Week 8 Science, Technology and Society

The Official Cyborg – Neil Harbisson Photograph by Dan Wilton https://www.dezeen.com/2013/11/20/interview-with-human-cyborg-neil-harbisson

Blade Runner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhJ7Mf2Oxs

Cyborg Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline coined the term "cyborg" in 1960 "to refer to the enhanced man who could survive in extra-terrestrial environments" "The purpose of the Cyborg . . . is to provide an organizational system in which such robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel"

Replicants Replicants are used for off-world work. Deckardt is part of the system, the last stage of authority, between the state and those who would oppose it. Replicants are humans, particularly Nexus 6. They are the ultimate representation of the sphere of scientific practice, who decide to promote the lines of individual resistance to the dominant scientific discourse that controls their lives. They seek a fundamental change at a system level, within the corporation that made them.

Pris and Roy The NEXUS 6 Replicant in Bladerunner is “a being virtually identical to a human. . . superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them.”

Cyborgs

TD versus SC Technological Determinism is the idea that technology drives our social structures. Social Constructivism says that it is actually social structures that shape our technology.

Metropolis

Metropolis https://vimeo.com/16925533

Hollywood Hollywood is a state of mind and has come to represent a specific historical narrative style that resonates throughout the world, maintaining American hegemony while supporting American cultural dominance.

Andre Gaudreault “The cinema knows so well how to tell a story that perhaps there is an impression that it has always known how”.

Bruce Joel Rubin “Movies to me are about wanting something, a character wanting something that you as the audience desperately want him to have. You, the writer, keep him from getting it for as long as possible, and then, through whatever effort he makes, he gets it”.

A Journey An ancient narrative at the heart of human endeavour that is told over and over again. Hollywood merely co-opted, refined and marketed it to a degree that had never been seen before. Every time it is the story of a journey, which is the story of our journey. But what if the main character is a metaphorical representation of humanity?

Colin McArthur “Intextuality asserts that the writer of a novel or the director of a film no more invents the work than the maker of a statement invents the language that it is uttered in. Rather, the process of literary production (and production in the other arts) is seen as primarily a rearranging of pre-existent works with constant reference to them.” “On the contrary, the meanings of texts have to be constructed at the moment of their appearance and reconstructed in periodic transactions involving critics and audiences in particular historical moments.”

Metropolis vs Blade Runner They are both set in cities dominated by technology. Each has a society divided into two groups: the ruling elite and the workers. In Blade Runner, the replicants are the off-world workers. Dr. Eldon Tyrell creates an empire based on slavery. So does Johann Fredersen in Metropolis. The workers in both films stage a revolution. Each film has a main female character with a duplicate robot: Maria in Metropolis and Rachael, modeled on Tyrell's niece, in Blade Runner.

Synthesis A deep archetypal structure embedded within the text of Metropolis that mirrors the desire human beings have to create a living being that bridges the gap between human and machine. Robot, android, cyborg are in reality all the same thing: a dream, a desire for synthesis with the machine, in one form or another.

Christine Cornea “Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, the cyborg has emerged as a dominant figure in science fiction cinema. Images of this figuration have entered the popular imagination, and the celluloid cyborg has become synonymous with an understanding of contemporary life, a life that is heavily reliant upon the information technologies of our postmodern age.”

Merge We are dreaming us. That cyborg on the screen is a dreamlike, filmic representation of ourselves, consumed by information technologies. We are not creating a cyborg. We are becoming cyborgs, as we merge with our increasing abundance of digital machines in a world obsessed with technology and globalization.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

DIY cyborg https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/diy-cyborg