simon.fiala@seznam.

cz

Shilling (2004) The Body in Culture, Technology & Society Chapter 8: Technological bodies
SAGE Publications Ltd (Dec 2004)

Notes:
Productive techniques and knowledge have moved inwards the body to invade, reconstruct and increasingly dominate the very contents of the body 173 o The meaning of what is to be and to have a body has been challenged o Illustrates how the body can be made immanent in relation to its environment Interrelated developments which have been significant for the emergence of techno-bodies o The cyberspace electronically mediated communications which allow people to interact without having to co-inhabit a place. o Invasion of technological enhancements and treatments into actual bodies plastic surgery, replaced organs, monitoring systems Cyber-technologies o Fleshy bodies becoming irrelevant, disembodied consciousness o Brings the possibility to overcome inhibitions of the fleshy bodies, but also threatens with reproduction of current social, cultural and economic inequalities Reconstruction and reconfiguration of the malleable bodily identities of subjects in line with societal norms o Clearly acquire meanings and narratives from their hegemonic creators and users, but also organize themselves around material artefacts, which ensure fixation of social relationships and peoples identities in place, and effectively structure human networks and the individual sense of self Challenge of the revolutionary nature of developments Winston o Strum and Latour: Technological artefacts enabled human societies ever since o We should be careful to attribute cyber-technologies with unique significance, they follow on a long history of using prosthetics to restoring bodily abilities Prosthetic memory, prosthetic identity o Basic bodily needs still may be the driver of technological innovation The body as a source of technology 176 o Marx and Engels: The body is the source of technology, but becomes objectified and shaped by the technologies o Simmel: The body is a source of its own transcendence It is not arbitrary or limitless: The scope and direction of innovations is informed by the aims of our practical conduct 177 Homology between peoples existing bodily capacities and projects planned and achieved by humans o Restore vs. enhance Runner legs made for competitive athletes IT hardware for disabled which enables to bypass the missing ability o Contemporary use of technologies resemble accommodation of the new abilities into the complex of bodily needs rather than transcending the bodies altogether 1

simon.fiala@seznam.cz Cybernetics a unified science of communications and control theory 180 Technologies widely used in the military, productive use of technology to efface the consequences on human bodies o Prosthetics to restore the missing function, not the missing limb o Alienation The work of hand replaced by the work of mind cerebral workers o Castels: We have entered a new informational mode of development, the main feature of which is the emergence of the informational processing as the core fundamental activity conditioning the effectiveness and productivity of all processes of production Technology and inequality o Digital divide accentuation of social inequalities o American English as the language of the internet o Informational division: the interacting and the interacted o Cyberspace widened the gap between Western and non-Western societies and within reinforced the relation of dominance and subordination 185 o Body have become an increasingly powerless location for the technological designs of informational elites 186 Aesthetics, identity and technological overload o Instead of empowerment to pursue individual ends, enhancements tend to build upon gendered reality o Overload thesis quantity and speed of information, disorientation, disconnection from reality, loss of control Research suggest that technologies such as the internet tend to complement rather than transform social relationships, and result not in revolution but in opportunities for certain kinds of innovations and social change. 187 The positioning of technologized bodies o Embodied subjects engage with the parameters, opportunities and constrains associated with technologies in ways which actively attach them to, or distance them from, societal structures 187 o Use of technology in attempting to alter the current constraints associated with particular forms of physical being and of the social milieu they live in 187 Physical substitution restorative attempts Organ transplants; amending effects of disabilities Physical extension / enhancement creating new capabilities Communal / political transformation In case of cyborgs, plastic surgery and genetic engineering, together with the growing number of ways machines can be harnessed to the flesh, seem sometimes to be leading to an ever-deepening incorporation of social norms and economic imperatives into bodies of those subject to them 194 Cyberspace the direction in which cultural and economic elites strive to extend their influence Refusal of technologies is problematic one has to become a cyborg to retain his/her presence in the world 195 2