Week 12 reflection

In the main, I thoroughly appreciated this learning space and its potentialities for interaction within and between our discrete and collective thoughts. Furthermore, the accessibility of discussions of the virtual world in which we live, are necessarily inclusive and engaging in their relevance. To this end however, there is an emotive and personal assurance we feel in our own views and comforts when discussing not only our online experiences, but infiltrating our ideas of the freedoms and limitations we expect from this virtual world. For better or for worse, we all came to the table with experience and opinions of this world. Also, for better or for worse, some of us are repulsed by the ideas of Haraway's "cyborg" and perhaps paranoiac of the perceivably ever-encroaching technologies. This has led to some dynamic and diverse experiences interacting in this space, and, in a very difference capacity, in the classroom. Suffice to say, we all approached a lot of dynamic discourses throughout the semester and grappled with the morality, laws and mechanisms of a very important modern domain.

In essence however, I cannot eschew certain deconstructive urges I feel towards our epistemic of the "cyborg", as founded in Haraway's oeuvre. Accordingly, if you consider debates of embodiment and virtuality, you're really retreading not only psychoanalytic discourses of the Real, Imaginary and Symbolic, but long-standing notions of phenomenology and consciousness theorising. Also, these 'transhuman' depictions have existed in folklore and mythology for thousands of years; that's not to say that theories rooted in a hermeneutic reframing are moot - if so, academia would be in trouble. Rather, I'm merely saying that we should proceed with conceptual clarity of what it is to be a "cyborg" and why we can't merely (or just more explicitly) theorise about consciousness, liberty, and pedagogy, within a less emotive paradigm. Also, we should likely proceed in a manner that acknowledges, cites and synthesises any influencing texts and theories, which I am not convinced has been the case within pockets of cyber-culture rhetoric. Progressivism is no doubt important, as is fostering new theories and modes of understanding, however these must be balanced against rational considerations that do not proclaim but investigate - and do not sensationalise notions solely because of their palatability and accessibility to the masses (which is how I would personally categorise the popular 'cyborg' theorising of the 1990s). Again, this is in no way demeaning of the importance the informational revolution that has happened in the virtual space, but just emphasises the need to proceed with caution and reason and understanding that while business isn't quite 'as per usual'... it really is.

Thank you everybody for a productive and interesting semester!

Andrew