yeaman & Associates ayeaman@cudnvr.denver.colorado.edu ABSTRACT Cyborg stories, although imaginary, can be informative. The transition from the machine to the cyborg corresponds to the movement from modern to postmodern society. Cyborgs reflect the reality of people and computers being blurred together. This article shows the aesthetics of criticism can bring about awareness of cyborg fictions as a cultural anaesthetic. Another purpose of this article is to use writing as a way of exploring the social reality of cyborgs. ALL MY TEACHERS WERE CYBORGS [1] Cyborg stories, although imaginary, can be informative. The transition from the machine to the cyborg corresponds to the movement from modern to postmodern society. Cyborgs reflect the reality of people and computers being blurred together. This electronic article shows the aesthetics of criticism can bring about awareness of cyborg fictions as a cultural anaesthetic. Another purpose of this article is to use writing as a way of exploring the social reality of cyborgs. [2] When I was a child all my teachers were cyborgs. Ability and character were not what they seemed. They were the result of hardware implants and softpsych programming but I did not learn about that till much later. Looking back from an augmented perspective, I can see that my teachers' personalities matched up with standardized profiles and that the components and softpsych were mostly repurposed stuff. By the time I was in eighth grade I could sometimes tell something was fitting incorrectly but I did not scan interactions then the way I do now. [3] Teachers who were cyborgized with military surplus parts, for instance, needed to be spoken to in just the right way or else they would fall apart. They also had to have everyone in line with no talking, had to have assignments in on time, and had to have everyone responsible for everyone else. They made speeches about increasing national pride because the country was under attack though no war had been declared. [4] There were other common types of cyborg teachers: * The commercial models droned on day after day about the need for investing in yourself, marketing yourself, and studying towards a good career that would pay off. I remember how they emphasized knowing the basics but, I realize as I look back, they did not explain why they knew certain facts and skills were the basics nor did they explain what the basics were not. It seemed the basics reached to infinity and we would turn 28 before we were allowed to graduate and fight with the oldies for McJobs. * The teachers with factory reconditioned units organized us into work groups or quality circles. We had to memorize the school district's organizational chart even though it meant nothing to us. They gave us just in time training by showing the class how to solve problems immediately before we took national standard tests. Grades were heavily based on punctuality, attendance, and participation. * Corporate retreads were similar in that they often talked about work. Learning was work and we produced a product. There were quality control measures. They did not like for us to work together. "Do your own work," they would say. We were preparing for a future of work. We were exhorted to learn all we could so we could compete successfully in the workplace. [5] The softpsych of all these cyborgs was nearly always downloaded at night. Most of the time the lessons were fine: just the usual sort of stuff everyone has to do in school. Once in a while cyborg teachers would start to ramble on about obscure topics, especially if the previous evening there had been a power outage. This also happened to a cyborg principal who lost control while giving a motivational lecture in a school assembly. I can still remember the phrase: "Much more can be expected from wetware" being repeated over and over. Some parents and guardians responded by threatening to jack their kids out of the matrix. [6] When I was older I understood that the cyborg teachers returned to college in the summer for system updates. At the time their comments about theory and practice were beyond my comprehension, but theory and practice seemed to be the cause of their anguish. It also accounts for why they usually tried new things in the fall semester. [7] Most of the cyborgization took place before teachers were allowed into a classroom. Student teaching was for fine tuning. Any defective teachers were supposed to be detected beforehand and sent to recycling. [8] One day our regular cyborg teacher left us in the charge of a new student teacher. Later, I heard that instead of a math coprocessor a random number generator had been installed. Things went smoothly for the first two days and then .... DO MOTHERBOARDS BAKE APPLE PIES? [9] All My Teachers Were Cyborgs is a familiar beginning to a typical story about the distinctions between people and machines becoming blurred. Named by science fiction writers, cyborgs have become a new species. Here is an example from Twenty Evocations (Sterling, 1992): When Nikolai Leng was a child, his teacher was a cybernetic system with a holographic interface. The holo took the form of a young Shaper woman. Its "personality" was an interactive composite expert system manufactured by Shaper psychotechs. Nikolai loved it. (p.154) [10] Cyborg stories provoke analysis and can be informative. Although imaginary, cyborg stories tell people about themselves. They tell more about the present and the past than the future. As part of popular culture this branch of science fiction reflects the reality of people and machines joining together. Earlier, in 18th century France, the laws of mechanics were first applied to human physiology, society, and consciousness (Huyssen, 1986). In consequence, "The determination of social life by metaphysical legitimations of power was replaced by the determination through the laws of nature. The age of modern technology and its legitimatory apparatus had begun." (p. 69). The analogy diffused widely and was reinforced by the experimental creation of many human automata for public exhibition. By 1818 Romantic speculations on the evolutionary theorizing of Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) brought about a popular extension of the ghost story in Frankenstein (Shelley, 1990, p. 9). The distancing of science and machines from traditional, patriarchal values continued to mirror the negative effects of industrial society. In a time when world war and workers' revolts were ordinary, Capek's 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) originated robots "from the Czech robota, meaning heavy labor" (Kussi, 1990, p.33). Similarly, Fritz Lang's early 1920s motion picture Metropolis, from the novel (von Harbou, 1963), revolves around the development of a robot designed to replace human workers (Huyssen, 1986, pp.68-69). The subsequent transition in science fiction from the robot to the cyborg corresponds to the movement from modern to postmodern society. In a world where machines express desire (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983) and intention is attributed to systems (Gardner, 1985) there is little solidarity for the cyberpunk (Hafner & Markoff, 1991; Leary, 1991) and the interface cowboy earns money for replacement body parts while taking pleasure in cybersleaze (Gibson, 1984). [11] The history of television science fiction programs catalogs the extent of technological media's service in cultural mythmaking about technology and progress ( Banks & Tankel, 1990). In an examination of Star Trek, and its spin offs, Banks & Tankel's alternate readings demonstrate that the physical sciences of the future are valued over behavioral and social sciences, which are shown to have not progressed. The commentary makes clear that television, as a technology, advocates a future where, "The scientific method continues to structure social inquiry to the exclusion of alternative interpretations of social interaction." (p. 34). [12] Haraway's cyborg manifesto investigates the feminist and socialist ironies of science fiction novels (1991). As much as definitions are problematic, here is Haraway's definition of a cyborg: A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. (p.149). [13] The cyborgs of science fiction represent the postmodern present. It is as if many hardwired meat puppets are unconscious of the programs that are running them. The surface differences between people, machines, and computers are deceptive. Unlike the tales of robots, androids, and cyborgs, real life issues cannot be settled by revealing that cyborgized postmoderns are truly people with gender, sexuality, reproductive capacity, and love. Technoscience appears to be degrading people of all classes into peripheral devices for computers and it is out of the ordinary for this electronic article's technological medium, computer delivered text, to be questioning science, technology, and itself. Therefore this article is intended to show that the aesthetics of criticism can bring about awareness of cyborg fictions as a cultural anaesthetic. Another purpose here is to explore the social reality of cyborgs through creative writing. Motherboards have more responsibility for baking apple pies than there seems at first glance. TECHNOLOGY, LANGUAGE, AND THOUGHT [14] Metaphors comparing people with computers reconstruct people as cyborgs. The widespread use of new objects and processes, such as computers and computing, means they will be added to the cultural symbol system. The symbol system then changes. Concomitantly, what people think and the way they think changes (Turkle, 1984). Marx noted in The Machine in the Garden that the meaning of industry had shifted from a personal activity to an impersonal method of production (1964, p.166). Postman observes in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology: "New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop." (1992, p.20). [15] This influence of technologies on language and ideas is apparent in everyday sayings (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, pp.27-28): * We're still trying to grind out the solution to this equation. * My mind just isn't operating today. * Boy, the wheels are turning now! * I'm a little rusty today. * We've been working on this problem all day and now we're running out of stream.. * He broke down. * He cracked up. [16] Whereas Lakoff and Johnson reported minds being thought of as hardware: "My mind just isn't operating today." (1980, p. 28), a change from modern mechanical imagery to postmodern electronic imagery can be observed in the use of idiomatic metaphors. Fifty years ago people said, "So and so has a cog missing" but today the following example does not seem out of the ordinary: "It was like going to the Addam's Family home. You'd go in there, and all of them have a computer chip missing." [17] Robots are used to represent physical bodies as machines but computers distinctly represent minds. The connection of both metaphors to cyborgization will be made clear by further considering the involvement of language and media in constraining thought and actions. Body and mind are literally enlarged by all forms of media: "Whereas mechanical forms extend the limbs and organs, electric technologies beginning with the telegraph extend the nervous system and the conscious and unconscious in one or another manner and degree." (McLuhan & McLuhan, 1988, p.117). These current technology idioms collected from colleagues have been sorted into three lists: [18] Mechanical metaphors * So and so turns me on. * So and so has become unhinged, maybe has a screw loose. * So and so is asleep at the wheel. * So and so lost control. * Let the air out of so and so's tires. * Gotta get myself cranked around. * I'm functioning in low gear today. * Maybe the problem is the loose nut behind the wheel. * We need a mechanism for dealing with that. * This office runs like a well-oiled machine. [19] Electromechanical metaphors * So and so knows how to push my buttons. * That cup of coffee has got me wired. * Sorry, I just blew a fuse. * My circuits are jammed. * We got our wires crossed. * My mind is overloaded right now. [20] Computer metaphors * This project is important: We need to get someone online immediately. * Getting out of bed earlier for daylight savings time means I have to reprogram myself. * I have NOT lost my mind; it's backed up on disk. * The information in your databank needs updating. * Would you repeat that? My mind was looping. * Just a moment; I have to reboot. * I'm so tired; I've got to crash. * There's a bug in your logic. * Get with the program! * Don't worry, you're in the computer! [21] Postman's formulation is accurate: Images of technology in daily language are ubiquitous and influential (1992). The chronological progression of mechanical, electromechanical, and computer technologies corresponds not only to the words people use but also to what they do and how they think. Cyborg culture is the reciprocal product of technology, language and thought. THREE CASES OF CYBORGIZATION [22] This article continues with three case studies documenting real life instances of cyborg behavior and thinking. CASE ONE [23] The first example of cyborgization is provided by the student teacher who insisted to me, the professor, that "forth grade" was spelled correctly: "I ran my lesson plan through the spelling checker in my word processor. It accepted 'forth grade' with no problem." [24] Weekly assignments showed that the student was a poor speller who relied heavily on a spell checker when writing. However, spell checking was not improving the student's spelling. The student did not want to learn to spell correctly and was satisfied that delegating the proofreading task to the machine was enough. The student disclaimed responsibility for any misspellings when turning in lesson plans. It became clear when we talked that the student did not understand homophones, that different words can sound the same and be spelled in their own way, as in forth and fourth. [25] It is important to ask if such a codependent relationship between people and computers is wise. The result in this case was a real class of fourth graders being taught by a student teacher who could not spell the name of the class' grade level and whose error was reinforced by a computer. When a person, like the student teacher described here, gives self control over to a computer and accepts the default options without question, that person has become a cyborg. CASE TWO [26] I went to a university library and asked at the reference desk for help. I had heard in a casual conversation that computers and electronic mail played a part in uncovering the Watergate scandal. I wanted to find out more. The librarian looked away, typed into a terminal, grunted, pressed a few more keys, and then said, "Ah-hah, this must be what you want." Next, the screen was turned towards me so I could read it for myself. In glowing green letters there was an abstract of a news item about Ross Perot. It became clear that Perot was in the computer business and Richard Nixon was also present at the event. The meaning of my original question had been forgotten after the librarian had reduced it to two search terms: Nixon and computers. [27] I gently protested this was not what I was seeking. The cyborg librarian saved face by saying I had been given a demonstration of how to do an electronic search. The librarian led me over to a bank of CD-ROMs where I wasted another 10 minutes with the Nixon and computers search strategy by myself. I did not learn anything more than I knew from looking up Watergate in the electronic encyclopedia, which I had done before going to the reference desk. I wondered if the librarian was reacting to computerization by deliberately behaving as if deskilled. [28] At this point I resorted to what experience had taught me would probably work. This technique is laborious and old fashioned but usually effective. I went to the stacks and tackled the shelves of Nixon books. The books about Watergate were easy to spot and I hunted in the index of each one for computers, electronic mail, and electronic data processing. After five minutes I had authoritative information about a computerized bibliographic database built to handle the overwhelming quantity of subpoenaed paper from the Nixon re-election archives (Dash, 1976, pp. 135-140, 223, 247). I crossed the library floor to the computers in society books and soon learned that witnesses' lies in the Watergate affair were uncovered due to accessing computer files (Burnham, 1983, pp. 41-42). Two reporters obtained credit card records that showed a person had been traveling. Another journalist obtained telephone bills that showed people had made calls. [29] Alexandrian techniques such as going through every book are seldom used today. This was confirmed more recently by another reference librarian's response that I would have to wait until the station for the MLA Bibliography CD-ROM was free. No mention was made about the index still being available in the library in printed volumes. Unfortunately the superficial answers of cyborg librarians to information requests are being accepted. CASE THREE [30] I remember fixing a misplaced comma after lunch one day, nearly 12 years ago. The job did not take long. I merely edited, then printed the page again, and left for the copy center seven minutes later. [31] While I stood in line at the copy center I realized that most of those minutes could have been saved by using correction fluid and a repro black office pen. Perhaps prior experiences with these more mechanical writing tools had been forgotten. I had become caught up in the computer process and had neglected my purpose. [32] As I waited for the copies to be made I jotted down these insights in my notebook: Word processing is no substitute for thinking. The new writing technology cannot be accepted without caution. Tools may shape thinking but thinking should first direct the shape of the tools and their manner of use. [33] The first three paragraphs of this tale about myself, the author of this essay, becoming cyborgized also came at a cost. Written several years back, they were dropped from later drafts of a paper. I spent 45 minutes going through 400K single sided Macintosh disks searching for the original essay with those paragraphs. Then I remembered that I had typed it with WordStar on my defunct Osborne computer and the easiest thing to do would be to find the print out in my files. I located the paper in the correct bankers' box in three minutes. Within another 10 minutes the text was retyped and smoothed by some revisions. However, I was feeling more humility than I expected when I first thought of reporting this case. ANALYSIS OF THE CASES [34] Each of the three cases shows that the habitual reliance on computers for making decisions is transforming people into cyborgs. In the first case, it appears that when educators call computers and computer education TECHNOLOGY, the power of these objects is increased to the level where they are to be accepted no matter what. In the second case, it appears that if the answer to an information need is not available via computer then it is regarded as not existing or not worth knowing. In the third case, it appears that the psychological and social effects of word processors, as writing tools, may be redefining how people think, when engaged in the task of writing, in ways that are not always helpful. In sum, three fallacies have been exposed that allow people to train themselves, or others, into becoming cyborgs. ANALYSIS OF FEELINGS [35] My feelings of unease started to surface when I chose to rewrite the first two case studies to match the first person point of view of the third. Drawing upon converging experiences, the observations selected as the three cases were meant to build a particular interpretation. The details are reported accurately and the assessment is a fair account of cyborgization. There is plenty of support here for thinking that computerizing causes cyborgs but, having brought in my subjectivity, I could not see why this should happen. [36] A feeling of oversimplification came over me. While not endorsing the myth of technological progress, I wondered that if ways of doing things change, then so what! I suspected I had substituted tidy descriptions for explanation. [37] I remembered first encountering a similar feeling when I taught Computer Science 101. That was in Maine ten years ago. Many students had thought before we met that I should be a straightforward computer evangelist. Most soon let go of that assumption. The puzzlement remaining in a few students came together with my own restless feelings. [38] I was influenced in my approach to computer education by Weizenbaum (1976). My continual insistence on contextualizing, questioning of social benefits, commentaries about inadvertent side effects and unfulfilled promises, identification of inefficiently designed hardware and software, critiques of ineffective instructional materials, and reminders that history showed that technological solutions often brought about new problems, were enabling most students to complete the class with skills and knowledge beyond the ability to blindly follow procedures. Nevertheless, I felt the same sort of intellectual dissatisfaction brought out by writing up the case studies: I feared I had neglected the need for a theoretical framework. [39] In Maine this changed when, in one of the texts I had chosen for the class, I found a particularly evocative passage. It was the tale of Tzu-Gung from The New Alchemists (Hanson, 1982, p.322). Tzu-Gung meets an old man who is watering a vegetable garden with a bucket. They talk and Tzu-Gung explains a vastly more efficient way of drawing water out of the well and into the irrigation ditch. However, he is rebuked by the old man who says he knows of the technique but people who use machines grow to depend on them and become like them. [40] When I went to teach my class I asked what this story was all about. I heard these opinions volunteered: * The old guy is resistant to technology. * The old guy does not want to learn anything new. * It's more difficult to learn when you're older. (That's not true.) * The old guy knows about this draw-well stuff already. * The old guy knows what he wants to do. * The old guy resents the young guy for meddling. * Tzu-Gung is from away. Maybe New Hampshire. (Laughter.) * Be that as it may, I would listen to Tzu-Gung's advice and try it out. * The old man is just a foolish old man, of course you can do things better with machines. * It says here the old man talks about his teacher and I guess the story means that religion and science and technology just don't mix. * Well, the book says: "There is no doubting it: machines are wonderful. Unlike the gardener along the river Han, most of us are unwilling to live without them, and for good reason." (Hanson, 1982, p. 322). [41] Then I shifted back to lecturing and introduced a theory of technological assessment. I presented Ihde's view of the non-neutrality of computer technology (1979, pp. 53-65). I chalked the jargon on the board: "amplification-reduction." I paraphrased, that technologies amplify some sorts of experiences and reduce other sorts of experiences. Usually so much attention is paid to a technology doing what is needed (amplification) that it is easy to neglect how other experiences are changed (reduction). Next, I gave examples. Ihde relates what it is like to try writing by dipping a pen into an inkwell after writing with a typewriter (p. 43 and p. 57). Ihde thinks the slowness of the old fashioned pen inclines the writing style towards longer, better thought out sentences whereas the speed of typing inclines the writing style towards shorter, clipped sentences. Similarly, Ihde analyzes how computerized registration on campus affects the roles of faculty, administration, and students, and influences power relations between them. [42] With the amplification-reduction framework in place I returned to the tale of Tzu-Gung. I asked what does mechanical irrigation amplify and what does it reduce? Insightful answers came from the students about larger crops at the price of more ditches to dig, more equipment to maintain, and the dangers of land erosion. Details were then provided about related innovations in the local agricultural community which had produced unforeseen consequences. Without prompting, the class began making connections to our previous weeks of study, demonstrations, and lab practice in the computer room. [43] The minority of students, the ones who saw me in the role of a fundamental believer in technology, were still uncertain. They said my judgment of Tzu-Gung's situation was required. This was not hard for me as the dose of theory had relieved my own headache. [44] I said that I probably did not exactly agree with anyone else's understanding but it seemed to me the old man is pretty much right, that technology inclines people towards acting and thinking in a particular way. There is irony here, too. From using a bucket, the old man lacks the self-awareness that he acts like a bucket, speaks like a bucket, and thinks like a bucket. Further, Tzu- Gung is the same way in having his thinking, behavior, and speech distorted by hydraulic engineering. He gushes out his sales pitch for new and improved technology, sees no alternative to the flow of its promised amplification, and fails to assess its reductive capacity for eroding the ground. [45] Over the terms I taught the class I gathered more examples. One I called the fallacy of functionalism. I outlined Rogers' list of factors affecting the success of technological innovation: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability (1983, pp. 15-16). There is an emphasis on action in Roger's model of diffusion but a disregard of understanding about outcomes, other than those benefiting the planners. [46] I would also share another instance of bucket- headedness, the condition where people imprudently allow their tools to take over their thinking and become cyborgian. For perspective, I asked the students to estimate the original date of this quotation, from Marvin Minsky an AI scientist, reported by Roszak (1986, p. 122): In from three to eight years, we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being. I mean a machine that will be able to read Shakespeare, grease a car, play office politics, tell a joke, have a fight. At that point, the machine will begin to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months after that, it will be at genius level, and a few months after that, its power will be incalculable. MY LOVE, MY COMPUTER [47] Remembering these emotions from teaching Computer Science 101 informed me about my reaction to the case studies and the subject of this text. Cyborgization goes beyond the habitual reliance on computers for making decisions. Social functions play a part, too, Their causal effects may be circular but they cannot be accepted as self-legitimating accounts. That is the obfuscation of metanarratives (Lyotard, 1984). Perhaps I have not gone Alternately, I might be as far as Berman in engaging with the texts observing an economic of my own writing and restructuring through thinking in a way that computerization as produces a 'common sense' of the narratological reading "the managerial and whereby human agents technological elite" deliberately cause the (1989, p. 29). effects I am studying. [48] In response, the title of this article was chosen to defuse a suggestion of intentionality. It comes from the last sentence of an exciting article on feminism which instructed me by saddening and aggravating me (Halberstam,1991): "Both Turing's apple and the female cyborg threaten our ability to differentiate between our natural selves and our machine selves; the images suggest that perhaps already cyborgs are us." ( p. 458). [49] I already knew a modest amount about Turing, the computer pioneer, including his suffering cyborgization from hormone injections judicially prescribed to destroy his homosexuality, but I had not known exactly how he died. I was saddenned by reading it was from eating a poisoned apple. At first I wondered if, having been pricked by a needle like Sleeping Beauty, he next mimicked Snow White: "Turing ended his life in 1954 by eating an apple dipped in cyanide." (Halberstam, 1991, p. 445). In the subsequent paragraph, I read this action "bizarrely prefigures the Apple computer logo" and I considered if this is why the Apple Computer apple is blue at the bottom? The spectrum of a rainbow is given as seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The Apple Computer apple is striped in six colors: green, yellow, orange, red, violet, and blue. Does cyanide make an apple blue? [50] Halberstam presents feminist arguments for equal access to computer time: "the Apple logo's byte no longer proves fatal." (1991, p. 458). Those aggravating liberal arguments will change nothing. Machinery and technical know-how are designed with patriarchal interests in mind: technological objects convey those values when they are used (Cockburn, 1988). The apple was poisoned in the design office, the board room, and the factory. Halberstam does not realize that most computer classes are to make people computer-friendly, that my teaching was not and is not typical, that most computer classes will not encounter any overt social theorizing, that most computer classes either fit students to the machines by teaching them to be docile in selecting commands from onscreen menus or fit students to the machines, as extensions, by teaching them to assemble algorithms for practice programs further conveying the hardware and software designers' ideologies. [51] I looked for a place of resistance where questioning the presence, the value, the amplifying and reducing results of computers and of cyborgization, still had a point. More than just bodies against machines, "Resistance that succeeds is a testament to the interpretive power of individuals to make sense of their lives. " (Wahl, 1993). In the background remained a warning that computers continue to isolate people as individuals and "their creation, forms, interpretations, and uses encode and reproduce sexist biases" (Damarin, 1993, p. 184). I thought about multiple needs: to wake up from the ideological programming and increase subjectivity yet remain connected. I remembered Damarin's platform for group identity: "The demand is for an education that demystifies mathematics, science, and technology." (1991, p.19). Like computerists who only see the good side of cyborgization, I had mystically focussed on the bad side. There is both amplification and reduction. there are no clear distinctions. We are inherently cyborgs. Acknowledging that assists in decoding cultural symbol systems, reasserting values, and determining direction. Beyond metaphor, we learn to live and operate in our cyborg culture. I reread Halberstam's concluding lines (1991, p. 458) and felt there may be hope through interpreting cyborgs as a new species: a resistant strain. PEOPLE AS COMPONENTS AND COMPONENTS AS PEOPLE [52] Cyborgs symbolize the fusion of artificial minds, and sometimes bodies, with human minds and bodies. People can be seen as machines from their repetitive movements made in eating, walking, washing, talking, and sex. Mumford conjectured the technology of ritual behavior was the precedent of the technology of language and the technology of thought (1966, pp.60-63). It may be that cyborgization is not only the combining of humans with machines and computers, but also that machines and computers were developed in the images of human conformity and mass culture. [53] The standardization of people as components may stem, in turn, from the standardization of components as if they were people. Religious worship, warfare, the daily labors of productive work, the repetition of sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, sleeping, and eating, each contribute to machine and computer functioning. The motions and rhythms of dance, music, speech-even these written lines-are the cultural and biological basis of mechanization, systematization, and computerization. [54] It appears that the goal of being technological is to make interaction and communication more alike. People interact with machines whereas people communicate with each other. Technology is not just artefacts. All technology is part of social technology and much of social technology deals with issues of social control. Technology is design "that reduces the uncertainty in the cause-effect relationships involved in achieving a desired outcome." (Rogers, 1983, p. 12). This modern faith in technoscience as a social technology is unintentionally producing cyborgs by two strategies: * Making hardware more like people. * Making people more like hardware. [55] Cyborgization should not be viewed only as negative, as a technology with solely reductive effects. As in the familiar process of automaticity, cyborgization can be a strength. It is extremely beneficial to be able to sound notes and sequences of phrases without effort as part of playing music; to be able to read any English text without consciously trying; and to be able to shape these letters and space these words as part of expressing an idea like this by writing in a notebook. Automaticity makes these things possible, although people are inconvenienced by tending to do something the old way despite the creation of a new routine. [56] This suggests that cyborgization is inevitable and, to a degree, is acceptable. Individuals and groups retain some ability to decide how to apply their cyborg capacities. Progressive examples of the subtleties of cyborgization are presented in these two lists. Each list ranges from harmless to potentially destructive: [57] PHYSICAL CYBORGIZATION 1. Wearing clothes and shoes. 2. Women putting permanent waves in their hair. 3. Men shaving beard hair off their faces everyday. 4. Using an automatic teller machine (ATM) for banking. 5. Mechanized transportation by cars and jet planes. 6. Eating diet food and drinking artificially sweetened drinks. 7. Addictions such as smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, and using drugs. 8. Unnecessary cosmetic surgery. 9. Carrying a gun. 10. Accepting the convenience of Depo Provera contraceptive injections despite advertisements indicating extreme health risks and compromises. See, for example, Upjohn Company (1994). (There is a link here to paragraphs 13 and 49.) [58] MENTAL CYBORGIZATION 1. Memorizing multiplication tables. 2. Reading People magazine every week to ease making small talk in social and business situations. 3. Consistently favoring one communication medium and preferring, for example, either speech or writing over the other. 4. Regularly reading a newspaper and habitually watching the same television programs. 5. Believing in authority whereby people in positions of power always mean well and are invariably correct in what they say and do. 6. Belief in thinking only in ways that produce functional, pragmatic, and expedient results. 7. Using computers as a social mirror for what it means to be human (Turkle, 1984). 8. Fusing the terminology of AI and cognitive psychology together (Minsky, 1986). 9. Reporting to a computer instead of a human supervisor (Zuboff, 1988). 10. Applying the telephone metaphor for communication from Shannon & Weaver (1949). [59] This last point is not obvious and requires a long explanatory note. Fortunately, it can serve double duty as readers may appreciate it as a preface to The Cyborg Dinner. [60] The introductory textbooks in educational technology stress the Shannon-Weaver model where it abstracts communication between people to the linear transmission of information (Yeaman, 1994). The model first appeared in Shannon & Weaver's book, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, which is about telecommunication apparatus (1949). [61] According to Shannon & Weaver there are five parts to a communication system (1949). These are the information source, the transmitter, the channel, the receiver and the destination. The illustrative figure shows a message originating at the box labeled INFORMATION SOURCE next to the left margin. An arrow connects to a second box, labeled TRANSMITTER. The SIGNAL is transmitted across the middle of the page by a long line running left to right. This line indicates the channel: RIt may be a pair of wires, a coaxial cable, a band of radio frequencies, a beam of light, etc.S (p. 5). The signal is received at the RECEIVER box. It is sent on by another arrow to the DESTINATION box, next to the right margin. Each pair of boxes is situated over the same word: MESSAGE. A fifth box, equal in size with the others, is in the middle of the page a half inch below the transmission line. This box is the NOISE SOURCE. Noise is anything that RperturbsS the signal after it has left the transmitter. This perturbation is shown by a vertical line rising from the noise box to a sixth box, much smaller than the others and located in the center of the page. The signal flows into this unnamed box from the left. Noise is added and the signal flows out on the right as the RECEIVED SIGNAL, although it has not yet arrived at the receiver. [62] Besides the common sense that people do communicate, although no one knows precisely how or what, the line of boxes linked by arrows flowing left to right builds a legend of neutrality. Not only are students and trainees transformed into components, but also the readers of educational technology textbooks-and their students-are transformed into components. All data are to be processed, without subtlety or deviation, until the right answer is found. By Haraway's definition: "a hybrid of machine and organism" (1991, p. 149), the social reality of mainstream educational technology creates cyborgs. Cyborgization is foundational to the modern practice, systems theorizing, and reductionist research of educational technology. THE CYBORG DINNER [63] I was eating at a conference with four colleagues. We were discussing our research on educational technology through semiotics and postmodernism. We spoke about power and the authority of the author. Then the conversation split into two dialogues, as often happens on informal occasions. I spoke about how the telephone model of communication, as a basic assumption underlying educational technology, was right-serving in giving power to the author and to authority. [64] After a few minutes, someone in the parallel conversation said something about the uses of power. It sounded related to what my conversation partner was talking about. I tried to listen but the other conversation was seemed difficult to follow. (Was there some noise?) I hoped the table would come back together as we were all planning chapters for the same book. Then one person clearly said that using the power book had been quite helpful in drafting a chapter outline. I picked up the cue. "Which one are you reading? Foucault's Power/Knowledge or Cherryholmes' Power and Criticism?" [65] It turned out that those on the other side of the table were talking about a portable computer. A CYBORG JOKE [66] Contemporary humor portrays acceptance of the new in terms of the old: Question: How do cyborgs have digital sex? Answer: They hold hands. CYBORG GRIEF [67] As I observed the struggle between my intellect and my emotions about cyborgization. I wrote journal entries to work out what I was feeling. Later, I organized those writings into the stages of grieving. DENIAL [68] There are clear distinctions apparent between people and tools, machines, and computers. The idea of cyborgs is a fiction without resemblance to anything that actually exists. Whether technologies function for better or worse, people are defined independently of technologies. Cyborg stories are mere science fiction entertainment. [69] The appearance of the Fitts list in 1951, and its revision as machines developed, maintains these distinctions-as quoted by Fuld (1993, p. 23): Humans appear to surpass present-day machines with respect to the following: 1. Ability to detect small amounts of visual or acoustic energy. 2. Ability to perceive patterns of light or sound. 3. Ability to improvise and use flexible procedures. 4. Ability to store very large amounts of information for long periods and to recall relevant facts at the appropriate time. 5. Ability to reason inductively. 6. Ability to exercise judgment. Present-day machines appear to surpass humans with respect to the following: 1. Ability to respond quickly to control signals, and to apply great force smoothly and precisely. 2. Ability to perform repetitive, routine tasks. 3. Ability to store information briefly and then to erase it completely. 4. Ability to reason deductively, including computational ability. 5. Ability to handle highly complex operations, i.e., to do many different things at once. ANGER [70] The sense of self is eroded by dependence on things. This dependence can be physical, mental, or economic, for example. It is disappointing to discover that artefacts are essential and that they cannot be discarded without great inconvenience. This anger is turned towards an object which functions awkwardly because of designers who did not bother to learn how it should be used. This anger is turned towards the people who sell the object with hyperbole, price it too high, and provide desultory follow up service. BARGAINING [71] Let us look on the bright side: this stuff is useful. The problem is really caused by the information overload. It is clear evidence of progress that I can operate appliances from across the room with a remote control. It has been years since I had to tune a television channel. GRIEF OR DEPRESSION [72] The computer has a virus or is broken in some way and I cannot do my work. My friend was arrested by mistake from having a supposedly unique identification (SUID) that was similar to someone else's SUID. The telephone may ring in the night from a person dialing a wrong number but I must leave it connected to catch my early morning call about the car pool. Who is in charge here; us or the machines? [73] Why is anyone certain that machines improve the quality of life for everyone? Where are the research findings to support that? There is no one type of technology that is better for people than another, except in obvious instances. Computers are supposed to work for people, not the other way around. ACCEPTANCE [74] It is true there is no grand plan of progress or technological deployment. The technology evangelists have no idea of where they are going or what they are doing. There are many unanticipated side effects and some of them are dangerously destructive to the global environment and to humane standards for human social conduct. [75] What can I do except try to point this out and lead my own life as sensibly as I can without losing perspective. As a cyborg I demand my right to a peaceful life. I refuse unnecessary X-rays in the dentist's office, do not smoke, drive defensively, and hope to die not in a hospital but with dignity. I ask for planning in organizational changes that includes everyone, reverse compatibility of new systems so that old knowledge and skills are not lost, and caution about dependence on computers. [76] Cyborg stories are true: technologies as metaphors both focus and limit social vision. The future is not dependent on biological evolution but on cultural evolution. For example, instead of testing a prototype with colleagues and clerical staff around the office it is known to be more effective to include the people who will use the product and involve them from the beginning in a collaboration (Greenbaum & Kyng, 1991). [77] It is still possible to shape what is to come; including ourselves. Technology, language, thought, and action are interwoven. Therefore, "The goal of science and the arts and education for the next generation must be to decipher not the genetic but the perceptual code." (McLuhan & McLuhan, 1988, p.239). CONCLUSION [78] From this field of differences, replete with the promises and terrors of cyborg embodiments and situated knowledges, there is no exit. Anthropologists of possible selves, we are technicians of realizable futures. Science is culture. (Haraway, 1991, p. 230) [79] More thoughtful decisions about computers and society are needed from the humanities point of view. That cyborgs come from science fiction does not preclude critical interrogation of that literary genre's social functioning. These themes can be explored by expository narratives or fictions or, like this electronic essay, by writing both. As "the disc jockeys of an advanced technocracy" (Spivak, 1985, p.28) readers should admit that the biological and cultural consequences of science and technology are vastly influential. Technoscience metaphors of language, technoscience models of thinking, and the technoscience subjectivity of virtualities drag readers towards a technoscientific instrumental rationality that deserves postmodern humanistic resistance. [80] CONCLUDING SUMMERY: A VIRTUAL IDYLL It is sunny And the sky is blue. A cooling breeze Flutters the gilded leaves of The last Tree of K n o w l e d g e. In the heat The industrious machines I d l e. But in the postmodern shade The cyborgs laze And quote Early cyborg poetry. REFERENCES Banks, J., & Tankel, J. D. (1990). Science as fiction: Technology in prime time television. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 7, 24-36. Berman, B. (1989). The computer metaphor: Bureaucratizing the mind. Science as Culture, 7, 7-42. Burnham, D. (1983). The rise of the computer state. New York: Random House. Cherryholmes, C. H. (1988). Power and criticism: Poststructural investigations in education. New York: Teachers College Press. Cockburn, C. (1988). Machinery of dominance: Women, men, and technical know-how. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Culler, J. (Ed.). (1988). On puns: The foundation of letters. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. Damarin, S. K. (1991). Women and information technology: Framing some issue for education. Feminist Teacher, 6 (2), 16-20. Damarin, S. K. (1993). Technologies of the individual: Women and subjectivity in the age of information. Research in Philosophy and Technology, 13, 193-198. Dash, S. (1976). Chief counsel: Inside the Ervin Committee-the inside story of Watergate. New York: Random House. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Fitts, P. M., Jr. (1951). Human engineering for an effective air navigation and traffic control system. Washington, DC: National Research Council. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings: 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books. Fuld, R. B. (January, 1993). The fiction of function allocation. Ergonomics in Design, 20-24. Gardner, H. (1985). The mind's new science: A lution. New York: Basic Books. Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books. Greenbaum, J., & Kyng, M. (Eds.). (1991). Design at work: Cooperative design of computer systems. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hafner, K., & Markoff, J. (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier. New York: Simon & Schuster. Halberstam, J. (1991). Automating gender: Postmodern feminism in the age of the intelligent machine. Feminist Studies, 17, 439-460. Hanson, D. (1982). The new alchemists: Silicon Valley and the micro-electronics revolution. New York: Avon Books. Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. Huyssen, A. (1986). After the great divide: Modernism, mass culture, postmodernism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Ihde, D. (1979). Technics and praxis. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company. [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Volume XXIV] Kussi, P. (Ed.) (1990). Toward the radical center: A Karel Capek reader. Highland Park, NJ: Catbird Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leary, T. (1991). The cyberpunk: The individual as reality pilot. In L. McCaffery (Ed.), Storming the reality studio: A casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern science fiction (pp. 245- 258). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lyotard, J. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1979) McLuhan, M., & McLuhan, E. (1988). Laws of media: The new science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Marx, L. (1964). The machine in the garden: Technology and the pastoral ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Minsky, M. (1986). The society of mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. Mumford, L. (1966). The myth of the machine: Technics and human development. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Knopf. Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press. Roszak, T. (1986). The cult of information: The folklore of computers and the true art of thinking. New York: Pantheon. Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Shelley, M. W. (1990). Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus. Philadelphia: Courage Books. (Original work published 1818.) Spivak, G. C. (1985). Reading the world: Literacy studies in the 1980s. In G. D. Atkins & M. L. Johnson (Eds.), Writing and reading differently: Deconstruction and the teaching of composition and literature, (pp. 27-37). Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Sterling, B. (1991). Twenty evocations. In L. McCaffery (Ed.), Storming the reality studio: A casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern science fiction (pp. 154- 161). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Turkle, S. (1984). The second self: Computers and the human spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster. Upjohn Company. (1994, January). Have you ever been away for the weekend and realized you forgot your birth control pills? [Advertisement]. Ladies Home Journal (pp. 68-70). von Harbou, T. (1963). Metropolis. New York: Ace Books. (Original work published circa 1920.) Wahl, W. (1993). Bodies and technologies: Dora, Neuromancer, and strategies of resistance. Postmodern Culture, 3 (2). Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. Yeaman, A. R. J. (1994, February). Deconstructing modern educational technology. Educational Technology, 15- 24. [Special issue on critical theory, cultural analysis and the ethics of educational technology as social responsibility. Edited by A.R.J. Yeaman.] Zuboff, S. (1988). In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power. New York: Basic Books. JAY LEMKE. City University of New York. BITNET: JLLBC@CUNYVM INTERNET: JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved via anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. If an article is re-published elsewhere it must include a statement that it was originally published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture. The EJVC Editors reserve the right to maintain permanent archival copies of all submissions and to provide print copies to appropriate indexing services for for indexing and microforming. _________________________________ _________________________________ _THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL ON VIRTUAL CULTURE_ ISSN 1068-5327 Ermel Stepp, Marshall University, Editor-in-Chief M034050@Marshall.wvnet.edu Diane (Di) Kovacs, Kent State University, Co-Editor DKOVACS@Kentvm.Kent.edu ____________________________ GOPHER Instructions ____________________________ GOPHER to gopher.cic.net 70 ____________________________ Anonymous FTP Instructions ____________________________ ftp byrd.mu.wvnet.edu login anonymous password: users' electronic address cd /pub/ejvc type EJVC.INDEX.FTP get filename (where filename = exact name of file in INDEX) quit LISTSERV Retrieval Instructions _______________________________ Send e-mail addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM (Bitnet) or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU Leave the subject line empty. The message must read: GET EJVCV2N1 CONTENTS Use this file to identify particular articles or sections then send e-mail to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU with the command: GET where is the name of the article or section (e.g., author name) and is the V#N# of that issue of EJVC