After speaking with Jen I decided to do my final assessment on authority, in particular how we sometimes feel that authority is compromised in digital spaces and what if anything we (should?) do to assert our authority.  I first noticed this theme in Hine’s account of digital ethnography:

Along with travel comes the notion of translation (Turner, 1980). It is not sufficient merely to travel, but necessary also
to come back, and to bring back an account. That account gains much of its authoritative effect with the contrast that it constructs between author and reader: the ethnographer has been where the reader cannot or did not go.

and is a feature in the later readings on critical perspectives and even – now I reflect back – in the very first dystopian weeks.

I won’t give away all my ideas in this post – just give you a visual introduction:

Our new pedagogies may be uncanny but it was with a sigh of relief I returned to the familiar realm of education.  The jaunt through cultural studies has been extremely interesting, but I was getting a little lost without a peg to hang it all on.  It was the readings for this block (especially Bayne and Usher) that made everything fit into place.

I understand the dislocation of online learning, and it is the strangeness that draws me.  I find it liberating – the lack of fixed rules that melt away with the disappearance of classroom walls and chalkboards.  I am interested how this uncanny nature disconcerts some and exhilarates others.  I have never been convinced the the native / immigrant divide that we explored way back in the days of IDEL – if it is that simple then why do I feel so at home in this virtual world, when I didn’t have an email address until my boss begged me to get one in 1997 (the same guy who took me shopping to buy my first computer in 2000 – I think he knew I would never get my Dip TESOL finished without one)?  As I was pondering these issues I kept coming back to Bayne’s paper on smooth and striated learning spaces, which we studied in the Course Design module.  Maybe a posthuman student (and indeed teacher) must be a little in love with chaos, and strange learning.  We have to get comfortable with alternate democratic sources of knowledge.  I remember when it was announced (on the internet of course) that Wikipedia was as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica – I have no idea if it was true and no intention of researching it’s veracity – other than googling it (here, see? 2005 – it must be EVEN more accurate now) but I got a thrill of smug vindication when I first read it.  Maybe this is what makes us cyborgs – becoming posthuman is a leap of faith, not technology.

Bayne, S. (2004). Smoothness and striation in digital learning spaces. E-learning 1(2): pp. 302-316.

Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education. [revised version uploaded 10 November 09]

Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1998). Lost and found: ‘cyberspace’ and the (dis)location of teaching, learning and research. SCUTREA 1998, Exeter.

I was getting quite frustrated with the readings on cyborgs and posthumans, not that they weren’t interesting, but they were so embedded in western ideas of self and being and what it is to human (and therefore cease to be human) that I was beginning to think that mandatory courses in Eastern philosophy might be a good idea for anyone wishing to put font to pixels.  Then at last week 9, I got to Hayles (2006) and at last, something I could identify with, the potential for our relationship with a computational universe to reveal to us a deeper truth:

What we make and what (we think) we are co-evolve together.

and

The cognisphere takes up where the cyborg left off. No longer bound in a binary with the goddess but rather emblem and instantiation of dynamic cognitive flows between human, animal and machine, the cognisphere, like the world itself, is not binary but multiple, not a split creature but a co-evolving and densely interconnected complex system.

From a Buddhist belief system (via wikipedia) we have:

Some consider that the concept of the unreality of “reality” is confusing. They posit that, in Buddhism, the perceived reality is considered illusory not in the sense that reality is a fantasy or unreal, but that our perceptions and preconditions mislead us to believe that we are separate from the elements that we are made of. Reality, in Buddhist thought, would be described as the manifestation of karma.

The Buddhist concept of dependant origination states that any phenomenon exists only because of the existence of other phenomena in an incredibly complex web of cause and effect covering time past, time present and time future. Stated in another way, everything depends on everything else. A human being’s existence in any given moment is dependent on the condition of everything else in the world at that moment, but in an equally significant way, the condition of everything in the world in that moment depends conversely on the character and condition of that human being. Everything in the Universe is interconnected through the web of cause and effect such that the whole and the parts are mutually interdependent. The character and condition of entities at any given time are intimately connected with the character and condition of all other entities that superficially may appear to be unconnected or unrelated.

Because all things are thus conditioned and transient, they have no real independent identity and thus do not truly exist, though to ordinary minds this appears to be the case. All phenomena are therefore fundamentally insubstantial and empty.

Is it possible that our relationship with technology and our understanding of a ‘computational universe’ might lead us to a more instinctive and essential understanding of reality? Quantum physics has already done this in the field of theoretical science, but maybe we will make the experiential connection through the ever decresing membrane of our interface with our computers and through them the world – the real world, that is… not the illusiory one we percieve with our senses.

To quote John Eccles (the neurophysiologist)

I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound – nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent.

What is left then, but energy, information and flow? Tat Tvam Asi.

Hayles, N.K. (2006). Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere. Theory Culture Society, 23/7-8.
Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1998). Lost and found: ‘cyberspace’ and the (dis)location of teaching, learning and research. SCUTREA 1998, Exeter.
.

I prefer the term posthuman to cyborg.  I think as the digital world we see today was emerging in the ’90s and early 00’s we misunderstood the effects of the relationship between ‘us’ and technology.  Much of this misunderstanding was idealistic and hopeful – Haraway anticipated we would be cleansed of gender and bias for example.  I enjoyed Muri’s interpretation – that we veered towards using technology as an imagined escape from the scatological and reproductive messiness of being human.

This encourages me to look for a more realistic relationship as seen through popular culture and blogs – while technology is not about to liberate us from the need to buy toilet paper anytime soon – we do seem on the brink of being liberated from the need to buy computers (phones and online storage are the way froward).  Our use of the net will change the way we think, and relate to the world – we will be connected 24/7, cloud computing and real-time searches will take the integration with technology further.  I think we will feel more cyborg as the human / digital interface becomes more transparent – as the gadgets we use to access information become smaller and less obviously intrusive (although ironically more literally intrusive – with implants and discrete accessories replacing the clunky laptop).

Once again Buddhist doctrine makes for an interesting parallel.  Once we come across something with our senses, we experience either fear and aversion or desire and craving (kleshas).  The readings so far have made me realise our approach to digital experience is no exception.  The potential of being successfully posthuman is for me, finding the middle way.

Aimee Mullins was the guest editor for Gizmodo’s current theme This Cyborg Life.  The weekly theme explored many areas, but stuck mainly with the focus on medical / physical prosthesis.  I found it while looking for cyborg related content and have been following their updates avidly for the last week.  What was interesting about Aimee is how she, using cutting edge prosthesis technology was able to turn a disability into a strength.  What was even more notable was how this divided her audience.  Looking into the back ground of her posts it seems that disabled athletes are acceptable in the context of the para-olympics but once they start to get good enough to beat conventionally bodied athletes then fur and feathers start to fly and claims are made that their ‘enhancements’ are giving them an ‘unfair’ advantage.

Aimee uses the example of Oscar Pistorius who is still fighting to be allowed into the main (not para) Olympic team in 2012.   I found it shocking that we are so determined to give diversely abled people the chance to live a ‘normal’ life but then when they take that chance and run with it (pun intended) we fight just as hard to force them to remain in their disabled pigeon hole.

It places our discussion into an interesting context, and suggests we are not quite ready to allow cyborg technology to liberate us from the shackles of massive identity issues such as race and gender when we can’t even let it free us of our more obvious bigotry.

Aimee however has hope for the future specifically with respect to how children build their identity through the internet and video games:

The generation of children growing up today has a distinct advantage in this realm of identity, thanks to their daily interaction with the internet and video games. It’s commonplace for them to create avatars and parallel representations of themselves, and they see their ability to change, transform, and augment those bodies to best suit their surroundings as beneficial.

That kind of fluid thinking was once solely the domain of those whose imaginations were heavily influenced by both technology and science fiction. Talk about seeing evolution speed up before your eyes. My being able to embrace the art in my artifice, to change my identities—how I perceive myself and how others respond to that perception — has profoundly changed the way I see the world and my opportunities in it. But I didn’t possess that ability at age six.

I keep thinking of how long it takes for most of us to go through the process of first accepting ourselves as we are, strengths and weaknesses, then celebrating that self and starting to have fun with your strengths and weaknesses, then transforming ourselves as architects of own our identities, redefining what our strengths and weaknesses actually are. I think kids today are able to do this faster than previous generations.

Here are some links to Aimee’s articles for Gizmodo:

Is choosing a prosthesis so different than picking a pair of glasses

Racing on Carbon Fiber Legs: How Abled Should We Be?

Normal Was Never Cool: Inception of Perception

This week was taken up with recovering from my ethnographic experience and viewing those of others.  Thus my lifestream got a bit neglected.  Pity the hard work of ploughing through Haraway doesn’t show up on it.  I have to admit  reading this text, ironically, made me regret for the first time not having face to face tutorials.  I could really do with help, the kind of intense help you get with a face to face discussion.  While I understand the overall message there is so much I just don’t get.  It is like a treasure chest of ideas that are meaningless to me.  So many of her statements left me crying “Why? What do you mean by that?”

Anyway, I will leave deeper ponderings to another post, in the meantime – check out your cyborg name:

Get Your Cyborg Name