According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite): "Most historians of video games also hail Spacewar!, coded by students working at MIT in 1961-62, as an important milestone in the development of video games. Spacewar was developed on the experimental PDP-1 operating system which allowed multiple users to share the computer simultaneously. Spacewar could be played as two-player game involving warring spaceships. However, none of these early programs were consider to be important or worthy of further comment at the time."
During a trial starting Wednesday, shoppers in London will be able to buy Underground tickets and newspapers with a wave of their mobile phone.
Hundreds of people have been given special handsets fitted with a built-in credit card and an Oyster card, the device used to pay for train and bus tickets in London. When the phone is passed over a scanner in stations or shops, money is deducted from the mobile phone as payment, the trial's organizers said.
People can spend up to 10 pounds at a time at selected shops and cafes, including cafe chain Coffee Republic, alcohol retailer Threshers, and book shop Books Etc.
Wireless transactions are common in some countries, such as Japan, where consumers already use mobile phones to pay for everything from burgers to train tickets. Organizers say that if the six-month London trial is a success, the scheme could be extended to include bigger payments, more shops, and concerts and plays.
Those taking part will receive 50 pounds (about $103) worth of Oyster journeys, 60 pounds off their O2 phone bill, and 200 pounds to spend with the in-built Barclaycard. The companies behind the trial include Transport for London, mobile-phone firm O2, Barclaycard, Visa Europe, and Nokia. (source: Reuters)
Generative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes.
According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite): "One of the most influential mathematicians working with numbers was Fibonacci, who described number series that have fascinated artists ever since. These so-called Fibonacci Numbers - (a series such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987) have influenced a whole range of artworks from sculpture to animation.
More recently artist and animators have found the mathematics of fractals and mandelbrot sets to be useful in describing organic structures such as the curve of a sea-shell.
A number of artists have explored the opportunities made available by computers running generative programs. They have used fractal and Fibonacci programs to generate artwork. These techniques are now available and are used by animators and website designers."
Generative Music
"As Michael Nyman notes:
"Experimental composers are by and large not concerned with prescribing a defined time-object whose materials, structuring and relationships are calculated and arranged in advance, but are more excited by the prospect of outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process of generating action (sounding or otherwise) , a field delineated by certain compositional rules." (Nyman 1999:4)".
Performance Art
"As I mentioned in an earlier lecture on cyborgs the artist Stelarc has explored the relationship between the body and machine in his work. In the Bio-Robotic Choreography work (2001) he developed an ‘insect-like robot” and explored human/machine interaction. As the project notes on the Arts and Humanities Data Service website notes:-
“The robot served as an extension to the human body, enabling the participant to experiment with alternative kinds of choreography. The robot's mode of locomotion, its direction and speed were controlled by the shifting of the human participant's weight or torso movement” (AHDS 2001)."
Stelarc (born Stelios Arcadiou on June 19, 1946 in Limassol, Cyprus to Greek Cypriot parents) is an Australian performance artist whose works focus heavily on futurism and extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centered around his concept that the human body is obsolete. Until 2007 he held the position of Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He has two daughters, one of whom (Astra Stelarc), has continued in his footsteps as an artist.(source: wikipedia.com)
Queen - Heaven For Everyone video clip feat. Stelarc
You can also visit Dr. Stewart's webpage "Betwixt and Between"and in the section "cybertext", you can find very good examples of generative art, using flash graphics. Furthermore, I searched for examples of generative art and I found some interesting video installations. So, I created a playlist on YouTube and if I find something else, I'll add it to the playlist. The playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BBC01E0E25ECCFF0
Hypertext. Does it change everything? Is it the end of books? Here are some cultural characterisations of books and computer-mediated texts (Stewart. 2006:57&74):
Cultural characterisations of books
* durable; * bounded; * fixed; and * finished.
Cultural characterisations of computer-mediated texts
"...hypertext fiction was building on a recent literary tradition in which there has been considerable interest in non-linear writing."
Is this post, and every other text, non-linear? Probably, yes. It, probably, is non-linear in space since the reader can be redirected to other pages and other texts through links,photos and videos. Even if someone does not think that the term "non-linear" can be used in this occasion, I believe that the computer-mediated reading experience is completely different than the real reading experience. A book has a structure, a beginning and an end. Hypertext has a more complicated structure (which can be edited and changed anytime) including digital "crossroads" (links, videos and photos). What about beginning and end?
Hypertext has a beginning but the end seems absent. The end isn't absent; it's not unique. In every hypertext we have the opportunity to define which part of the text is our ending, so we have many endings in one text. When reading a book, the end is defined by the last page and the back cover. Hypertext allows us to read selectively what we want and place our own full stop wherever we want.
Another question. I can find Dr. Stewart's notes at Blackboard Academic Suite as hypertext. From there I copy-paste some parts of the notes to my blog, using the opportunities that hypertext offers. If I print these notes in 4-5 pages, have I transformed hypertext into a simple "linear" text? Personally, I think yes. When I read Dr. Stewart's notes online, I have the opportunity to use the links, to watch videos related to the subject or read related articles. Therefore, my reading has not a specific structure. When I print the same notes, I cannot use the links so I am, just, reading 4-5 pages with a beginning and an end. If hypertext is printed, it loses some basic structural elements and, then, it gets a different form. What is a cybertext? According to Dr. Stewart's notes:
"a cybernetic system that generates a different sequence of signs every time the work is experienced" (Ryan 1999:16) However, It is important to recognize that cybertexts do not have to be computer-mediated, for as Espen J.Aarseth noted:
"A cybertext is a self-changing text, in which scriptons and traversal functions are controlled by an immanent cybernetic agent, either mechanical or human." (Aarseth 1994: 71) In his seminal work, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Aarseth recognised that the ancient Chinese text the 'I Ching' is an early example of a human-controlled cybertext. He also regarded tarot cards, runes and other divinational texts as early human-controlled cybertexts. Typologies of cybertext
The majority of Aarseth’s book deals with computer-mediated cybertexts. He provides a fascinating typology of examples, such as:
First of all, iPod Touch is great (i know that maybe in 2-3 months something else will be greater but that's the interesting thing with gadgets). I went to Apple's Regent Street store in London and I gave this thing a hard time! Very nice characteristics though the keyboard is a bit annoying (we can't have everything!).
Are we happy with the commercialized web? It depends. It depends on how we are using the web. For the consumer internet-user, the commercialization of the web is a positive development. For the regular internet-user the commercialization will have negative and annoying effects.
It's true that in the internet someone can find everything and at affordable prices. Sites like Amazon and Ebay give many choices to all the consumers. The advertisers are aware of the fact that internet is the best market up-to-date and that is why every time you visit a webpage you see annoying ads like these. As far as the future commercialization is concerned, I think that depends on the feedback that the internet will have on the advertisers. If internet is, still, going to be a wide market, then things are going to get worse for the common users who just want to use the internet. This future situation will, of course, satisfy buyers.
The only thing that matters is to decide in which side do you belong? Consumers or "surfers"? Using the internet as a market place is not a bad thought but everything must have its limitations. Otherwise there'll be a time in the near future when consumers will be fed up by the increase of quantity and the decrease of quality of the internet's products. Globalization helped to the spread of the internet commercialization but we must not forget the emerging phenomenon of localization which forces all the financial powers to adjust to a new era, when the e-commerce should be used wisely, with specific target audience and have a discrete presence. After all, everybody loves to e-buy, but nobody loves pop-ups and ad-ware.
News have a long history. In ancient Greece, there was the agora: a central gathering point where the wealthy men were going to hear the news. Of course, news, back then, had a different form than the one it has nowadays. News had to do with tales of warfare, trade and politics. Others great empires of the past, like the Ancient Rome, the Hun dynasty and the Incas had invested in roads, not only for facilitating trade, but also for speeding up the transmission of the news. A good example for the importance of the news, even in the ancient societies, is the greek Pheidippedes, who ran about 28 miles in a day, just to bring to Athens, the news of the greek victory at the battle of Marathon.
After the speeding up of the oral news, the written news came up. The concept of the "record" is, of course, extremely important, today, in the world of news. The idea of the "record" came up in 59 BC, in Ancient Rome with the "acta". "Acta" was a sheet in which the proceedings of the senate of the Ancient Rome were written. Julius Cesar asked these sheets to be pinned up in a public place, as well as, to be sent throughout the Roman Empire.
In the end of the 16th century, the newly introduced printed technology led to the print of news pamphlets in Western Europe. Gradually, news sheets were produced on a regular basis. The coffee houses, in London and Paris, helped in the spread of these new sheets. It took another few hundred years to get over the obstacles and produce a mass circulation daily newspaper. The Times appeared in the 1840s.
During 20th century, humanity experienced the "massification" of the Media. Inventions, like the telegram, camera, telephone, television and early computers, all contributed to the increase of the speed and the power of the dissemination of the news. Nevertheless,news gathering, during the 20th century was an expensive and complex procedure. That is why, the dissemination of the news was in the hands of a few (powerful enterprises, state). Telecommunications satellites increased the speed by which news was transferred from continent to continent, but it has been argued by Negroponte that the new media are bringing about the de-massification of the existing media. Nowadays, personalized news is a common phenomenon. Readers have the opportunity to receive emails, sms and other phone services containing, only, the news that are really interesting in (politics, sports, entertainment etc.). However, did this rapid development of the dissemination of the news help in receiving the "real story"? Can we trust the sources without being suspicious of propagandist information? Is it possible "creating" the news and, at the same time, being objective about it? Can we trust the journalists? The governments? Maybe we should not trust anyone?
Nowadays, media are owned by a few people or by governments. Journalism , until recently, was a profession without special training and specialization and that is why everyone with language skills could, easily, become a journalist. Sometimes, journalists were (or are), just, puppets in the game of propaganda and they were (or are, I repeat) under the control of the owner or the government. It is widely accepted that objective news media are like the Black Rhinos: they are out there, they exist but I have not seen them. So, the only person that we could trust, as far as news is concerned, is ourselves? Are we going to believe only what we see and be suspicious of the rest? Rejecting news because of the lack of trust in the news is like a broken pencil: pointless. This super-mediated era demands from the users/readers/consumers to create their own filters. The news should be filtered, according to the reader's/viewer's/listener's background, ideology etc. For instance, if someone lives in England and watches a BBC report about Gordon Brown, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, should not reject or accept immediately the information presented. By filtering the report, he should stay in the facts, rejecting the comments or the complicated info. Of course, the method that I suggest is a bit insulting towards the journalists, because it, totally, ignores their place, but since journalism has become such an "unstable" and , at the same time, "powerful" profession, I think it is not my fault. Cheers!
Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist and media ecologist exploring the impacts of new media on human interaction. He graduated summa cum laude from the Kansas State University Anthropology Program in 1997 and returned as a faculty member in 2004 after receiving his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Virginia. There he pursued research on social and cultural change in Melanesia, focusing on the introduction of print and print-based practices like mapping and census-taking in the Mountain Ok region of Papua New Guinea where he lived for a total of 18 months from 1999-2003. This work inspired Wesch to examine the impacts of new media more broadly, especially digital media. (Source: Kansas State University website)
His video "The Machine Is Us/ing Us" became the most popular video on YouTube with more than 3.000.000 viewers. The video has to do with the changes that web 2.0 has brought, brings or is about to bring in our lives. You can find the video at the right side of the page, at YouTube M&C Videos or here:
You can read a very interesting interview of Michael Wesch, talking about the ideas that led him to the creation of this video, here: http://battellemedia.com/archives/003386.php Furthermore, you can visit the webpage of Michael Wesch's digital ethnography working group, a team of cultural anthropology undergraduates, exploring the impacts of digital technology on human interaction and vice versa: http://mediatedcultures.net/ Recently, a new video was uploaded by Dr. Michael Wesch entitled "A Vision Of Students Today" that has to do with being a student in a digital era and society.
Since the famous video of Michael Wesch is about web 2.0, it would be good if we take a look at it:
WEB 2.0
What is web 2.0? There is not a definite answer but there are a lot of possible answers and definitions. Mr. Stewart writes:
"Building on this rather complicated meme map, Michael Platt offers the following five qualities as being defining characteristics of web 2.0
• Network and devices as a platform • Data consumption and remixing from all sources including user generated data • Continuous update • Rich and interactive UI • Architecture of participation (after Platt 2006)"
"Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the weorld wide web, is quoted in an interview with developerWorks in August 2006 as saying:-
“Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."
"Two other terms that have also gain wide currency amongst commentators in the last two years are APIs and mash-ups. According to ‘librarything’, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are “ways for one computer to talk to another, simple ways of getting and giving data without having to share programming code”. APIs are not a new thing in computer programming...This ‘openness’ means that developers outside of the corporate group can develop applications based on the web service. At first, this might appear to be a risky strategy as the third party developers can develop applications that compete with the company’s offerings...Open APIs also allow developers to combine data sets into new applications called a ‘mash-ups’. For example, it is possible to combine mapping data with photographic data drawn form two different databases. "
Are Bloggers ‘Citizen Journalists’? : Journalism and Web 2.0
"A recent article by Donnacha DeLong published in the National Union of Journalists has rekindled a long running debate about the relationship between bloggers and traditional news journalists. In this piece DeLong argues that problem with web2.0 and bloggers is that they are seen by some commentators as “replacing traditional media” . DeLong argues that this is a bad thing because “professional media provide users with something that we need to fight to retain – truly authoritative content”. However, those who “those who argue that Web 2.0 is the future want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
Should blogging be treated as a threat to traditional journalism? Nope. I don't think so. I believe that blogging should be treated as a research tool. Journalists could gather a large amount of possibly important information by communicating with the "citizen journalists". Nevertheless, since journalism faces its own decay, it's absolutely understandable why every writing effort by amateurs is considered a menace. Blogging means more opinions, more sources and, therefore, easier and more complete research for the professional journalists.
Is anybody going to be happy to get his/her news from a blogger or from a government website? Nope. We can't deny the amateur element of blogging. We, also, can't deny the non-subjective coverage of the news from a government source. Of course neither journalists are subjective and they, almost, always follow guidelines but if we have to live in a lie let's choose the most convenient one, right? To conclude, I would trust only professional journalists.
Web 3.0? We still don't know the definition of Web 2.0 and a new term came up. To tell you the truth I don't care even if there is the term Web 156.0. I think that, nowadays there is the tendency of creating a term and, then defining it. Ok, this is good for writing big essays and "interesting" articles but, personally, I find it boring. I don't like to find blogs or webpages that try to be fortune-tellers, predicting what Web 5.0 will be. I don't care how you name it, I care about the content. Creating terms without content, in my eyes, is provoking and naive. But that's just me.
In this post, the combination of the body, the mind and the computer is going to be analyzed. Terms like Arificial Life (ALife), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cyborgs are going to be discussed, according to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite):
Artificial Life: ALife
"In his book, Virtual Organisms Mark Ward describes research into the phenomena of Artificial Life (ALife). ALife is the study of systems related to life, “its processes and its evolution”. It is based on designing programs, simulations or robotic systems that are self-replicating and capable of maintaining ordered patterns over time. According to Stephen Levy:
"Artificial life, or a-life, is devoted to the creation and study of lifelike organisms and systems built by humans. The stuff of this life is non-organic matter, and its essence is information: computers are the kilns from which these new organisms emerge. Just as medical scientists have managed to tinker with life's mechanisms in vitro, the biologists and computer scientists of a-life hope to create life in silico" Levy.
Arguably, the most famous example, of ALife research is the computer game- Conway's Game of Life. This is not a computer game in the conventional sense, but is a simulation based on a chequer board on which a series of generations are projected according the rules lay out below.
Rules for Conway's Game of Life
* Any given cell on the checkerboard is either alive (on) or dead (off). * If a cell is alive, it will continue to be alive in the next iteration, or generation, if and only if it has either two or three neighbours that are also alive. * If a cell is dead, it will continue to be dead in the next iteration, or generation, unless exactly three of its neighbours are alive, in which case it will be born.
Overtime completely random selections will mutate into a series of stable and self-replicating systems."
Inorganic Life
"Proponents of Alife research suggest that the informational properties of life are not unique to organic life forms, such as humans. It is argued, therefore, that life can be formed out of any material capable of maintaining an order. Interestingly, the idea of inorganic ‘life’ is not new...One of the most famous cautionary legends is Frankenstein's 'monster' which originated in a book by Mary Shelley. In this story dead flesh is brought back to life by Frankenstein's experiments. As the critic Maurice Hindle notes:
“As a cautionary tale warning of the dangers that can be cast into society by a presuming experimental science, Frankenstein is without equal” (Shelley 1985 pg 7)
This story, which pre-dates contemporary transplant surgical practice by nearly two hundred years, still acts as a warning to researchers and society. One of the significant aspects of Shelley's story is the way the monster is treated by human beings. This intelligent thinking entity is utterly rejected as an abomination and driven by this rejection to terrible acts. The monster also struggles without success to understand the nature of its being. The story ends with the destruction of both the monster and its creator." Artificial Intelligence:AI
"Another strand of the vitalist argument has centred on the uniqueness of the human ability to reason and make intelligent decisions (the Latin designation of our species Homo sapiens literally means ‘knowing man’). However, in the foreword to The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain Robert Pepperall argues that:
“the development of an artificially conscious entity may happen within our lifetimes” (Pepperall 2003:iii)
One of the holy grails of computing is to make an intelligent machine that could successfully complete a Turing test (by convincing a human that it was an another intelligent human). This research area goes under the name of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Unlike a conventional program that uses pre-set algorithms (worked out by their programmers) to solve problems, AI programs are designed to learn (these programs sometimes make use of interconnected neural nets). Over time, these programs develop ‘models’ of their worlds and they exhibit behaviour that their programmers can’t predict. Sometimes they have quite uncanny capabilities. For example, in the 1990s an IBM computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Gary Kasparov at a game of chess.
Enthusiasts for AI computing, such as Ray Kurtweil (see website below), claim that AI computers will soon be as smart as human beings. Kurtweil also claims that computers might make a suitable environment for human intelligence. In his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines; How we will live, work and think in the new age of intelligent machines he sketches out a future in which organic human beings upload their minds to superior AI computers in order to enjoy better lives.
One of the challenges facing designers of AI systems is the notion of consciousness. This sense of self-awareness is thought by many philosophers to be the cornerstone of any definition of intelligence. A true Turing machine would have to know of its own existence as an entity and have a sense of self. See the Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose (1989)."
DNA: The Digitisation of Organic Life
"Let's return to Richard Wise's key observation about digitisation:
"The key concept and technology behind multimedia has been digitisation: the conversion of images and sound to numbers, making them amenable to manipulation by a computer." (Richard Wise pg 2)
To what extent is organic life amenable to manipulation though the messages encoded in the genome?
The first stage of this ‘digitisation’ was implemented with the Human Genome Project. This massive scientific undertaking sequenced the whole human genome (all the DNA in the human cell) so that it is now possible to ‘read’ the code that makes up human life (as well as number of other species). With other developments in molecular biology (such as the cloning of Dolly the sheep by scientist at the Roslin Institute) this situation might rapidly develop into full-blown manipulation (read and write).
Are we happy to manipulated like a digital text?
It is already possible to select the characteristics of a baby, such sex, before it is conceived. In the future it might be possible to dial-up a child from coded sequences or alter our own genetic code. This will raise all sorts of moral issues about who should have the power to make these kinds of decisions. A recent Guardian article reports that the scientist Craig Ventner has constructed a chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and “is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth”.
This is a controversial area. The manipulation of life has already caused concern amongst the general public. In particular, there have been protests at the release of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) into the wild. Cell stem research using human embryos has also given great cause for public concern. Both experiments have been branded as Frankenstein's monsters by pressure groups. They see such practices as being 'unnatural'; whatever that might mean."
Robotics: The Body's Return?
"In 1979 The Robotics Institute of America defined a robot as:
"A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks".
The industrial robotic arm, used to spray cars, is the classic implementation of this idea. The arm, using a series of motors and sensors can carry out repetitive actions that would be tiring and dangerous for a human being to do. These commonly deployed machines, however, are just the beginnings. Workers in their area are trying to produce 'artificial creatures' that display many of the functions of life such as spontaneity, autonomy and self-regulation. So far the results have been rather mixed.
Early robot designers at MIT based their work on AI and programmed their robots to make cognitive maps of their locations, so that they could 'understand' their environments. These robots turned out to be very slow, and unable to deal with changes. More recent work by researchers such as Rodney Brookes devised much simpler robots that do not have centralsed cognitive elements in their programs. Instead Brookes modelled their systems on insects, with a series of simple routines built one of tope of another. These robots have been amazingly successful at producing life-like results. Brookes argues that it is important that his robots have the following features; situatedness and embodiment.
"A situated creature or robot is one that is embedded in the world, and which does not deal with abstract descriptions, but through its sensors with the here and now of the world, which directly influences the behaviour of the creature.
An embodied creature or robot is one that has a physical body and experiences the world, at least in part, directly through the influence of the world on that body. A more specialised type of embodiment occurs when the full extent of the creature is contained within that body." (Brookes 2002 pg 51)
The implication of Brookes' work is that intelligence requires a body. The body also gives, the entity purpose and potentials. Brookes and many others argue that the future of AI and robotics lies with a fusion between man and machines?"
The Cyborg Ancestry; 'Cybernetic Organism'
"The world's first cyborg was a white lab rat, part of an experimental program at New York's Rockland State Hospital in the late 1950s. The rat had implanted in its body a tiny osmotic pump that injected precisely controlled doses of chemicals, altering various of its physiological parameters. It was part animal, part machine.
The Rockland rat is one of the stars of a paper called "Cyborgs and Space," written by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in 1960. This engineer/psychiatrist double act invented the term cyborg (short for "cybernetic organism") to describe the vision of an "augmented man," better adapted than ordinary humans to the rigors of space travel. Clynes and Kline imagined a future astronaut whose heart would be controlled by injections of amphetamines and whose lungs would be replaced by a nuclear-powered "inverse fuel cell. The contemporary realisation of the cyborg is somewhat different. Human beings have been fitted with devices such as heart pace makers and insulin pumps. However, these devices are not under the immediate control of their human host and largely work on a chemical basis though, cochlea implants, that help treat certain types of deafness do interact directly with the human nervous system, converting sound to electronic machine signals and then to nerve signals.
A more integrated vision of man and machine has been realised by a Kevin Warwick in an experiment conducted over the Summer 2002. Warwick, who is a professor of cybernetics at University of Reading, had an electrical implant surgically placed into the median nerve of his wrist. With this implant he was able to communicate using his nervous system, for example, in one demonstration he drove a motorised wheel chair without using a joystick. In another experiment, Warwick connected his wrist implant up to the Internet, and he was able operate a robotic arm in Reading. This experiment raises the notion of a 'distributed' cyborg body.
I, Cyborg: Resistance is futile
The Borg Collective from the TV series Star Trek is a powerful fictional warning, in this case about the dangers of the cyborg and the hive mind. This alien species are imagined to have lost any respect for individuality and they seek to assimilate everything else into their collective. They communicate using a system a little bit like the Internet and have no concept of privacy or free-will.
Not all visions of the cyborg are apocalyptic. Donna Haraway, for example, sees the independence between organic life and technology as being a long-term and on-going phenomena. In a Wired interview she noted
"Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections - and it matters which ones get made and unmade."(Kunzru)"
I, personally, do not have any comment or thought about these matters because they have enormous importance and they play (or will play) a very important role in our lives. So I am not for or against something because this field seems extremely large, sensitive and complicated to me. Nevertheless, I recommend you read Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (previous post) and watch "The Matrix" for a wider look at the subject. Cheers!
"Donna Haraway (born September 6, 1944 in Denver, Colorado) is currently a professor and chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. Cyborg theory was created by Donna Haraway in order to criticise traditional notions of feminism -- particularly its strong emphasis on identity, rather than affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg in order to construct a postmodern feminism that moves beyond dualisms and moves beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics." (source: wikipedia.com)
Full Text of "A Cyborg Manifesto" During my undergraduate studies in the department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Athens, I translated, as a part of an assignment, the full text of "Cyborg Manifesto" to greek.This is the .doc file: Greek Version of "A Cyborg Manifesto"
