Techno Culture and Human Bodies

It has been suggested by Debra Shaw that humans have a correlation to machines, rather than two different entities. Using the of the body's circulatory system as an example Shaw compares it to working with medical tools to create our 'natural' understand of the human body. Shaw tells us about William Harvey building upon Galen's findings how the heart served its purpose. Shaw continues to say "produced by technology in the simple sense that Harvey had necessarily to use tools to examine the workings of the heart."(Shaw, 2008, p.82) This suggestion allows us to make correlations between machines and the human bodies being repaired and reassembled using tools. 

There is a fixation among individuals to create ideological embodiments of there perfect self using technologies which have only advanced because of our understand of the human body. The example used within Shaw's Technoculture is that of Bruce Springsteen and the modern geek. Bruce Springsteen used in the consumer society to relate towards those of the working class by doing so creating a body that was enhanced with technologies within a gym.

"He thus signifies the passage from the body of the industrial worker, marked by social class, to the body of the late capitalist consumer" (Shaw, 2008, p.85). 

 

Emphasizing Shaw's notion of Bruce Springsteen, the modern geek, as the machine driven body can be constructed to fit the ideological stance within their cyberspace. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the computer literate can create new identities, to enhance properties of themselves otherwise unknown outside of cyberspace. This allows a "construction of a wide variety of private worlds and, through them, for self-exploration". (Turkle, 1984, p.21). With the technology allowing us to use pseudonyms, and be annoymous within cyberspace, the reality creates convergence between collective intelligence and its participatory culture. Do we live as a machine or in a machine?

Bibliography

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

Turkle, S. (1984) The Second Life: Computers & The Human Spirit 

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture, where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press. 

Are we human or are we technology?

In today's society, people can't do without technology. The most popular device used by mass culture is mobile phones, using these devices give us quicker access of communication. As these are imbedded as an extension of the human body that we can't go anywhere without. However this new technology plays a higher role in new media. When William Harvey's unearthed the circulatory system it leads to the impression that using technology to discover the system helps to evolve technology on discovering how the body functions.

"the concept of 'human' is unthinkable without technology but we act as if it is." (Shaw, 2008, p.81)

Society revolves around these technology such as laptops, mobile phones, tablets which we are growing up with, there is not that many people in society that are not I.C.T literate. These concepts can be associated with Michel Foucault who identifies

"the soldier is 'manipulated, shaped, trained' so that it 'obeys, responds," (Shaw, 2008, p.82)

As people we understand what it means to be human whether we are male or female. This considerations comes across from a higher power in the context of how we function and our appearance as a gender. Fred Pfeil discusses Bruce Springsteen's projection, and the icons that follow.

"he moves activate a form of consciousness that refers to industrial technology... masculine identity in a time of insecurity and flux."(Shaw, 2008. p.84) here he is then marked from fitness to health and also items of clothing as consumers. As this is relating to what is the norm to a mass culture, as society buys into produces created to be marked to their insecurities

"In Foucault's term...is a 'marked' body."(Shaw, 2008, p.85)

Cyberspace is often a retreat from the realization of influences that are market towards consumers, giving the attentive of being what or whoever they choose to be situated as their own individual. Gibson refers to this as

"bodiless exultation of cyberspace"(Gibson,2008, p.86)

As a conclusion humans wouldn't be able to progress information fast, if it wasn't for technology, in addition to technology couldn't be as advances without humans pursuing to establish further.

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