“The Virtual body is a body of great potential. On this body we can reinscribe ourselves using whatever coding system we desire. We can try on new body configurations. We can experiment with immortality by going places and doing things that would be impossible in the physical world. For the virtual body, nothing is fixed and everything is possible. Indeed, this is the reason why hackers wish to become disembodied consciousness flowing freely through cyberspace, willing the idea of their own bodies and environments.” Flesh Machine: Critical Art Ensemble 1998.
If you've not read the book Flesh Machine you can download it for free from the Critical Art Ensemble's website. It's definitely a must if you're interested in Cyborg/Posthuman theory (along with other issues such as Eugenics, Pancapitalisn, and the Net)
Whilst it is certainly fascinating to imagine a far future where Mankind may throw off the shackles of the physical body and all its diseases and limitations, do any of these theories take into account the potential loss of physical human contact and the "pleasures of the flesh" so to speak? The aim of these pioneering ideas ultimately, I think, is to attain a state of complete consciousness where the physical body may merely become an inert mechanism, simply plugged into a cyber-system that enables our minds to roam freely and control the world around us through mental interface with machines (The Matrix). These machines will then be controlled by us, their enhanced strength and capabilities enabling us to achieve all manner of tasks. But what about sex? What about the physical sensation of actually touching a loved one, of walking on a sandy beach, of feeling the sun on our faces? Will these sensations only be available to us synthetically. Will the sensation of touching another person's skin just become a sense-memory, delivered to our cortex in the form of off-the-shelf endorphins injected into our brains, merely giving us the impression of pleasurable physical contact?
ReplyDeleteNice post there Greaves. Unfortunately the transitions to becoming posthuman will involve the giving up of many things - yet perhaps the loss of physical sensations are not necessarily a part of this. It seems more likely that that we will augment our lives with the digital, rather than replace. Observe, if you will, the status of the Net and the endless sites offering live webcam feeds of remote tropical paradises (not to mention the fact that you can enter the the nest of an egg bound Chuff on the BBC Springwatch site at the click of a button) as artist Garnet Hertz would say “webcameras constitute an attempt to re-introduce a physical sense of actual sight into the disembodied digital self” The spectacle and awe of seeing a female Chuff give birth to its offspring live over the Net, as telepresent as it may be, still invokes physical emotions that would have been otherwise impossible in a world unplugged from the exchange of digital information.
ReplyDelete