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.

Rise of the machines

We are living in a post-humanist age, the age of New Media. In this New Media era, Shaw (2008, p.81) argues that “the concept of ‘human’ is unthinkable without technology but we act as if it is”. In this way, Stelarc talks about an obsolete body (Shaw, 2008, p.81), since the body can now be seen as invaded and determined by technology.

During the period of modernism, the idea of the human body was dependent on accepted differentiations, such as the ones between humans and machines and between humans and animals (Shaw, 2008, p.87). These distinctions also legitimized the racial, gender and class divisions. In this respect, Michel Foucault introduced discourse, which has the function to make distinctions between what we recognize as normal or deviant. He sees the male white body as the normal, unmarked body, while all the other bodies are seen as deviant.  Moreover, discourse is reflected in media. Media institutions are disciplining and classifying our bodies and are also disseminating dominant norms, since we are constantly “plugged in to the technology” (Shaw, 2008, p. 86).

However, in our high-tech culture, the body has become obsolete since these binary distinctions are increasingly fading. Especially the opposition between the physical and non-physical is disappearing because of the use of smartphones and tablets. Haraway (1991, p.153) argues that “Modern machines are quintessentially microelectronic devices: they are everywhere and they are invisible”.  Therefore, it is uncertain who the producer or the product is in the relationship between human and machine.

Consequently, The body is now regarded as an unformed and nonstratified ‘Body without Organs’. Moreover, the body is being shaped as a cyborg, a fusion of human and machine, since it increasingly resembles the machines that determine our self-understanding. “We may have ‘made’ these machines but now, in a very real sense, they make us” (Shaw, 2008, p.88). Through the use of technology, we can create our own identity and replace our human shortcomings. We do not need to be a man or a woman, on the internet we are all equal.

Bibliography

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

Haraway, D. (1991) "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.