Technobodies

According to Debra Shaw "the concept of 'human' is unthinkable without technology" (2008 pp.81). What she means by this, and what she sets out to explain, is that the whole concept and understanding of what it means to be 'human' could not have developed over the course of history without the use of technology. In addition to this she attempts to go further by arguing just how closely linked technology has been in understanding what is suggested by 'humanity', contending that "technology should not be considered an adjunct to the body or in opposition to it but as a determinant of its ontology" (ibid.)

To exemplify this assertion Shaw examines William Harvey's discovery of the circulatory system, and does well to exhibit that, not only is our understanding of the body "produced by technology in the simple sense that Harvey had necessarily to use tools to examine the workings of the heart" (2008 pp.82) but at the same how technology "produces the body because... increasingly complex and sophisticated technologies allow us to examine it in more detail" (ibid.). We can therefore argue that this example is effective in how it describes how our understanding the body is shaped by currently existing technology, and how the body in turn serves to evolve technological progression.

Bearing this in mind we can link this idea with Foucault's concept of the body as "an object of knowledge" (Shaw, 2008 pp.82) where bodies are likened to machines in that they are "crafted according to the dictates of certain requirements" (ibid).With this approach, it can be argued that these requirements represent the ideals and standards dictated in society to which we must conform. Added to this idea of the body as an object is the Marxist principle decreeing that "the worker's body is a commodity to be bought and whose value is determined by the fluctuations of the market" (Shaw, 2008 pp.83). This leads on to the rather bleak notion that the body having now become a tool, crafted in a certain way by set requirements, assuming its place in the overall machine of society to learn "the ritualised movements of factory production" (ibid.) and continuing the process.

Shaw, D (2008) Technoculture: The Key Concepts (Oxford: Berg Press)