Question 3: Frankenstein continues to occupy the popular imagination as a monstrous scientist. Analyze some of the ways in which Frankenstein continues to haunt discussion of recent technologies.
Technologies help to improve human lives but also destroy human’s identities. Catherine Waldby’s ‘The Instruments of Life: Frankenstein and Cyberculture’ brings out the notion of monstrous imagination of Frankenstein’s monster of Mary Shelley’s story. In order to examine why Frankenstein’s monster launches a wide discussion in society, I would conduct searches of online materials through Yahoo and Google search engines, and six sources written by Sanstone, Gelardi, Sack, Grubbe, Locke and Richard are used for the question.
[1] I think Sanstone’s article is useful as she gives a general picture of the concept of cyborg, which helps me to organize the structure of my essay, as well as elaborate the ideas with its examples. In Sanstone’s article, she tries to explain the concept of cyborg in two dominant perspectives: ‘the cyborg as a reconceptualized post-human body and the cyborg as machine-controlled monster.’ Base on the view of scholars like Clynes, Kline and Haraway, the cyborg is an extension of human body, which is believed to be positive to human body by enhancing human’s capabilities. On the other hand, as cyborg is an integrated entity of machine and human, Santone states the monstrous images of machine / human relationship, which is origin from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Some scholars such as Sherry Turkle and Sandy Stone stress that human heavily rely on technology, which leads to the significant role of machine towards human daily lives. One of the examples is the alternative identities on the internet. In the cyberspace, human characteristics such as race, gender and age are disregarded, and it helps to reconstruct the identity without physical human body. Sanstone also mentions that the reason of ‘human regards cyborg as monster’ is a reflection of technology-phobia. Since the intelligence and automation of cyborg may take over the human brain, cyborg has the potential to liberate to be ‘human’ and even uncontrolled like Frankenstein’s monster or the Terminator.
[2] From Gelardi’s article, I believe that it can explain human’s fears towards technology / humanity in both gender and identity aspect respectively. Gelardi’s article shows the reason why Frankenstein’s monster is imaged as monster by focusing on the genderlessness of Frankenstein’s monster. In the discussion of monstrous image of Frankenstein’s monster, he says that the emergence of Frankenstein’s monster blurs the distinction between human and monster, and the identity of Frankenstein’s monster is ambiguous. It is regarded as a part of human being because of its physical human body; yet, it was not born in human’s womb but created by human dead body with advanced technology in a laboratory. Moreover, Gelardi also points out that even though Frankenstein’s monster looks masculine, its gender is still uncertain. Similar to Haraway’s concept of cyborg, Frankenstein’s monster is created by technology and does not have its biological sex, as well as has no original unity (i.e. not simply born and raised with a family). All these characteristics are conflicting to human being, which threatens human with technology / humanity.
[3] Sack’s article is about the question of the human nature and artificial intelligence, shows that the technology is too powerful to duplicate the ‘human nature’. Sack states that it is easier for us to define the differences between us and them from artificial beings such as cyborgs and replicants, since machine is supposed not to have emotion and spirit. However, with the development of artificial intelligence, machine is indistinguishable from human. Therefore, human starts to worry about the computer acts like a person, and himself as being like a computer. Therefore, Sack uses the example of ELIZA to explain how the ‘Wired-style community’ disregard the man-machine relationship. ELIZA is a computer program could carry on a textual conversation with people by varies replies. Scientists and researches have attempted to merge some human characteristics like the senses, perception and social discourse with computer. As the result, the artificial human perception and sensation of cybernetics would eliminates the artificial / natural boundary and challenges human identity.
[4] In order to give a further explanation on human’s phobia of cyborg or technology, I would use Grubbe’s article as an example to show how technology burring and threatening the human nature. Grubbe’s article gives various living examples on how the technology functioned on human body. Being an expert of biomechanics and tissue engineering, Dr. Meloy and Dr. Warwick shares his experience on implantation of human body. Dr. Meloy pinpoints that it is common to use tools to replace lost functions of human body. For instance, robotic legs, knees and ankle can replace amputated or paralyzed legs, and it is believed that with the aid of machine, the artificial legs will be better than human legs for running in the next decade. It seems that people who disabled benefited from biomechanics, Grubbe states that some people worry that technology would goes nuts, or people would misuse these technology. One of the obvious examples is the creation of fighting machines for military use.
[5] I found that Locke’s article ‘Literary Examples of Man’s Fear of Machine’ is useful, which offers a further discussion on human’s fear on machinery out of control. Locke stresses that machines can be very powerful by enhancing the ability of human being as well as guarding men from harm; on the contrary, it is also resulting in people lacks self-reliance and being manipulated by machines. According to Locke, some writers have realized the rebellion of technology, and express human’s fear of machines through their works. Those storylines are usually about people afraid of machinery rebellion, or people begin to lack social interaction by relying machine for living. At the end of the article, Locke cites a scholar’s saying that “A machine… can be the great Liberator of human drudgery, but it can also be the monster of Doctor Frankenstein's genius", which reaffirms that human should not neglect the hidden machinery crisis with technology flourishes.
[6] Richard’s article ‘Clones, Genes and Faustian Technology’ explores the issue of reproductive cloning in both positive and negative way. In fact, cloning technique is widely used in farming but not animal cloning. However, it is suggested that human cloning should be practiced in order to cure some disease. Though the cloning technology, humans can choose the genes they like based on their genetic structure. Nonetheless, in the aspect of morality, Richard states that human cloning brings out the problem of genetic variability and demean the human nature, which is regarded as diminishing human dignity and morally unacceptable.
In short, the six sources I chose show the reasons why human afraid of the images of cyborg or man-machine as technologies are too powerful, which is similar to the monstrous images of Frankenstein’s monster with negative impacts to society.
Bibliography:
[1] Santone, Jessica (2003) ‘cyborg’ http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/glossary/cyborg.htm (accessed 29 March 2008)
[2] Gelardi, R. Adrienne (2006). ‘Parallels Between Frankenstein and the Cyborg’
http://www.kristinscott.net/gelardi.html (accessed 29 March 2008)
[3] Sack, Warren. (1998) ‘Artificial Human Nature’. http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/artificial_human_nature.html#fnB11 (accessed 29 March 2008)
[4] Grubbe, H. Charlotte. (2007) ‘The Blade Runner Generation’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2079637.ece (accessed 30 March 2008)
[5] Locke, Amber. ‘Literary Examples of Man's Fear of Machine’http://www.mindmined.com/public_library/nonfiction/amber_locke_mans_fear_of_machine.html (accessed 30 March 2008)
[6] Richards, J. Robert (2004) ‘Clones, Genes and Faustian Technology’ http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777190263/ (accessed 30 March 2008)
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2 comments:
You have a nice organization on your webliography and have a rich references to support your point that technologies are helping us to improve human lives but also destroying our human’s identities.Such as in Sack’s article, it shows that the technology is too powerful to duplicate the ‘human nature’. Also, it had a interesting example on Grubbe’s article that technology can replace the lost functions of human body such as robotic legs can replace amputated or paralyzed legs.It is showing that technology is become so powerful or it may become too powerful and overcontrol. Therefore, from Gelardi’s article, you had point out the problem about human’s fears towards technology because of the well developing of the technology in nowadays.
You've reached both positive and negative ways of cyborg and tenologies bring to human. Most of the people would only conern the postive way of technologies bringing to human. They might neglect the negative ways and phobia that result in many problems and harms to us. Both Sanstone and Grubbe's artcles are making good focus on these parts.
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