2007. Who’d have thought fifteen years ago that I’d be writing a masters thesis on the effects and origins of computer mediated communication?
It seems like only yesterday I blankly stared ahead of me, wondering exactly how the electronic orange font particles displayed against the black void of the computer screen, suspended like some futuristic pop-up book. I fumbled with my 5.25 floppy disk, hoping the information wouldn’t scrape off if I touched it wrong or dropped it on the floor or didn’t put it into the drive right. This contraption in front of me was light years ahead of the Brother typewriter I used at academy. Computers were an anomaly, like University in many respects, and to many of us the wonder and possibility of the internet was still a piece of science fiction.
1992. That’s when I found myself amidst a hundred or so other students, stuck against our will in the makeshift computer lab on the fourth floor of a building that once housed an all girls dormitory, an architectural treasure on an otherwise drab campus of lackluster brick and mortar relics — the legacy of the seventies.
Campus was changing. It all seemed relative to me at the time, being from a new generation more outspoken and perhaps academically driven than the previous. Little did we know the trends in technology would open a new trove of philosophical artifacts and a thirst for knowledge that would spawn commonplaces like the personal computer and the IPOD.
My generation’s instant love affair with films like Star Wars and James Cameron’s Terminator put the whole cyborg fantasy in the hot seat. What would we look like and how would we behave as machines? Man married to electronic circuits, unable to function without his connection to the technology he had created. William Gibson’s Neuromancer took “man vs. machine” a step further by introducing the “matrix,” a virtual world in which man could reshape his identity and experience life in an alternate form, unaffected by physical matter — in essence rendering him immortal. And Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (a film based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) made us question the divide between organic and synthetic. The “corporeality vs. virtuality” dialogue that ensued put the old “man vs. machine” match into an entirely different context. What would happen if dreams could come true, if Dorothy could in fact click her heels three times and return home, just like that?
Meanwhile, the changes seen on campus were a clear indication that life outside of school was swiftly moving into the next millennium, and that science fiction was becoming science fact. Gears shifted from material to virtual, a transition we would later find was so instantaneous, many hadn’t noticed it at all. It was as if we were born ready to divide and conquer this virtual landscape of ones and zeroes rife with invisible connections to past technologies.
So here I am, fifteen years later, working through my thesis.
Man’s psychological relationship with the computer inspired many academics, including MIT professor and sociologist Sherry Turkle, who produced several seminal works surrounding the invention and exploration of virtual technologies. It didn’t take long for scholars to prove, and for the rest of us to realize that we had already become cyborgs long before we asked the questions. Sure, there were no dark helmets or serial killer androids, but many of us had to admit a bit of social impotence with the absence of those technologies we’d all become so fond of by the late twentieth century.
Now, after fifteen intense years of silicon wars at home and harrowing virtual wars abroad, scholarship exposes the effects of that technology on our collective psyche.
But wait, there’s more.
Understanding popular theory of remediation allows us to ask more interesting, if not pressing questions. What will we do with the technology history and human intelligence have so graciously bestowed on us? How will we fashion the technology after ourselves? How will we fashion ourselves after the technology?
If by this point you’re wondering whether the chicken or the egg came first, that’s ok. that question remains at the bottom of many “man vs. machine” and “corporeal vs. virtual” texts, and for the purposes of this thesis, still remains unanswered. Due to our finite existence, we humans obsess with the past and the future.
And understanding cyborg reality and exploring the relationship between corporeality and virtuality allows us to step back and view the bigger picture. What do we do next? And what do we stand to gain (or lose) from it all?
Over the course of the next few months I’ll post quotes, reactions to sources and other material related to my thesis, and journal the experiences surrounding my research. Each entry will discuss a different source and how it relates to the big picture. Hopefully by the end I’ll get to the essence of this topic, and perhaps shed some new light on an ever growing sea of scholarship surrounding the sociological effects of computer mediated communication.
To better utilize this blog, I suggest you click the “How to use this weblog” tab on the homepage. Feel free to leave comments and questions.
Read my thesis proposal. COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION: A SHIFT OF WRITING TECHNOLOGIES TOWARD THE ORGANIC AS ILLUSTRATED BY ONLINE LITERARY JOURNALS
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
