Saturday, October 17, 2009
mind-boggling blogging about the (cy)borg...
My dear co-blogger, I agree with your discomfort with the idea of a feminine cyborg identity, and I appreciate your futuristic vision and appeal for an identity which is not confined to the real life social demarcations of gender into male or female. However I see that as the ultimate goal for cyberspace, but my concern is that as of now the cyberspace is still very masculine in nature and form, therefore perhaps the next immediate step is to a feminization of this space, after which a complete de-gendering is possible. Your point about the virtual space extending and perhaps imitating the real space is well taken. I agree that progress only in the virtual space is not enough. Now if we were to look more closely, at this virtual space and the question of identity, the debate becomes more complex. Take an Orkut profile for instance, I can choose to be male or female or a bird. I can put any image that may not even be remotely associated with my real self. I can write in a language I do not understand etc. The phenomena of Orkut deaths still fascinates me, additionally can also continue to live in the virtual space even after having no existence in the real space. So, can technology especially the technology of the new media which offer us the possibility of being anonymous or of being in control of our identity/the constitutors of our identity. Can such a technology be looked at as a potential threat or does it have an advantage? Perhaps the simple answer is both. But are we so consciously aware of the negative and positive aspects of such a phenomenon, to use them to our benefit? Has the medium become so powerful that it has become the identity? What happens when the screen persona acquires more importance than the real-life persona? Looking at psychoanalytic literature on cyberspace and the “cyber-identity-games” according to them the cyberspace is not a non-space, ‘on the contrary it is an actualization of a potentiality of life, and in that sense it can the quality of the virtual, as that which is “becoming”. How does one become, someone that one is not? What one is not is perhaps what one can be in the virtual space. Is this a potential or a danger?
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A technology, whatever be the name, form, or domain it reigns supreme, is still only a tool. Like all tools that have been invented by man it becomes a threat or an advantage depending on the user and how it is used. Therefore it is more important, according to me, to weigh which is more - the advantages or the disadvantages (the potential threat / danger). One great threat, to my mind, is that one virtually (or really ;-)) knows nothing about the person whom one is interacting with and it is so easy to get deceived or get intellectually corrupted. Therein lies the danger, especially since this tool is available to everyone of all age groups and gender and from all strata of society (so long as they master the use of this technology). Filtering the good, the bad and the ugly is virtually (and really :-D)) impossible.
ReplyDeleteSo coming back to the gender of the cyborg identity - does it matter which gender of the 'virtual' cyberworld corrupted which gender of the 'real' terra firma? - for I am sure before long we will be debating this issue and trying to analyse statistically which gender corrupts which gender more. Will it then matter that the technology was a 'neuter' gender?
Regarding the screen persona acquiring more importance than the 'real life' persona - we have seen it happen already. The lead actors are to their fans far more real in their 'screen persona' than in their 'real life persona' and the fans actually adulate the character portrayed by them in their 'reel life' regardless of what kind of a person they are or who they are in their 'real life'. Therein lay the success of actor turned politicians like late Mr M.G.Ramachandran (Tamil Nadu) and late Mr N.T.Rama Rao (Telugu Desam) who went on to become the chief ministers of their respective states. Take 'superman' and 'spiderman' for example - there are children who believe that they are not only real but will also come to their aid if they are in trouble! So the chances of this happening are not just huge it is unavoidable and absolute.
Is technology inherently gendered, or is it ascribed gender by us - or rather femininness or maleness? Are we replicating our wished identities in the cyber world, or is it that the technology determining how en/gendered the space is?
ReplyDeleteI don't know but I do know that the cyber language, and interface that we use now has acquired its own syntax with which we decipher codes of gender.
But how do you choose your own identity if the codes are predecided, so in a sense you have a drop down menu for your choice.
Just thinking.