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I've been reading a ridiculous amount of research lately, in preparation for phD applications, and I must say it has been one of the most mentally invigorating times in recent memory. Joel Dinerstein, David Noble, Carolyn de la Peña, Fred Turner, Colin Milburn, and E. Anthony Rotundo are just some of the authors I've been reading lately and I'd recommend to anyone interested in liquid cultural landscape and human interaction with technology. I keep asking the same question from different angles - what is the relationship between the biological and technological? Strides in the fields of genetics, robotics, information technologies and nanotechnology promise the much lauded singularity where everything that occurred prior to that event will be considered human and everything after will be a technological utopia outside of our wildest imagination. And while I love science fiction, are we doomed to a Matrix or Terminator-stylized future where the machines and human battle for supremacy? Will we all coalesce into a hive mind stored on the cloud where we must plug electrodes into pleasure centers of our brains in order to masturbate? And will we still experience embarrassment as everyone else watches us? Am I only my mind - and can the concept of "mind" be distilled into primarily computational as the analogies seem to be suggesting? We talk about building processors that rival the computational power of the human brain as if that is all this mess of synapses, grey matter, nerves, and chemicals can be boiled down to. As many have started to argue, the posthuman utopia neglects broad strokes of what it means to be human. Are we just re-cycling the modernist myth of progress and cumulative knowledge, while neglecting the "Creole" side of human existence as Dinerstein would argue? In what ways is our techno-driven future just silencing the diverse sexualities, ethnicities, and cultures that make up the strange, yet interesting Gumbo of the pan-human experience. I have more questions than anything, yet a future that seems quick to abandon the lessons of the past, seems doomed to create more problems than answers. I would love to hear what others think if anyone has the time to comment!
