Cyborgs are Iminent

Wow, what a great read! I suppose my sarcasm is apparent. However, I have an overwhelming sense that this reading would be far easier if the entire work were digested. From what I can figure out it looks like the cyborg manifesto was part of the book: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. If this is actually the case I think that a lot of our difficulty in digesting the work is the 150 or so pages that came before what we read. It is clear that Donna Haraway writes in a very unique way that has the potential to be either acutely clear in its essence or astoundingly muddled depending on your approach to it. I often find that when reading authors who take this approach a lot of the digestive process is hearing the key words they use over and over and over. This subtley builds up an almost un/sub-conscious sense or feel of what the author is trying to convey. In many ways I think Haraway is getting at a subject that cannot be nailed down and organized into pretty little boxes. Because of this there is an abstract supra-lingual quality to the ideas she is attempting to express. I don't think our inability to fully grasp her thesis or point is the fault of the author. Rather, the difficulty lies in the subject matter itself and our very limited exposure to it and motivation to understand it.

So I fully recognize that I have completely side skirted the issue of analyzing the content or attempted to make meaning out it, but I feel like the above discussion is the best thing I can contribute to the conversation at this time. Perhaps we'll have the opportunity to discuss the text more in class. Perhaps as Wendy suggested we'll encounter the same work in grad school if we find ourselves there. Maybe then we will have the foundation to effectively experience what Haraway was trying to get at...

Kolko y Gómez-Peña

In Kolko's article Erasing @race she quotes Donald L. Day; "Too frequently, people must adapt to technology rather than adapting it to their needs." She uses this comment to highlight the part of her thesis which claims that the interface of applications, web-based apps in particular, not only dictate how the user interacts with the machine, but also how different users interact with one another. She is specifically discussing how the assumed "whiteness" of the users and hence the resulting interface creates unexpected obstacles for non-white users attempting to communicate and be a part of the online community that this interface is the portal to.
Upon reading this I was forced to recognize that not only had I not noticed the inherent "whiteness" of most technology, but that this was likely the reason it had never occurred to me before (I'm white). It was designed for me, most likely by people who thought similarly to me because of our shared background and culture. I have always recognized the phenomenon of white advantage, particularly in regards to my exuberance and disregard for law as a youth. It is likely that my blessed presence to sit here and write this today is in part due to a legal system that most certainly was not blind to my color and that of my family in the courtroom.
However, the point I am making is that never had I considered the more subtle nuances of white advantage. Gómez-Peña's article, Chicano Interneta, was a clear testament to the obstacles encountered by another culture stepping into cyberspace. He discusses the mythology that mexicans and other latinos cannot handle high technology. This mythos, he posits, is perpetuated by hispanics and anglos alike. However, he makes the important point that although the general stereotype depicts "Mexico and Mexicans as technologically underdeveloped, yet culturally and spiritually superior, and the U.S. as exactly the opposite", many Anglo-Americans also do not understand technology. Once again I am further informed of my own rare association with the group who "gets it" as it is stated women and people of color in the U.S. also suffer from a lack of equal access to cyberspace.
On a personal level these articles better informed me of the very deep obstacles that still permeate high culture. It is very easy to say racism is subsiding or isn't as bad as everyone says it is when you just so happen to be both the privalged race and gender. It's gonna take a lot of commitment and time to heal the racial barriers that were constructed through our species path to the "now". I'm down.

Well, I am curious as to how I forgot that the assignment was to compare and contrast Nakamura's article with some commercials from the recent 2008 summer Olympics. (see post below) But alas, now I have remembered, (upon reading my fellow group members posts), so here ya go!

The first commercial I watched was for Adidas. It was quite creative in the way it depicted all of the spectators as the playing fields and then swimming pool. This approach gives the impression that it is the spectators and fans that really "hold up" the athletes and thus embellishes you the viewer with part of the credit for the success of those competing. I was unable to watch a single event of the olympics so I am not sure if this commercial aired in the U.S., but because everyone in the commercial was Chinese it may have been regionally targeted. I didn't really get the feeling that this particular commercial was attempting to unite humans so much as it was aligning itself with the hosts of the Olympic Games.

Next up was a commercial titled "One World, One Dream". This drew heavily upon the themes of everyone being equal and togetherness. People from various cultures and ethnicities are displayed performing tremendous athletic feats and often the scenes are manipulated in such a way as to make the actions appear superhuman. The ingredient missing in this commercial however is the explicit attempt to sell something. Not until the very end is it revealed that the sponsor of the commercial and thus the potential profiteer is the Olympic Games themselves. I think that it's somewhat fair to say that the Olympic Committee has more of a right than most to make the claim that their "product" encourages equality.

Finally I watched the coke commercial where athletes of every color and creed are awarded their gold medal. This one was unique in that it stated that if I 'd had a coke in the last 80 years I played a role in making the Olympic Games what they are today. By unique I am refering to how it was almost thanking me for my previous consumption of their product rather than directly asking me to buy more. In giving me credit for my past choice of coke I am subtly encouraged to choose coke again in the future.

After watching all of these commercials I am left with the thought that of course commercials in the Olympics are going to utilize people from various ethnic backgrounds. This is different than an IBM commercial that uses this same subject matter through its own decision and airs the commercial everywhere without the context of an event that is so interwoven with the subject. What do my fellow "just minds" think about this? :-)

First of all I apologize for my tardiness in this post. As we just received our group lists today I hope I didn't affect anyone's efforts to respond to my post.

Nakamura's article titled "where do you want to go today?" discusses the irony of corporations using ethnic groups in advertising to make the claim that their products and services breakdown the barriers of race and gender. The irony is found in the necessity of painting these personas in their advertising as characteristically "other" whilst claiming that a particular commodity reduces us to "just minds".

While I can accept that there is a certain aura of deceit and mis-characterization taking place in these advertisements I still find myself in more appreciation of them than discontent. It reminds me of the Kaiser-Permanente paradox. That being that based on their commercials you would think they were a very progressive, care oriented HMO. However, as revealed in the tapes that Michael Moore popularized in Sicko their whole model is based on a profit vs. care structure and you can guess who wins....profit. (click here for transcript) The point I'm making is that even though these tapes demonstrate some less than angelic beginnings for the HMO, at least now their commercials are encouraging people to take a preventative approach to their health. Regardless of the fact that Kaiser-Permanente benefits from this scenario I support it, it's advertising that doesn't make me sick to my stomach and I appreciate it.

So am I saying that the only merit found in the advertising discussed by Nakamura is that it doesn't suck? NO, although that is a bonus. I think that many of these companies really would like to see an utopic society in which racial, ethnic and gender barriers dissolve. Just because they profit from it doesn't mean they don't support it.

What do you think?

Here's a Kaiser-Permanente commercial to compare the above link to:

First post: Profile

What up?! My name is Danny Mulvihill. If you're reading this we're probably in DTC 475 together. So the basics: I'm 26, live in Vancouver (until Oct 1st, then Portland, yay!), work lots, DTC major, music is the breath of my spirit and I use air for my physical needs.

So what's this class gonna be about? If I had to guess I would say diversity in the digital realm. Okay, I'll elaborate a bit. I expect that we will further delve into a lot of the ideas discussed in Dr. Grigar's DTC 375 class I took over the summer. Basically a brief historical overview of how we got to where we are within the digital age. I'm sure we'll talk about different mediums and how they have certain advantages as well as limitations in expressing particular ideas. And just to snag a snippet from the syllabus: "...we will examine the ways in which elements of cyberculture both reflect and impact larger cultural issues and concerns."