The unnatural interface

Today's generation have developed and 'updated' alongside the computer screen interface. By learning the functions of the window interface from a young age, users integrate with the technology until the point where interaction becomes second nature. Debra Shaw notes this connection between the body and interface, "My computer and I constitute a cybernetic system"(Shaw, 2008,pg.90). How we automatically know when to click, scroll, drag, how to search and select the content we want though the interface design, " making the interfaces "transparent" and therefore more "natural""(Bolter, 2000,pg.32). Through constant "contact with the interface" the user "learns to read, just as she would read any hypertext", the language and shared knowledge that makes up the interface experience (Bolter, 2000,pg.33)

This however identifies that though we are automated within the technological interface, we are aware it is unnatural. The "obviously mediated" functionality of the interface, the buttons, the links, the irritating Microsoft animated paperclip clearly defines the computer window from the real world. The interface is constricted by the physicality of the technological medium it is contained in. Although this lack of "the real" only furthers our desires for "immediacy", as mediation "tries to reproduce the rich sensorium of human experience" (Bolter, 2000,pg.34). There is a constant negotiation of the "visual space as mediated and as "real", a conflict between the surface and the deeper cultural meaning (Bolter, 2000,pg.41). A real life example is that of as the Disney World theme park, where fictional media content clashes with physical reality.

As Huthtamo notes "hypermediacy can also provide an authentic experience", the audience may acknowledge the unnaturalness of the medium and yet it doesn't diminish the experience (Bolter, 2000,pg.42). This is illustrated in the rise of online worlds such as "WoW" (World Of Warcraft), although the game is obviously constructed through programming and is contained within the material screen of the medium. Users still recognise it as an authentic experience, some have argued that the line between reality and the game interface has been blurred by the users "point of view". Shaw notes how we try to escape "the meat", our body's through cyberspace but we can't yet escape the reality of the medium (Shaw, 2008,pg.86).

Bolter, J.D. (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press)

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

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. 

Super "Meat" Identity

Our cultural cyborgification has been written into our very DNA and has left a digitized finger print on all that we perceive to be apparent in our everyday lives. Societies "retreat from the flesh marks the dissolution of the body in a incurably informed world in which the 'meat' is constantly manipulated and thoroughly mediated" (Shaw, 2008, p86).  

With regard to the above statement, Shaw looked at the connotations surrounding the idea of the prefect solider and later on in the text he states the unacceptable of a woman's meaty exterior versus their "technological solution to [their] 'problem'" (ibid). He found that the "super" solider worked well inside a team and used a common term "well oiled machine" (Shaw, 2008, p82) to illustrate his point of the prefect human and its fundamentals towards a formation of prefect technologies. As well as the soldiers inside fundamentals towards technologies we have to look at their intended sexuality.


Shaw goes on to write about the imperfection of the woman and the capitalist need to use a technological stance to change their appearance through external environment. Without context we state the soldier to be a man not underlining the fact that they could be a woman and vice versa with the stance towards appearance through external environment.

When reading Shaw's text you find a underlining meaning through his readings, which highlights the stereotypical format of technology. Seen through the points above and the study of Pat Cadigan's cyberpunk story Synners (1991).  Shaw breaks down the human interaction between the four main characters which stated the difference of the weak and their empowerment through the technological and new media stance.

This now leads to "the notion that the media now allows us to all create out own complex, diverse and many faceted notions of personal identity" (Creeber, 2009, p18)


Shaw may look at the embodiment of the "circulatory system" but his underlining factor shows us that technology identifies changes in the world and produces what we understand as the ordinary.


Bibliography:
Shaw, D, (2008) Technoculture: The key Concepts (Oxford: Berg Press)
Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009) Case Study: Digital Aesthetics in ED. Creeber, G. & Royston, M. (2009) Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media; Maidstone, Open University Press.

A world without technology, could you manage?

Without today's technology's, as a society we would struggle to survive and evolve, we are dependent.  Stelarc notes the "idea of human evolution aided and determined by technology", such as within the last 100 years through technological advancements we have evolved more than the previous 1000 years (Shaw, 2008, pg.81). Although there is also an argument that "we may have 'made' these machines but now, in a very real sense, they make us" (Shaw, 2008, pg.88). Technologies which have allowed us to understand the human genome have changed our understanding of what it is to be human. Such as how we can sum up our attributes, our humanity into "Different combinations of 'code'", just as we understand computers through binary code (Shaw, 2008, pg.89).

Societal structures have also formed around the functionality of technology's , such as how Foucault identifies how "the solider is 'manipulated, shaped, trained' so that it 'obeys'", referring to how the functions of technology can be implanted into human behavior (Shaw, 2008, pg.82). This concept can be applied to how we are socialised into society, such as school children trained to move from class to class at the sound of a bell, to store required information, to obey, to become part of the "specialized machine"(Shaw, 2008, pg.82). We try and conform to the ideal, what society expects of us while also judging others who don't fit the mould, in order to "reconfirm what is 'I' by bringing close to us and then rejecting all that has been deemed 'Not-I'" (Shaw, 2008, pg.100).

Marxists argue further that "the worker's body is a commodity", labour to be bought and sold, body's that show "the marks of social status and social class"(Shaw, 2008, pg.83). That our physical appearance, class, gender and status can separate us from the "norm that is invisible and assumed", the perfect image projected by society (Shaw, 2008, pg.85). Our consumer culture permits us to consume products such as fake tan, make-up and fitness products to come closer to this ideal norm. A temporary means of achieving this goal is is that of the "bodiless exultation of cyberspace", leaving our flesh behind for a world where we can become unmarked (Shaw, 2008, pg.86). Explaining the popularity of social networks and online community's such as Pinterest, where we can create new identity's and be validated for technical skills which aren't as valued in real life.

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

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)