Between humans and machines
I have a lot of disputes with the authors' use of liberal semiotics in these two papers. In Cyborgology, the authors state that Western intellectual history can be seen as the overcoming of four artificial distinctions. They are:
1) between humans and the cosmos (overcome by Copernicus)
2) between humans and other life (overcome by Darwin)
3) between humans and the unconscious (overcome by Freud)
4) between humans and machines
In analyzing that list, I see one major discrepancy among the first three selections, isolating the final and fourth (which is a crux on which hangs the belief that "cyborgology is essential to mankind's intellectual process"). The first three selections are elements which mankind did not create. The fourth is something we created (although one could argue that the unconscious is a definition we created, but so are the definitions of other life and the cosmos rendering this point null).
Can you say "one of these things is not like the other?"
How can we "progress intellectually" by analyzing our relationship to something that was already the creation of our "intellectual progress." There's something about this which appears suspiciously cyclical to me.
posted by wayne.madsen at 6:08 PM
2 Comments:
Yeah, that's an interesting point. I can see progressing intellectually by going through the process of creation and development, but not necessarily through the "use" of reliance on something that man/woman has created. In the opposite, it seems like the more we develop, the less we really have to do (other than to develop further to help us do less!!)
8:18 AM
but how can we "develop" off of a platform that we created? as fallible as we are, i think we'd be heading in the wrong direction to progress against our own progress using our progress as a guide/measure.
9:57 AM
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