Question: ‘Why should our bodies end at the skin?’ asks Donna Haraway. Discuss the idea of skin in relation to how we might imagine our future embodiment.
Bodies, Embodiment and Ubiquitous Computing
“Technologies weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” This can be exemplified through addictive technologies such as mobile phones and Internet accounts like Facebook and Twitter. Facebook addicts access their accounts multiple times every few hours, where logging on becomes an involuntary task. When one has a Facebook account, they select parts of their identity that they want to displayed on their home page. This Facebook individual could be very different to their identity in reality. Does this mean that we now have multiple identities? One in the virtual world and one in reality? We have to ask ourselves, “where does the body end and the technological environment begin?”
Shick and Malmborg refer to Deleuse’s concept of the fold in this journal article, where technology is described as folding around the body, and the body unfolding out into the world. Human skin is no longer separated from the technological environment, but has expanded into, where it is no longer possible to think about our bodies as autonomous. It is clear that the relations between humans and technology are creating a shared embodiment.
Cultures of Embodied Experience: Technology, Religion and Body Pedagogic
Hediegger suggests that, the body is always “stretching beyond its own skin, actively directed towards and interwoven with the world.” The problem, is that if our future embodiment consists of our technological selves and our actual selves, and technology becomes increasingly more advanced and more addictive over time, then we will eventually all become cyborgs.
This article suggests that because modern technologies are so invasive, they could have consequences for the embodied individual in the future. As technology becomes increasingly advanced, we will continue to be controlled by it. If we look back along the timeline of technological developments, it becomes apparent that as mobiles and computers have become more advanced over time, they have become much more popular and addictive. People cannot leave their iPhones alone; these objects are practically attached to the skin of users. It becomes apparent that overtime technological advances will continue to weaken “the boundaries between humans and machines to the extent that we are all cyborgs.”
E’scaping the Ageing Body? Computer Technologies and Embodiment in Later Life
In this article, experimental studies were conducted, in order to determine the technological changes experienced during peoples life course, that result in changes to their embodied competencies. Those surveyed are between fifty and one hundred years old, and claim that they have found it difficult to use modern technologies, particularly the computer when it was first invented. These participants believe that young peoples knowledge of computers is embedded instinctively, as today’s youth are brought up with modern technology at their fingertips. Although it takes the this age group longer to become competent with modern technologies, they believe embodiment can still exist when one eventually reaches a level of technological competency.
It is suggested that there is an absence of embodied competency amongst younger generations, where two people surveyed said “ it makes me fear and tremble for shop assistants who have to use the machine to work out the change.” The participants describe such simple calculations as being carried out in their head. This suggests that our mind could eventually become detached from our body, where we will need technology to perform tasks that our brain or body would normally perform.
“It is argued that the Internet may help compensate for physical difficulties which constrain other forms of interaction, enabling differential possibilities for embodiment.” This can be particularly exemplified through Facebook, where one can create an identity that they aspire to be, which is an identity very different to their actual self.
Bodies that Matter: Science Fiction, Technoculture, and the Gendered Body
“A growing number of theorists contend that the age of humanism is over and that we are morphing into a new posthumanist condition,” particularly through the eruption of the Internet and cyberspace. Modern technology has and will continue to blur the boundaries between humans and machines, resulting in this posthumantist condition in which our bodies don’t end at the skin, but have expanded into the technological environment surrounding us. This, along with the other research, suggests that technology has become a part of humans identities. One of the problems with this is that “new technologies offer new possibilities for self transformation and empowerment.” In the future, we are predicted to become too powerful, with technological, social and cultural powers that are unstoppable. The question of embodiment becomes further complicated at the machine interface, where there is the potential for virtual or multiple bodies, as well as disembodiment. If someone is a member of three online accounts, then technically they have four bodies, three in the virtual environment and one in reality.
Remediating Football for the Posthuman Future: Embodiment and Subjectivity in Sport Video Games
The human body can easily be manipulated by information and control. As playing video games requires little or no forethought, the gamer’s response can become habitual. “The gamer can place his or her body at some remove from the center of the experience,” where they ultimately risk losing their sense of embodied reality.
Butryn reminds us, “the twenty-first century self is no longer characterised by a singular identity, but an assortment of politicized and fractured cyborg selves.”
Becoming an avatar in the game scenario allows the gamer to become a character that is very different to their actual being, where they get the opportunity to construct their identity from scratch. Becoming an avatar invites the user to adopt a posthuman subject position, where a shared embodiment exists between the gamer and the avatar identity.
Scientists involved in designing technologies such as computer and video games “consistently use a rhetoric that first takes human behavior as the inspiration for machine design, and then, in a reverse feed- back loop, reinterprets human behavior in light of machines.” This ultimately suggests that the machine has power over the individual, as technology, more specifically video and computer games, or the video game have the ability to interpret and control human behavior.
Bibliography
E. Buse, Christina. “E’scaping the Ageing Body? Computer Technologies and Embodiment in Later Life,” , 2010, accesses 06/09/10.
Mitchell, Kaye, “Bodies that Matter: Science Fiction, Technoculture, and the Gendered Body” , 2006, accessed 06/09/10.
Plymire, Darcy Cree, “Remediating Football for the Posthuman Future: Embodiment and Subjectivity in Sport Video Games” http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&hid=10&sid=46094f1d-c2ac-4c3f-8d55-265fb70de170%40sessionmgr14 >, March 2009, accessed 07/09/10.
Schick, Lea and Malmborg, Lone. “Bodies, Embodiment and Ubiquitous Computing” http://www.informaworld.com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/smpp/section?content=a922546010&fulltext=713240928>, 2010, accessed 06/09/10.
Shilling, Chris and Mellor, A. Philip. “Cultures of Embodied Experience: Technology, Religion and Body Pedagogics” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/doi/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00721.x/full>, August 2007, accessed 07/09/10.
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