Shaw Passage Explanation

For Part One, Section One of the Final, I think that a passage from Shaw’s “Embodiment and the human from Dante through tomorrow” has a useful passage on p. 170. The passage is as follows: “At the core of the posthuman is the same hermeneutic feature that is key for humanity: the ability to understand the other” (Shaw 170). I think the passage generally sums up Shaw’s challenge of the necessity of embodiment by claiming that it does not matter so much what the posthuman looks like, as long as we can understand it in a human way. He uses Dante’s human interaction with the “trees” after his return from the afterlife as proof that the posthuman will not be about “corporeality but rather the personality and sustainability of their personality” (Shaw 170).  Additionally, the passage includes a difficult vocabulary word in hermeneutic — a method of or principle of interpretation. Finally, I think this passage is especially relevant because the idea of an entity with a non-human appearance being interacted with as a human is one that we have repeatedly explored throughout the second half of the semester in werewolf texts such as Bisclavret” and William of Palerne.

All Google Everything

I had a very similar reaction to Jay’s creative presentation as Hannah did. To me, it was very concerning to realize how believable it was — a project like Google Universe is one that I could totally see happening. I thought Jay did a great job of capturing just how invasive Google can be with projects like Google Glasses (and if you think about it, how invasive it already is). Continue reading

Going Beyond our Limitations: The Singularity

For my paper, I’m doing choice A and examining Ray Kurzweil’s view of the transhuman and The Singularity. First, I will attempt to establish exactly what the Singularity is through its origins and different incarnations, culminating with Kurzweil’s theory. I intend to utilize several articles from academic journals whose authors (such as Katherine Hayles, Ben Goertzel, and Brooks Lahdon) examine Kurzweil and the idea of The Singularity with varying results and opinions. The well-known and respected Hayles seems generally dismissive of the idea and worries about individuals being “left behind” (a concern voiced earlier in the semester by Fukuymama). Continue reading

Plastic (in)Human

I thought that Smith’s presentation on Cindy Jackson and her many encounters with plastic surgery brought up many questions about humanity and the posthuman. When plastic surgery is taken to such extremes, as in Jackson’s case, the results are shocking. She looks completely unrecognizable as compared to her “former” self, and the class generally agreed that knowing that she’s undergone all of these surgeries is disturbing in itself and perhaps doesn’t allow us to look at her as we would a “normal” person. Continue reading

Holy Wars

“The more the human will becomes conformed to what God wills, the more free human beings are to become who they truly desire to be” (189). This quote from Nuth’s essay at the end of The Showings of Julian of Norwich is, to me, a very interesting approach to life. It would seems logical that one would sacrifice anything and everything (even kill) in order to carry-out God’s will (and this has proven true countless times in the past).  But what happens when the rules of one’s faith become obsolete? Continue reading

Who Are We?

I really enjoyed and endorse many of the points Bynum made in the chapter Metamorphosis and Identity. My favorite part was the first point of her conclusion where she discusses how “these dichotomies of nature versus nurture, biology versus social construction… do not seem to me to give us the help we need to deal compassionately with ourselves or with others” (Bynum 187). This point is so insightful to me — these difficult questions that we agonize over and spend so much time thinking about are ultimately obsolete if we are not compassionate and loving to one another. Continue reading

The Myth of Progress

After having just reviewed all of the course’s modern-day material for the midterm, I found it very interesting to note the parallels between the texts we began reading this week from the Middle Ages and the aforementioned modern ones we looked at in the first half of the semester. Whether these texts are examining mortality, ontology, religion or just what it means to be human, it becomes clear that many of the same questions have plagued humanity for years and years (like 800 years to be exact). For as much as we like to think we have advanced over time, the question now arises: are we really any “better” now then we were then? Continue reading

Science is Good!

In chapter 5 of Graham, there is a quote from Nelkin that says “social factors, such as social class, wealth or poverty, environment, lifestyle and diet are far more influential (than genes) in influencing morbidity and mortality rates, as successive surveys have shown.” I am curious as to how statistics like these are gathered and interpreted, and also how it is possible to know what it will be like if we do in fact make vast improvements in our understanding of genes through the Human Genome Project. To me, pushing the boundaries of science seems like a better long-term option for solving poverty and suffering than any alternatives. Continue reading

What We Aren’t

In this post I would like to explore the often emotionless Crake (as well as the Strangers) posthuman, and, in turn, what these observations say about humanity. From what we’ve read so far, it seems Crake is the one who has brought about the destruction of society. Obviously, whatever world he was living in was extremely corrupt with its child pornography and violence; but rather than to try and use his natural ingenuity to fix it, he apparently thought that a better solution would be to end humanity completely. Continue reading

Robots > Humans?

An idea we have discussed in class is that sometimes androids (in this case Spike) can appear to be “more human” than most actual humans (including those who appear in the first part of The Stone Gods as genetically altered monsters), and in turn this can beg the question of what it means to be human. Throughout the novel, Billie insists that Spike’s system is limbic, not neural (and therefore cannot experience emotions), and usually Spike wisely retorts that the definition of humanity is constantly changing, and if this is so what really is human? Are “genetically fixed” people any more human than synthetically created ones? I interpreted these conversations as suggesting that (at least part of) the reason why humans are again and again so destructive is that we value our own form and way of life above that of other forms. Continue reading