I am a cyborg
This was a blog I wrote earlier this summer (for my own personal blog) on Haraway's notion of the cyborg. I've read the article a couple of times...well and I just wanted to post what I have written here.
I spend huge amounts of time in front of my computer screen. No wonder I continue to engage in the battle of the bulge each passing week. And strangely enough, one wouldnt' think that a cyborg would have a weight problem--that belies our true human orgins. The purpose of this essay is to merely claim that I am a cyborg; my fractured online identities (and there are many) increasingly become more fragmented and difficult to reformulate into one coherent self.
I suppose if I were to browse the interpersonal communication literature, an IPC scholar would tell me that I am merely engaging in scripting. using different scripts for different situations. But my ever increasingly fragmenjted online world creates scripts that I too frequently have difficulty keeping up with...remembering...and refolding into my own memory. Such difficulty here in RL (read that as Real Life) in reformulating my fractured self again reflects my own humanity (or robs me of it!). An interesting paradox as I claim to be a cyborg but yet I would not picture a cyborg as having difficulty remembering different selves. Before I continue, I'm going to tease out the idea of the fractured self some more (please excuse the stream of consciousness--but hey its a blog, and I promise good signposting and transitions, well b/c i'm a polite writer like that..). Let's start with a key definition, shall we? Then move on towards the fragmented cyborg identity.
What is a cyborg?
I'll use Haraway's (1991) definition because it is not only accurate, but is also consistent within the critical theoretical framework I use when approaching online identity.
A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women's movements have constructed 'women's experience', as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women's experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion. (Haraway, 1991, p. 149)
Haraway is specifically involved in the cyborg-feminist manifestations. While she spends a great deal of time talking about postmodernims identites and feminism, her argument is taht ultimately that she is a cyborg and implies that we all are ones too.
As a cybernetic organism, how then do we have fragmented identities. Looking at popular literature and movies reveals the problem with the identities of cyborgs. We can turn to our own imaginations first to understand some of the complexities of identification.. Alfred and Deidre??? I knew that speculative fiction class would pay off one day! I'll turn to Moore's writing of Deidre. I only remember a bit of the story, but it was one of my favorites. Deidre was a performer in a nightclub gig and died horribly in a fire. Her brain was encased in a robotic body and she struggled with her humanity. I do clearly remember Moore describing how her robotic body eerily moved to mimic her real life dancing. I've found a great synopsis of the story online and they even cite passages from the text: DEIDRE
Of course, our television history also reveals the challenges that true androids and cyborgs must undergo. Commander Data and Seven of Nine both struggled with their human identities while on the television shows. (Hey ask me about how I know Lynn Zimmerman--aka Jerri Ryan. How she played Lucy in MHT alongside my brother who played Charlie Brown...and how as a six year old kid, I used to look up at her and think hmmm...she scares me a little).
And yet, I too seem to struggle each day with my identity. I have a yahoo instant messenger list, an AIM account, my purdue account, my hotmail account, oh and my chat site account. Some days I don't remember who in the world I'm talking to. Usuually because I'm only faced with "text" and no image or face with the words that are blasting past me. As a child, technology felt human. It allowed me to communicate with others, via the telephone. I remember when I walked around with all my friends' telephone numbers stuck in my head -- (and they have remained there and will the rest of my life!!). But as phone technology has advanced, my memory--or human's memories--has waned and forced us to become more cyborg like by relying on the very devices to retrieve phone numbers for us. In other words, I do not know anyone's home phone number at all, save for my mother's phone. Were it not for the directory phone list stored in my cell and on my land phone, I would not be able to contact anyone easily. My argument is this: the advancement of the technology has made us more reliant on it, and less reliant on ourselves. Humans have shifted the burden of memory to the electronic devices.
In fact, the further my online identity has become fragmented, the more I rely on the technology to help me reformulate my missing Identity(ies). For example, I get lots of people who want to chat on yahoo--and I know if I am goign to ever remember them, I have to save the chat log so I can look it up and reread it at a later date. If there isn't a picture in the profile, then often times a series of random numbers or names means very little to me. The problem has only grown the past year, because I rarely chat on yahoo. I originally had it to keep in touch with friends, but as a single gay man interested in talking with other techno-chat-gay-savvy men, my chat list continued to grow and grow. Exacerbated further by the fact i log into the account maybe once a week to get a barrage of instant messages from people that are on a list and I have no idea who they are.
My identity becomes further fragmented as I'm forced to create a damn fricking profile for any and every site that requires a login. I've decided that myspace is evil. Everyone wants me to add them to their friends list and becomes angry when I refuse. My standard answer: No thanks, Myspace is just to keep in touch with my close friends and I don't want a bunch of silly bulletin board posts on my page from strangers I don't know". That usually gets them off my back--but its true! I've made the mistake of adding people there before, only to be inundated with stupid pointless surveys from people I hardly know at all. But again, myspace becomes a place, a virtual shared community and memory with saved messages, pictures, posts, blogs, and guestbooks.
The cyborg elements extend beyond my memory. As I sit in front of my computer screen I quickly become immersed in the virtual world around me--especially when playing my MMORPG, DDO. I play my game on a 60 some odd inch HDTV set and roll up as close to it as possible allowing it to encompass my entire field of vision. I literally become connected to my computer--wired in. I have my keyboard, my mouse, my audio volume, and my headset on. These components allow me to navigage the virtual world--to engage another different world. This world has images, and familiar voices. The mouse and keyboard allow me to communicate--in this world, I am completely reliant on the technology to "exist." Without it I am nothing. My feelings--my sense of urgency within the game are real, my shared connections feel real--that is the humanness, but without the technology, that extended identity that I project in the game cannot exist at all. Attempting to move from my seat only reminds me of my wired-in status, as the wires shuffle, and my ability to navigate my avatar becomes jarred. My cyborgness is fully aware when playing the game.
But as I back away from the game, I see how my cyborg self has overwhelmed me. As my identities become fragmented into intellectual electronic memories, I feel as though I have lost part of myself. This blog helps me remember--but it also serves as the memory for me. Is it any different from writing it in a book??? Yes! Journals can be eaten by dogs and the memories forgotten---damn that dog!! Here its at least semi-permanent. There is also an identity I project here that would be different from writing in a journal. This post, I know is primarily for my own eyes, but I also realize it may be read by others (and hopefully will be!).
As I scan my computer's hard drive, I come across fragments of conversations, phone numbers, people I have talked with via instant messenger over the past three years. Who is this person? And who is the person that constructed all this text--only to be found left so meaningless in a 2GB D: partition. I'm a cyborg more than ever before; it makes me shudder.