Difference between revisions of "Technosocial Womb"

Revision as of 07:57, 11 May 2010

Also see Pod Culture and Tele-Cocoons

In 'technosocial womb' everything is the same distance away.

To ‘go virtual’ is to free the self from the weight of the flesh incarcerated by ‘heavy modernity’. Cyber Ethnologist Sandy Stone discusses the theoretical benefits of joining virtual communities:

"Electronic virtual communities represent flexible, lively, and practical adaptations to the real circumstances that confront persons seeking community in what Haraway (1987) refers to as ‘the mythic time of the late twentieth century.”

They are part of a range of innovative solutions to the drive for sociality—a drive that can be frequently thwarted by the geographical and cultural realities of cities increasingly structured according to the needs of powerful economic interests rather than in ways that encourage and facilitate habitation and social interaction in the urban context [Benedikt 1991: 111].

The fetishism to 'meld' with technology gives lifeless bodies more power, and gives a way for the human selves to finally compete with the industry around them. There is also fear that if humans don't join the fold of technology, technology will eclipse or a way for the human selves to finally compete with the industry around them. There is also fear that if humans don't join the fold of technology, technology will eclipse or replace them, similar to how human factory workers were replaced by machinery through the many stages of the industrial revolution. As long as the technology can be upgraded, humans have control over it. Instead of throwing out the human, the technology can be thrown out. The human is safe, while the technology is not.

The desire to upgrade the cell phone is also a desire to upgrade one's body to the next best state in evolution. It is a means of purchasing power in the form of better, faster communication. It is what Anthropologist Donna Haraway calls a symbiotic relationship: a co-production of existence. “In this context, electronic virtual communities are complex and ingenious strategies for survival” (Benedikt 1991: 111). Without human support, technology could not survive, and without technological support, a globalized society would not be able to sustain itself.

Entering into a network by becoming part cyborg creates the ability for the subject to augment social and physical capabilities. The cell phone allows people to be more

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omniscient and omnipresent. Technology allows one to transcend more readily the confines of the flesh-burdened human body. Information stored on the computer can be seen as accessed by many at once, allowing copies of a person's essence to be present in many places at once (while retaining one singular place).

Upgrading signifies a feeling of human power over technology. The technology can be detached from the network and upgraded separately from the human. Humans, fearful of becoming obsolete to technology, can throw out technology and upgrade their power by purchasing a better object. Purchasing a cell phone is akin to purchasing a better looking ear and a better looking hand. As long as the technology can be upgraded, humans have control over it. The human feels safe, while the technology is not. The modern technosocial state does not save the human from decaying. Since technology and human interaction is co-produced, the human who does not upgrade is actually obsolete in the modern sense. Though the human can feel secure from the touch of technology, status is tied right into technology, and will decrease unless the technology is upgraded.

Mobile Technologies and Infancy: The Allure of the Mobile Auditory Place

Michel de Certeau writes, that to “visit the gleeful and silent experience of infancy: to be another, and go over to the other, in a place” (Augé 1995:83). The cell phone is a space that is a place existing in extraterrestrial space, yet is a place that one can frequent again and again. Though the person on the other line may be different, the place in which the two people meet is the same. The space of a cell phone helps to reduce the isolation that exists in the modern state, and can thus be considered a womb of social connection.

Starobinski's definition of modernity is that: Movement adds the particular experience of a form of solitude, and, in the literal sense, of 'taking up a position': the experience of someone who, confronted with a landscape he ought to contemplate, cannot avoid contemplating, 'strikes the pose' and derives from this awareness of this attitude a rare and sometimes melancholy pleasure. [Augé 2000:87]

The reconnection of the individual to something greater, to real social interaction, is the womb state, the Garden of Eden, the utopia. The baby in the womb, like a tree, only needs to be in one place to grow. In the same way, the postmodern individual can travel with a womb through which social sustenance may be delivered, because no social sustenance can be delivered by individuals in the modern public sphere.

As anthropological places create the organically social, so non-places create solitary contractility (Augé 1995:94). Non-places are the sources of modern anomie. In Emelie Durkheim’s perspective, a malnourished public sphere deprives individuals of real social connections. In the face of this anomie, the cell phone allows an organic social network. Through the subject and the technology combined, the subject can become an Actor on the larger Actor Network. If the human spends time in a non-place, then the addition of a non-place accessed through the telephone tears through the solitary contractuality characterized by the non-place. Both the place and the non-place can exist at once, because in the supermodern perspective all dichotomies blur into one another.

Donna Haraway discusses the compression of dichotomies as a result of technology. “the cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries [and] deepened dualisms

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of mind and body, animal and machine” (Haraway 1991:154). Instead of delineations between place and non-place, or delineations between public and private, the hybrid state decays the delineation between dichotomies and reduces it to a state the is neither public nor private, place or non-place, or 'here nor there'.

Thus, non-place is not separate from place, but is both a place and a non-place at once. The realm of the cell phone is a place that may be heard, and only liminally lived in. Augé defines the idea of the communication network as one that lies on the plane of extraterrestrial space (Augé, 1995:79). Thus the cell phone is a liminal extra-terrestrial space, or a space that is actually a place removed from place (the isolation of urban reality) that can be accessed simply by logging onto the Actor Network of cell phone users. It is natural that so many disconnected individuals would so quickly adopt a technology that allows them some semblance of former society, even though it is mediated by technology and a payment plan.

From: Cell Phones and Their Technosocial Sites of Engagement by Caseorganic.