9th Summary

20080514 & 20080516

Introduction to information technology
The Global school of Media – Class B (나)



media as extensions or prostheses

“All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical.”
“The wheel is an extension of the foot...
the book is an extension of the eye...
clothing, an extension of the skin...”
*six million dollar man / Aimee Mullins



ratio of the senses

McLuhan, in Understanding Media, claims that every new medium institutes new ratios between our senses.
McLuhan does not say that new media are replacements for older media.
Instead, McLuhan's idea is that the introduction of new media serve as "extensions" to ourselves and, simultaneously, they "amputate" various capacities of subjectivity.
compare this to the common and very different pronouncement that “media are converging” and the computer is the locus of convergence

“What I am saying is that media as extensions of our senses institute new ratios, not only among our private senses, but among themselves, when they interact among themselves. Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in the talkies. TV caused drastic changes in radio programming, and in the form of the thing or documentary novel. It is the poets and painters who react instantly to a new medium like radio or TV." from Marshall McLuhan Understanding media: the extensions of man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964)





★ media as mirrors versus media as prostheses

medium as mirror
we see “ourselves” in the medium
medium as prosthesis
we are radically altered by a medium





☆ a definition of media studies

media studies is the theory and practice of exploring how people and things are connected, reflected, extended, reconfigured, and separated by technologies and techniques
media as mirrors
media as machinations
media as prostheses

digital media studies is a kind of media studies that pays especial attention to the techniques and technologies of computers and computer networks




identity and cyborgs: identity and affinity
what is a cyborg?
a comparison of
democratic, liberal politics;
identity politics;
biopolitics; and,
cyborg politics
who is Donna Haraway?
a reading of the “cyborg manifesto”
identity and performance: identity and difference
RL (real life?)
identity tourism
passing




※ who/what is a cyborg?

do you wear a prosthesis? e.g., do you wear contact lenses or eyeglasses?
do you take any medications?
have you ever had an immunization?
do you depend upon any form of technology for transportation?
how would your life be affected if the power grid was shut off permanently?
do you ever eat food or drink water that has been processed?
in short, how intimately tied are you to technology?




※ biopolitics versus cyborg politics


★ who is Donna Haraway?
“My work has always been about what counts as nature.” Haraway, p. 51 of How Like a Leaf
Publications
Crystals, Fabrics and Fields
Primate Visions
Simians Cyborgs and Women
Modest_Witness
The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness


☆ the cyborg as organizing myth

“There is nothing about being “female” that naturally binds women.”
“No objects, spaces or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language.”
“The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, post-modern collective and personal self. This is the self feminists must code.”
Haraway, p. 519

My Opinion :)

This week, we talk about human.
This topic is very easy and very hard.

Actually, I’m a human. I know about me, well. (Better the other people)
But, I don’t know me exactly. Who I am? Where I am come from?
So, I’m afraid this topic. But I heard this lecture, I know human a little.

And We saw six million dollar man.
That movie is very interesting. I’m so surprised that movie.

Six million dollar man is a disability man.
In movie, He attached robot arm, leg… etc.

It (robot arm, leg… etc) is very interesting thing, But I don’t want to attached to me.

Next week, We talk about public & privacy.
Privacy is very important thing in www and our society.

I’m so expect next class too.
See you later~