Cyborg Theory Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

SUMMARY
The ubiquitous use of digital technology in all aspects of daily life has opened up unprecedented possibilities such as immediate access to information, (tele)presence at any place on the planet, multiplication and modification of identity, as well as rearticulation and reconstruction of embodiment. In cyberpunk literature, new media art practices, cyber theories, SF films and comic books, and scientific research, there is often a tendency to leave the mortal physical body, behind in order to upload the immortal mind into the vast realm of the digital where one can be whatever or whomever s/he wants. In relation to modern technology,
the biological body is often regarded as obsolete for not being “equipped” to cope with the exponential speed of technological development. Hence, it is not surprising that many studies ignore the problem of embodiment by focusing more on the issues of identity, consciousness and disembodiment in digital worlds. Therefore, this book will attempt to highlight those theories that focus on embodiment in technologically mediated environments, thus reintegrating the physical body into discussions of new media phenomena and the ways they affect social reality today. In this book I will start from the hypothesis that without the physical body there is no virtual or real. The aim is to underline the significance of physical body in biotechnological interfaces, and to discuss and analyze the
ways in which the role of body and embodiment changes in ubiquitous virtual environments, as well as to map the ways in which technology alters bodily functions thus affecting ontological survival of humans as biological species.
The issues of constructing identities and identification processes will be observed through an anti-essentialist theoretical framework and mapped through two different but mutually intertwined phases in the evolution of global networks – Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 platforms. While Web 1.0 platforms were based on textual representations and identity play allowing us to become everything we are not
and can never be in the physical reality, Web 2.0 platforms that are specific to social networking delegate identities of physical reality in the virtual domain. However, presumed “real” identities manifest themselves as constructs in a virtual environment since they are based on a selective representation of an idealized self. Through feedback loops, this phenomenon further highlights the question of not only the quality of interpersonal relationships and communication, but also the way that we perceive and define ourselves in the physical environment. Dispersion
of boundaries between real and virtual, private and public, entails a fundamental question that this book will attempt to answer: What does it mean to be human in today’s world of digitalization when the explosion of digital imagery and interactions into the physical environment has so profoundly affected social, cultural and political activities, interventions and subversions, turning both the distinction between “real” and “virtual” spaces and dualistic ways of defining the self into rather obsolete concepts. Is anything at all “virtual” in cyberspace, i.e. can cyberspace be defined as virtual at all when, for example, because of an activity such as posting on Facebook, one can lose a job or has to let corporations dictate and define what is and what is not appropriate in the one’s digitally constructed identity? Nevertheless, we are still comforted by the illusion that our screen as an interface separates the real and the virtual, functioning as the boundary or line marking the end of real and the beginning of virtual. Everything situated on the other side of the screen, like a distorted mirror, allows us to rationalize and simplify the existence of the boundary between what defines us in physical reality and what we are as constructs in online interactions. However, what happens when the screen, that black mirror, breaks into pieces, thus enabling the body as interface to become responsible for the other Self or the digital alter ego? In this regard, special attention will be given to the concept of abandoning the screen and turning to the emerging new interfaces that rearticulate the relation between corporeality and virtuality. Gestural interfaces as a new “mouse” or a new touch screen without a screen will, coupled up with holographic projections that have already found their way into the physical public spaces, open up a multitude of far-reaching questions of psychosomatic nature: If, for example, we are present/telepresent to one another via holograms animated via corporeal gestures, would it mean the differentiation of degree of corporeality in terms of valuation and hierarchy of embodiment? How will we be able to determine what is more valuable, more present and real – projection or materiality of the body? And finally, will there be any difference at all between gesturally manipulated projection and the real body that is already deeply caught in the process of cyborgization? In William Gibson’s words, the future is already here - it is just not very evenly distributed.