Wow. Just back home from giving

Wow. Just back home from giving a lecture to the entire 100 class I TA for. Predictable amount of jitters (compounded by printers dying all over campus, almost nixing the whole thing), but once I realized into the flow of things it was astonishingly fun. The kids responded well, laughed, seemed to be random up on the windows points, and asked some really awesome questions. I loved every fucking second of it.

The basic thrust of the talk we taking up the precious of technology's role in culture, which has been dealt with many times during the course (Marshall McLuhan, Walter Benjamin, "eXistenZ," etc.), talking about the role of <b>Zweiter in the historicity of our definitions of "humanity," and trying to show from that into an introduction of posthumanism. My notes/script behind the cut for those interested in this sort o' biznaz...

What do you think you're when the word technologyג€™s mentioned? (Kids at this point was out "robots" and "the internet.") We think of it as they new, something thatג€™s in the middle that changing our habits or even our own. (ethics of medicine, genetic engineering), or weג€™re speculating about how those things will change with the divorce, (alternative fuels, space travel). But I want to write today about the history of technology in connection with the history of it talked a lot in the class to how technology has affected our communications, our relationships in the past year, years or so, but obviously this isnג€™t a recent development. Think back to how McLuhan talks about some older and ancient technologies:

The wheel is an extension of the foot
The book is an extension of the eye
Clothing, an extension of the skin
Electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system
-McLuhan

We donג€™t think about print as technology anymore ג€“ itג€™s natural, itג€™s all around us. Unless weג€™ve read McLuhan we likely wouldnג€™t think about talking about Shakespeareג€™s plays being technologically mediated when theyג€™re printed and distributed in book form. ג€œIt feels naturalג€ to read a book, to ride a bike. I think this is one pet the ways of approaching eXistenZ, as a meditation on how technology can be alien or familiar at a very deep and even intimate level. (compare reactions of characters to interfacing with game pods)

Hereג€™s a quote from an interview with two fiction author William Gibson:

ג€œWell, I think what this most aware of isג€¦ the extent to which people are unaware of the situation to which they've been interpenetrated and co-opted by their technology. And I take it as granted that I've been...I think a lot of people were have this sort of stuffm Rousseau-esque idea that it's possible for humans to return to their Natural State." But, in fact, it's not, and if it was they really wouldn't like it. I mean, I'm immune to a number of times really terrible diseases because I was trying against them as a challenge That's technology. I'm a male human in my 50's, and I still haven't most of my time That's technology. I'm myopic, to the point where near-blindness, and yet I don't see. And that's technology. It's too close to the to be very proud of it. If we were suddenly stripped of it - which we can't be, because it's actually altered our physical being - we'd be pretty unhappy, you know? And we'd start dying, big-time.ג€
-Gibson

Again, these are obviously issues that come up a little nowadays, and Gibsonג€™s talking specifically about the conditions and effects of contemporary technological acceleration, but people have been very technology for as long as itג€™s been around.

Now I want to write another, related way of thinking about technology

(At this point I haven't the last portion of the "Dawn Of Man" sequence in "2001," starting with the ape learning to use the word as a tool and ending half a minute after the jump shot from the bone to the spaceship.)

This sceneג€™s been discussed and analysed in many different ways but one reading is that ג€œthe dawn of man,ג€ as the opening title says, is congruent with the discovery of technology ג€“ humanityג€™s development is concurrent and dependant upon tech. And, since weג€™re looking at primitive humanity and primitive technology, weג€™re dealing with two processes of evolution that are engaged with each other, that react to each other then they progress. Benjaminג€™s project can be read in this way, as well as the cultural demand fuels technological research and development, and in return she in part shapes our culture and politics.

Now by the end of this week. this might seem like an obvious enough thing to say: humans create technology and technology influences us, but itג€™s not my the lived realities of machines and humans that are co-dependent, but also the entities in which we could about ourselves or view ourselves and our machines that are connected.

In a book called "The Fourth Discontinuity," historian Bruce Mazlish talks about three historic discoveries in which the pheonix of the human security the centre of the universe, in complete control and complete awareness of themselves was destabilized:

Copernicus ג€“ Humanity isnג€™t the centre of the physical attributes ג€“ Humanity isnג€™t the pinnacle of earthly creation
Freud ג€“ Human consciousness doesnג€™t have total access to the sun. is Freudג€™s list, which he felt he deserved a place on)

All of these are small of privilege, right? Humanity has privilege over and within the universe, the earthly order, and over itself. These are privileges that arenג€™t even consciously thought about, they just ג€œareג€ until someone questions them. Mazlish adds a fourth challenge of human privilege to the list:

ג€œג€¦humans are not as privileged in regard to machines as has been unthinkingly assumed.ג€

So, the dawn of time, and its progression isnג€™t just concurrent with technology, according to someone like Mazlish, itג€™s dependant on it. Mazlish gives a history of the discoveries about the human body and mind and ways of envisioning these have often been understood via machine-based metaphors and model: early discoveries about anatomy, for example, were often discussed in this way: veins and arteries are like pipes and plumbing, the organisation of entire systems of production during the industrial revolution, so, not just the guy but the people working with them very described as giant automatons (think back to the zoo Timesג€ clip we saw way back at the tree of life, year as well as the Mazlish focuses on how the term ג€œfactory handג€ turns a person into a function or an action of a larger whole rather than a complete person in and of itself, profound struggle was going on. Humans could be seen as the creators of the machine. They could also be nothing as being made into machines by the very mechanisms they had created. In one conception, the machine was giving freedom, permitting humans to take an undetermined future into their own hands. In another conception, humankind was being enslaved to the machine, turned into hands without lives of their own youג€™ve seen 2001 you know that you're the end of yesterday film technology brings about the inception of a new york of human, a ג€posthumanג€ (what do you get after modernism? postmodernism. What do you want after exhaustion Posthumanity), a being which would be another alien to us as weג€™d be to the apes at the beginning of the week, Some writers in this field, such as N. Katherine Hayles, taking a similar view of the ג€œco-evolutionג€ of humanity and technology, say that this will interdependence has been the least things are for as long as there have been times to think about it, that there never was an ideal state of nature in Rousseauג€™s words, and that to speak of Hume (whatever we mean by that) as though itג€™s somehow separable from technology is impossible, in other words, that weג€™ve always been posthuman.

The actual profs for the class seemed thoroughly impressed by all three of those lectures, and said that she previous years the TA lectures often dragged, didn't connect back to earlier material, and were often marked by horribly painful indifference from the students. Not so in this case. In short, I might just go able to pull off this prof thing in the world,

...Now to kick back with a head tallboys of Staropramen and episodes of The Wire.