At 09:56 AM 4/25/97 -0400, you wrote:
Hi Tanya,
>Interesting post, Melissa! I too am interested in cyborgs- presumnably you
>were looking at Donna Haraway's "Manifesto....."? She mentions a whole
Actually I was a bit unclear. I had been reading Dale Spender's new
book on Women & technology (construction of language and the impact of the
net) and Donna Haraway's essay. They complimented one another really well
-- oddly enough. And somehow I was able to tie Piercy's _He, She & It_ to
both of them -- through the subject of obliterating dualisms.
>opportunity- now I suspect it has narrowed somewhat. With cyber-rapes
>and cyberstalkings, and cyborgs in the movies simply reinforcing "natural"
>(uh!) sexual differences (Robocop and the Terminator being examples of
>supposedly sexless machines being definitely "hard" and masculine), it
>may be that this window of opportunity- that the dissolving of boundaries
>between human/machine and hence other binaries like male/female- has
>closed.I know Harraway shouldn't be treated too literally, as she was
Interesting comments. I'm in the middle of writing/piecing together
a short story about a very tech-grrrl. I'm keeping the stalking in mind,
and even brought it up. It's such a difficult thing for non-internet people
to grasp. I had this discussion after reading _(Learning About) Machine
Sex_ (my fave short story in the Norton anthology of sci-fiction ed. by Le
Guin) with my tutorial. Many were confused. They couldn't understand how
virtual stalking can become just as scary/dangerous as "real" stalking.
That is until most of them heard on the news about a fairly local case. A
family moved into a new home, and a person called "Sommy" was using their
telephone (with a voice disguiser) to listen in on other conversations (on
the phone and in the house). This Sommy person continued for several
months, turning off their heating and electricity. Lots of "experts" went
in to investigate, only to leave completely confused. Eventually the
family's son confessed to being Sommy. It left many people very aware of
the dangers of being "cyber-stalked". I am reminded also of another case
that I saw on the news before Xmas that took place in British Columbia. It
involved their voice mail. Through their voice mail the stalker located
their place of business, knew all their plans etc. They still haven't
solved that one -- to my knowledge anyway. Talking about such cases helps,
IMHO, people understand that they can't be naive when they log-on or use any
other kind of technology.
I think I am very optimistic. And believe that technology can still
obliterate most dualisms -- especially the male/female one. An interesting
paper, I think, would be to discuss how the internet eliminates/encourages
that particular dualism. (Summer project perhaps? <laugh>)
>not, alas, sexually revolutionary.Can anyone think of other female cyborgs
>in the movies?Do things pan out any better???
I can't seem to think of any. Why is that?
>PS the writer of The Terminal Experiment was Robert Sawyer- a Canadian- he
An interesting side note about this text... It was on our class
syllabus, yet we were not permitted to write on the novel during the final
exam. Again, I was left with the question WHY? The text fit well in many
of the questions he asked. <shrug> Something to think about ... Especially
I found the book to be very easy to read (bestseller-ish), and it was the
*only* new book (post-1980) on the reading list. I thought he would use the
text as an example of where sci-fi was heading. Anyway, that's a tad off
topic. My apologies. I wanted to bring that up since so many of your are
in academia, and to let you know that some students question *everything*
(choice of texts, questions etc.). :-)
Thanks for recommending more books (and to everyone who emailed me
privately! My cyborg reading list has tripled!!)
Take care,
Mellissa
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