Eisengeiste: Just in Time for the Election

March 26, 2007

Dr. X posts this from that ammo shop on S. El Paso Street:

"You know what's making a lot of sense to me right now? Cyborg feminism."

JAB said...: An interesting essay, but I have to strongly disagree - the metaphor of the cyborg is no substitute for social justice, in world where people are oppressed by rape and machetes as much as culturally typed gender, ethnic and labor roles.

Techonology is yet another cypher where people paint their fantasies of ego liberation, hoping that it's allegedly inevitable advancement will yield freedom and power. Actual liberation is far more yeoman work, stopping the shooting, the mutilation, getting voices heard, cutting out massive, self-protective accumulations of political power.

Little about cyborgs helps this process, not as metaphor, not as actuality. The brief, powerful flash of medical benefits will likely turn rapidly into yet another new kind of eugenics.

And I have yet to hear a coherent description of any technologies which may transform our nature in any aspect that will genuinely enhance our experience of life, unless of course, we are changed into creatures which value only those transformations.

Genetic or technological, essential manipulations of human beings at any mass scale in our current cultural climate promise a future of people regarded by financial elites as different breeds of dogs.; March 27, 2007 at 11:51 AM
Latouche at Large said...: Dr. X posts this from Stanford University:

"Brings to mind the e.e. cummings bit about 'gadgets that murder, squawk, and add'..."; March 31, 2007 at 9:50 AM